 Link Rot?
By: Christina Patterson
With the New Year fast approaching, it is important to take a few minutes to update your company Web site by searching for "link rot" a/k/a bad links. We have all received those dreaded 404 error pages "file not found" when searching the Internet and know how frustrating they can be. The good news is that there are some free and easy services you can use to check for bad links on your Web site. These services will check for bad links both internally (links inside your Web site from one page to another) as well as externally (links to pages outside of your Web site).
There are several good reasons for taking the time to run these searches.
1) Bad links will send visitors away from your Web site.
2) They present an unprofessional image.
3) Search engines tend to favor Web sites where they don't find 404 errors, giving those Web sites higher rankings.
Here are a few Web sites that offer free test runs of their services. For those of you who have small Web sites, the free test run should be sufficient to completely check your entire Web site.
Web site Garage:
http://www.websitegarage.com
Net Mechanic:
http://www.netmechanic.com
Dr. Watson:
http://watson.addy.com
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