Link health refers to the quality and structure of all links on your website � both internal links pointing to your own pages and external links pointing to other sites.
Broken links create a poor user experience. A visitor clicks expecting content and gets a 404 page. Multiple broken links signal a neglected site to both users and search engines.
Search engines use internal links to discover and understand the structure of your site. Pages with few or no internal links are less likely to be found and indexed. This is called orphan content.
Broken internal links � Links pointing to deleted or moved pages on your own site. Fix with 301 redirects or update the URL.
Broken external links � Links to other sites that no longer exist or have moved. These are harder to maintain because you do not control the target.
Redirect chains � A link that goes through multiple redirects (A to B to C). This slows page load and wastes crawl budget. Keep redirects to one hop maximum.
Orphan pages � Pages with no internal links pointing to them. Search engines cannot find them through crawling.
Use descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text. Avoid 'click here' � it tells users and search engines nothing about the destination. Links within body content carry more weight than footer links.
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