It’s been said links are the currency of the Web, and an honest-gotten inbound link is like a tip for good work. Locating broken inbound links, then—links attempted but because of an error don’t connect with a page on your site—is like an opportunity to locate missing money.
Google recently introduced a feature to its webmaster portal that can be like a metal detector on the beach. The tool allows webmasters to view a list of 404 errors generated from broken inbound links.
Obviously, fixing these links can help improve your ranking in the search results. The Googlebot tries to crawl those links from other sites, but when it arrives it has no where to go, and you don’t get credit for that link. Plus, visitors get a bad experience with your site, also something you don’t want.
Matt Cutts gives a nice tutorial about how to reclaim those lost links, beginning with how to download a list of 404 pages and links to them through the webmaster portal:
“It would be trivial to mail some of these people and say ‘Hey, I noticed you linked to my site (thank you!) but the link is broken, so users will get a 404 page. Would you mind changing your link on page A to point to the right page, which is url B?’ When the other site fixes their link, their visitors find your site directly, plus all search engines can follow those links and give you credit for them. Converting 404 links to links to the right pages converts sucky links to free direct text links for all.”
In the comments, someone asks about 301 redirects, which Cutts doesn’t seem confident in recommending. He replied, “I purposefully left out the ‘301-to-the-home-page’ issue from my post, because there are pros and cons. The pro is that you don’t have to ask other people to fix their links (and as long as you’re doing this in a normal way, you shouldn’t run into problems with Google), but the downside is that it’s a really weird user experience for your visitors.”
If you know the intent of the link, though, perhaps you could 301 to the intended page, or even, though it’s more work, create new content for that erring link.
However you deal with the problem, it’s definitely like finding a $20 bill in a coat you haven’t worn since last winter.
