All the search engine optimization in the world will be in vain, if your website does not function properly. Great content, tags, headers and all the other SEO suffers when a website has broken outbound links. These links either link to error pages or are links that do not work at all. Besides, Google considers a website as being "Under Construction" when it regularly delivers error pages or links to non-existent pages or files. Search engines believe this website is of less relevance and use to human visitors.

Broken links commonly occur when remodelling a website or when a major overhaul takes place. Old pages are removed but not all the links pointing to these pages. Sometimes a file structure edit can leave legacy links behind. Search engines, with their vast indices, can keep track of changes to your website and consequently, every broken link is evident to them. Above and beyond the user experience reasons, the main focus of broken links is the SEO factor - how do broken links affect your SERP (search engine results page) ranking?

There is much contention about broken links affecting search engine rankings. Some SEO believe that broken links can be discounted as an organic factor having little or no impact on a website's ranking. However, this has been proven untrue for a number of reasons. Foremost among them is the site wide SEO aspect to links. Among the many factors that can reduce a site's crawl rate are broken links. Crawl rate indicates the frequency of visits from search engine spiders and higher the crawl rate, higher the amount of content being indexed. Google's Webmaster Guidelines clearly states "Check for broken links and correct HTML" under the Design and content guidelines section.

All search engines, Google especially, are committed to providing quality content to their users. Broken links are indicative or a poorly maintained website, a dead end for the spiders. Search engines mark the page as missing when a website returns a 404 error and all the pages linking to it will be catalogued. Thus, the overall appeal of the website surely drops and sending pages tumbling down the SERPs. It is important that your SEO company does not overlook the little details, all of which have some impact on the ranking of your website.