How to fix broken external images
Broken external images are one of the most common preventable problems in website management. They cause a number of issues like:
- Frustrating users and decreasing trust.
- Causing visitors to go elsewhere to find the information they’re looking for.
- Google viewing the website less favorably and dropping its ranking.
Don’t let broken external images cause you to lose potential clients and damage your search ranking when there’s an easy fix. Find out how to detect broken external images and get them fixed quickly.
What are broken external images?
An image is broken when the original URL is either damaged or no longer active. Users will notice the broken image when they reach an area of your site where an image is not loading correctly. It could be because of a typo in the URL, an incorrect file path, or a site that no longer exists.
The user experience is significantly impacted by broken images, making this an urgent problem. There’s a very good chance your website’s bounce rate will increase as a result of missing images. And where are those users going? Most likely to a competitor’s website. To avoid this scenario, it’s essential to regularly check for broken external images.
How to track down a broken image link
You can manually fix broken image links on your site if only a few exist, but it’s usually not the most efficient solution if there are a lot of broken images. You would need to examine each link for every article and page across the entire website. It’s a process that takes a significant amount of time, regardless of the website’s size.
Because you need to monitor your site regularly, you’d spend valuable time reviewing your links rather than working on crucial tasks that can grow your business. However, utilizing a plugin or SEO tool like evisio can automate the process, making it much easier to detect broken external images.
Fixing broken external images
Fortunately, repairing broken images is not a complicated process once you’ve detected the problem. What you need to do is ensure the image has the same name and is located where it was when the page was initially coded.
To do this you’ll need to:
- Right-click the broken image icon and choose “copy image location” or “copy image address”.
- Copy the results and paste them into a word processor or text editor so you can examine the file path.
- Double-check that the image with that name is in that folder. If the image’s name or location doesn’t match what’s displayed in your web page’s HTML, you have two options:
- Give the image a new name and place it in the correct folder.
- Update the HTML of your website to reflect the different name.
- Double-check the spelling of the filename extension. Numerous standard file types for images exist. These include JPG, GIF, PNG, and more.
Essentially, fixing broken image links is a matter of matching the information. What is within the URL on your site has to match the external image exactly or you’re going to have issues that could provide a bad user experience and harm your SEO efforts.
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