A webmaster or website owner's role or responsibilities do not end when
the website he operates goes "live" and is now accessible by visitors
online. There are a whole new set of responsibilities and functions that
a website owner has to assume in order to make sure that his website continuously
works perfectly and is able to fulfill its intended functions. Some of
the responsibilities he has to assume include providing fresh content
as much as possible, submitting the website to search engines and actively
looking for reciprocal links in order to raise the ranking in search engines.
One of the most crucial responsibilities of a website owner is to check
for broken links
to his website. Broken links can be considered as one of the worst things
that can happen to a website. A lot of not so good perceptions and negative
effects arise from having a site that is riddled with broken links.
In fact, broken links
are plaguing so many websites that it is being considered as a serious
problem on the web. Many reasons can be cited for the spread of broken
hyperlinks, the general causes of broken
links include: Websites not being maintained with the appropriate
degree of dedication, the architecture of the website and how information
is placed within the site constantly changes, and the large incidence
of websites that are closing down.
Hyperlinks are a very important component of websites because it aids
in the navigation around the webpages and points to directions outside
of the site. A website without links is like a ton of documents that are
piled one on top of the other with no rhyme or reason and no intelligent
way for you to get to the information that you need.
Link management is a very important and absolutely essential part of maintaining
a website. As previously mentioned, broken links
bring with it very negative perceptions about the website and these can
have very detrimental effects on the traffic generated by the website.
From a technical perspective, broken links
can stop search engine robots dead in its tracks, effectively preventing
it from completely mapping out a website for submission to search engines.
In addition, a website that is riddled with numerous broken hyperlinks
gives visitors the idea that the site is unprofessional and that the website
owner or owners have a dubious reputation - very costly image problems
that are hard to change once it is established. Moreover, visitors who
encounter many difficulties in a website will most likely not go back
for a return visit, this is almost tantamount to losing prospective clients.
They will be turned off because they won't get the page that they are
looking for, thinking that it is not really in the site when in reality
the page is there only that an error in coding made the page inaccessible.
With internet users becoming more and more sophisticated as time goes
by, it will take website owners more effort to entice these users to visit
their websites and broken hyperlinks will not help this very difficult
process in any way.
Website owners and webmasters should be very aware of the bad effects
of having broken links
in their websites. They should diligently weed out and fix any broken links.
Fortunately, there are now a growing number of handy utilities that can
help webmasters located broken links.
With these utilities, managing a website becomes relatively easier.
For example, xml-sitemaps.com has programmed
a standalone script that will not only create sitemaps but also looks for broken links
in a website and then informs webmasters or website owners what links
they are and to which pages the links are associated with. This automation
of the task of checking broken links is a great time saver for webmasters
and website owners.
