Do You Need to Clean Up Old Links to Other Websites?

Learn how important it is to clean up old external links on your website. Should it be a priority?

Video Transcript

Lidija: If you have a blog website, like, for instance, I have a client who is a fashion blogger. So, she links to many different products and brands and ends up having many links that are no longer valid. But it’s so extensive in her case. What would you recommend?

David: Linking to other websites or within her own website?

Lidija: Because she writes about fashion, it would be products and small brands that she’s trying to promote. And yeah, I guess when they sell things or some of those brands don’t even exist. This is a site with really old blog posts. She has many.

David: Google will not hold it against you per se to link to a page that no longer exists. But your users might be frustrated. And so, I would make it a low priority but maybe combine it with the process of updating your content. Right? So, some of these are still getting traffic and one of the things you’ll do to make that page a little bit better is to fix those links to broken pages. And then some of them are irrelevant and not worth saving, and there’s nothing more to do. So, just by killing it, now you fix that problem, too. But I wouldn’t undergo a project that would be going through my entire blog and fixing links that I’m giving to everybody else. Right? That doesn’t help you. It might help your customers and your visitors. But it’s a lot of work to keep that up.

Lidija: Exactly.

David: That’s why making it part of a process like updating your old blog would be a better way to do that.

Lidija: Makes sense.

David: Good question.