Broken links on your website are an issue many authors are unaware of especially broken links to your books! So let’s give your website a quick health check with this what, why, and how to easily find broken links on your author website.

WHAT IS A BROKEN LINK?

There’s nothing worse than following a link or a heading to an article you want to read, or that book review, or book on sale—only to get hit with the 404 message of SORRY THIS PAGE IS NOT HERE.

This is a broken link.

Technically, it’s the URL address.

URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is the address for a unique resource on the Web.

URL is the name of your webpage like this one:

https://theauthorplatform.com/newsletter/

HOW DOES A LINK GET BROKEN?

Gremlins. Delinquent leprechauns having a day out. Unicorns having a hissy fit.

Or it’s because:

• The URL has a typo, which is the most common reason
• They moved the web page because of internal housekeeping
• Upgraded to a shiny new website provider
• the web page got deleted
• Or the website no longer exists! Yep, they’ve pulled the plug.

WHY BOTHER FIXING THOSE BROKEN LINKS?

Besides flashing off your fancy 404 page (we so love ours) doing a bit of housekeeping on these links may not seem an issue.

But….

Broken links can:

Spoil your hard-earned author reputation with sloppy housekeeping. Did you know that 88% of users won’t return because of this!

It wrecks your visitors’ experience of being stonewalled by that big 404 page.

Broken links ruin your SEO (search engine rankings) that help potential readers find you. This means the Google Gods hate websites cluttered with broken links and will stop referring people to your website!

And the big one is, it could cost you that book sale, or a new name on your email list who could be a potential superfan!

HOW TO FIND THOSE BROKEN LINKS ON YOUR AUTHOR WEBSITE

If you have Google Analytics set up on your website, login:

• Go to the behaviour tab
• Site content
• All Pages
• Change the dates (in the far-right corner)

In the middle, look for the PAGE TITLE heading:

• Tap on Page Title
• Tap on Advanced (on the right)
• The green tab should show the page title
• In the empty box next to the work ‘containing’ is where you put in your 404 page.
• Press APPLY, hold your breath, cross your fingers, and hope for a positive result like this:

If you have no broken links, it will show up in the grey box area for you to fix.

OTHER FREE ONLINE TOOLS THAT CAN HELP YOU FIND YOUR BROKEN LINKS

In case you don’t have Google Analytics linked to your account, there are dozens of free online tools to help find those broken links. We tried:

1. Broken Link Checker
2. Dead Link Checker
3. Google Search Console. This one is great for doing an all-over health check on your author website.

HOW TO FIX THOSE BROKEN LINKS ON YOUR AUTHOR WEBSITE

Before calling in an exterminator that specialises in supernatural creatures, its easy to redirect the links or fix them.

And that depends on who you use as your website provider.

For WordPress users:

• Go to your dashboard
• Pages
• Click on edit
• You’ll find the URL directly under the title and can fix the typo there.

If you have created a new page for this, you can easily redirect the URL. And we did a whole new post for that one. HERE >>

If you have no page and you’ve deleted it, you can update your 404 page to direct readers to your home page.

HOW TO PREVENT BROKEN LINKS ON YOUR AUTHOR WEBSITE IN THE FUTURE?

• Keep the URLs short and sweet on your author website
• Check the URL spelling is correct.
• Set a calendar reminder to check your links – or subscribe for our emails and we’ll remind you.
• Use a link checker

Finding and fixing those broken links on your author’s website matters. After all, it’s the heart and soul of your author platform.

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