Calgary web design relies heavily on hyperlinks. Linking between multiple web pages is an important feature of quality Calgary web design. Links are essential to improving your business’ SEO, making your website user-friendly and creating a comprehensive website.
When all is well, every link on your website will lead to the right place. However, sometimes the links can go bad or a page can be deleted or become unavailable. An image may not load or can go missing. A website or resource link might disappear. Someone might move a page and forget to update others that link to it. All of these cases can lead to broken links. A broken link can cause many issues for you.
Fixing the broken links on your site is crucial because it can hurt your SEO ranking. While the process can be slow and tedious, particularly when you have hundreds or thousands of pieces of content on your website. You will see that it is necessary to fix any broken links if you want to improve your site’s overall function. This article highlights four important reasons why fixing broken links is an essential part of Calgary web design.
User frustration is the most common disadvantage of broken links. Broken links can cause user frustration and irritation when a client is trying to access some information they have bookmarked, or an article that they someone linked to. If they find it difficult to access the information they are looking for they will likely go elsewhere. This will make their trust in you diminish which will, in turn, can damage your brand’s reputation.
Broken links can also be a source of frustration for your customers because it gives them the impression that you do not do regular housekeeping on your platform. This will make your supporters to stop sharing your content (because your links turn bad often) and it becomes more difficult to receive highly coveted inbound links. Your Calgary web design should prioritize keeping links in working order which will keep your customers happy.
Broken links can harm your credibility as a business. This is especially true for online businesses. It can also negatively impact your credibility as a source of authority. It can affect your site conversion if the broken link is on your sales page. If you decide to re-direct your clients or readers via a broken link on your site it will give them a bad impression. They will feel that your website isn’t a reliable authority or source of information to use. This will affect your site’s reputation and its credibility. It may even result in a significant reduction in the number of visitors you get.
If you publish blogs regularly with broken links, as well as social media posts with bad links, or email newsletters with broken links, your users will soon start seeing your content in a negative light. Consumers can forgive bad links but eventually, they will gorw tired. Remember that when a user shares your content, they are vouching for you by putting their reputation out for you. If it happens that the URLs or the pages they shared are deleted without redirecting the link, you’ll risk hurting their reputation too. Protect you and your partner’s credibility by keeping your links up to date!
This is probably the most vital issue. You may think a broken link isn’t a big deal, but users bookmark, favourite, and even save links. When they reference these links in the future and it doesn’t work anymore, you’re not giving them a positive experience. The same can be said about search engines.
Online search engines are designed to give users the best, most relevant, useful and on-topic content possible. If your links in Google’s search results are broken and don’t exist, this makes search engines mad. It also creates a negative user experience for the end user your prospects. Having too many bad links on your site can damage your reputation with search engines, this will make your website less desirable and this can eventually hurt your ranking on search engines. It can also decrease the chances of your website showing up in search results. If your links to a page for a service or new product that you are using for marketing doesn’t work, many people won’t be able to access your site.
Broken links negatively affect user experience on your site and make you look disorganized. If your website is a chaotic mess filled with broken links (which prevents users from gaining access to the information they need), don’t be shocked if they decide to move on to a platform that actually works. And it is likely going to be your competitor. No matter the amount of time and resources you invest into getting potential clients to your website, if what they see there is a site filled with broken links, all of your efforts will go to waste. How can they possibly trust to hand over their credit card details or invest in your services when you have an unreliable site? Trust takes time to grow, but one moment to lose. Having broken links will make you look disorganized and hurt your conversion rates.
Now that you know the type of effect broken links can have on your site then you’ll know that it’s important to fix the issue. We strongly recommend that you always check for broken links on your site every month. Doing this will allow you to take action and ultimately minimize the negative effects of having broken links on your website.
You don’t need to be obsessive over this, but it is essential to make it a habit of checking for broken links. This will certainly benefit your site and business. As broken links are a major concern for businesses and Calgary web design, there is a broad range of tools available to use for checking for them. Some of the tools out there are completely free while others may require an investment.
