Fixing 404s is Fun (not)

• Posted by Badi Jones on November 20th, 2008 - Comment on this Post »

Yesterday, I started on the daunting task of cleaning up 404s on SEOlogs. Fortunately, I have lots of experience when it comes to this task. Unfortunately, I’ve never thought to attempt in on SEOlogs.com until yesterday

A big part of the problem is actually in the comments. A lot of the urls that people use when they comment, don’t work anymore.

Luckily, I have some good tools to help me with this task:

For Windows Users (and mac if you run windows):
Xenu’s Link Sleuth is a great tool for finding 404s. Somehow, it’s free. Xenu is a real jewel, and actually good for so much more than finding broken links. Check out this great guide for many uses of Xenu

For Mac Users
Integrity is the best I’ve found so far for mac. The only problem is that it will only work for smaller to small-medium sites. I’ve tried it on a site with over 18,000 pages, and it doesn’t work.

SiteSucker is a decent alternative. It can actually handle larger sites. The only problem is that you actually have to download the whole site. SiteSucker is meant for downloading whole websites. It gives a nice log file with all 404s though. So it does the trick for finding 404s.

Remember to check for 404s, and check often.

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