If you have a website for your pest control business and are aware of SEO, you may understand how important it is for digital marketing. However, one thing that most people overlook in website optimization is fixing broken links. Broken links can frustrate users and hurt your website’s SEO. This can lower your site’s visibility in search results.
Search engines, such as Google, consider how good of an experience your website provides to a visitor. Broken links indicate poor website maintenance and can cause your site to rank lower. If you are someone who depends on search traffic to attract new customers, this is bad news for you. Fixing broken links may look like a big job, but that is also why they are important.
The longer you do not conduct maintenance of your website, the more customers you lose. SEO involves various complex things that a business owner may not always understand. It is best to hand over the work to a pest control seo expert while you focus on providing the best services to your clients.
Table of Contents
What are broken links?
Broken links are hyperlinks that no longer lead to the intended page. These typically result in a “404 Error” or a similar page-not-found message. These links can harm both user experience and your website’s search engine optimization (SEO). Therefore, regularly monitoring and correcting is important.
There are mainly two types of broken links– internal and external.
Internal links point to pages within your own website. For example, a link to a blog post that has been deleted or moved or a service page that no longer exists. On the other hand, external links lead to pages on other websites, which may have been removed or relocated. For example, a reference to an article that has been taken down.
How do broken links affect SEO?
Broken links can severely affect your website and disrupt user behavior, SEO, and conversions. Poor user experience is the main downside of broken links. They do not allow your potential clients to access information on your website, which frustrates them. As a result, the bounce rates of your website increase.
As customers spend less time on your website due to broken links, it tells the search engine that your website is not a good one. Therefore, your ranking also decreases. The organic traffic you received before may not come to you anymore, and worse, it might go to your competitors. Another problem with broken links is that they interrupt the flow of link equity (SEO value) within your site.
How to avoid broken links on your website?
In order to avoid broken links on your website, you have to take a few provocative steps. The biggest first step is to conduct regular website audits. It is important to detect and resolve broken links before they affect user satisfaction or SEO. Tools like Google Search Console, Screaming Frog, or Ahrefs to scan your site for non-functional links.
If you have external links on your website, that is, links that lead to other websites, make sure to monitor them more frequently. They are more likely to become outdated or broken over time. Another thing to keep in mind is to maintain a consistent URL structure. Changing your URL too many times can lead to confusion.
If you are going to remove a page from your website, make sure to update your website with the proper links. For deleted or outdated pages, use 301 redirects to point users to similar or updated content.
Keep your pest control website healthy!
Broken links can drive your customers away and towards your competitors and hurt your SEO rankings. You have invested money in building your pest control website, and you want to make sure it works to your advantage and not your disadvantage. Hire an SEO website design expert today!
