What is a dead link? How do you detect dead links?

　　In the daily process of SEO optimization for a website, as site features expand and content grows, some links or content from earlier may be deleted when adding new content later, or the URL may change due to a site redesign—either way, dead links can appear. So what is a dead link? What are the methods for detecting dead links?

　　I. What is a dead link?

　　As the name suggests, a "dead link" is a link that cannot be opened because the path link was changed or the site path indexed by the search engine was deleted—that is called a dead link! The original link carried a certain amount of authority. If a large number of dead links form, authority will be lost, which can easily lead to a downgrade of the site's ranking, or even the site being K-station by the search engine!

　　II. Methods for detecting dead links

　　1. Use SEO webmaster platform tools

　　Our preferred method for detecting dead links is SEO webmaster platform tools; we can use the crawl exception tool in the SEO webmaster platform to detect dead links. First log in to the SEO webmaster platform, then find the web crawl option, and inside it find the crawl exception function button and click it.

　　One thing to note here is that the crawl exception tool of the SEO webmaster platform does not mean that one or two crawl exceptions indicate the site has dead links; it could be a server instability issue. Therefore, only if the crawl exceptions persist over a long period can we judge that the site may have dead links.

　　2. With the help of other webmaster tools

　　Dead link detection can also make use of other webmaster tools. In such a webmaster tool, we select the dead link detection function, then enter the URL you want to check, then click to show all links, and finally click the start execution button; after a short wait, the detection results will appear. For example: we randomly enter a URL to detect dead links, and if there is a dead link, an X prompt will appear after its URL.

　　3. Analyze the website's IIS logs

　　Besides the above two detection methods, we can also analyze the website's IIS logs and check the 404 status codes in the logs. The specific method is to export the IIS logs as an Excel spreadsheet file, then after editing in the spreadsheet, click the AutoFilter function to find the entire column of erroneous link addresses with 404 error status codes.

　　The above is all the content of "What Is a Dead Link? Methods for Detecting Dead Links," provided solely for webmasters and friends to interact, exchange and learn. SEO optimization is a process that requires persistence, and I hope we can all make progress together.