Published by Krista Hillis on Monday, July 15, 2024 in Seo, Seo, Tool Review.

Check My Links Review: Features, Benefits, Alternatives

When search engines crawl your content most people know they look for keywords. But did you know that they also test your links?

Search engines are looking at the quality of your links and checking if they lead to authoritative sites that make your content more appealing and trustworthy — but they must also be up-to-date. Even if you chose high-authority links when you published a blog post last year, you can’t guarantee that the link works. Since broken links lead to 404 pages when visitors click them, they can reduce how highly your site ranks in search results. That’s why marketers often lean on link-checking software like Check My Links. 

Check My Links can help you identify broken links that can undermine your SEO strategy.

In this Check My Links review, you’ll learn some of the top Check My Links features, how this tool can benefit your content marketing strategy, and the possible alternatives to explore. 

What Is Check My Links?

Check My Links is a free Chrome extension and link validation tool created by developers, web designers, and content editors. 

Check My Links reviews the links on a page to determine whether or not they work. The tool comes in handy when you need to edit a page with many links. You wouldn’t use it to check content with two or three links — you can do that manually to ensure they work. Alternatively, freelance experts can check those links for you if you outsource your editing work. When you have content with dozens of links, though, it makes sense to automate the process.

Many subscription services will review your links to see if any are broken. However, Check My Link costs nothing to use. Just install the Chrome extension and have it crawl your webpage to find broken links while you focus on editing and optimizing the content.

Once Check My Links finishes going through all the links on the page, you can copy bad links to your clipboard. From there, you have a straightforward way to pinpoint and correct problems that hurt your SEO and search engine ranking. Staying on top of this process will ensure higher-quality content and help you improve your search engine ranking. 

In 2023, SEO experts shared that the most important ranking factors for a site are quality content, backlinks, and search intent/relevance. So, you must stay on top of changing trends and prioritize accordingly. However, quality content and links are always high on the list of ranking factors. 

Key Benefits of Using Check My Links

Here are some of the top Check My Links benefits:

• Reviews all the links on a page, requiring no assistance from you. This level of automation can help you protect your greatest resource — your time!

• Check My Links highlights broken links so you can investigate them. If you have broken internal links, you can update your links or pages so they work for readers and don’t confuse search engine crawlers.

• Check My Links allows you to copy all of a page’s bad links to a clipboard with just one click. This gives you the information you need to optimize your content by removing, updating, or replacing bad links. This ease of use can help you significantly improve your content with minimal effort. 

Limitations of Check My Links

You should be aware of the potential downsides when using any tool or platform. Here’s what to consider before using Check My Links:

• Check My Links works much more slowly than you might expect, so you should only use it on high-priority pages. If you want to audit an entire website, choose a faster, more comprehensive tool — or at least plan for that time delay.

• This tool does not offer users in-depth, actionable information that could lead to better search engine optimization. So, this may not be the best choice if you’re looking for a tool that provides guidance. 

• Check My Links can only audit one page at a time. Since it’s a Chrome extension, it will only check links on the page you have open in your browser. So, you must be relatively hands-on throughout. For those working at their computer on other projects, this may not be a big deal, as you can let the tool run in the background. 

• Check My Links isn’t a very smart tool. The Chrome extension checks each link on a page as it comes to it. A smarter tool would skip links that take a long time to load. Unfortunately, this means that you could spend 30 minutes waiting for the tool to review one link before it moves to links further down the page. Again, if time sensitivity is a concern, you may want to invest in a paid tool. 

Check My Links User Reviews

Check My Links gets diverse reviews from its users. 

As of this writing, there are 409 Check My Links reviews, resulting in a 4.1-star rating. 

Some people find the tool extremely helpful, while others say that it doesn’t help at all. The following reviews could help you decide whether you want to try Check My Links. 

• In February 2024, Jordan B. said, “I like the extension, but often see one or multiple "Invalid Links" listed in the pop-up window that doesn't show on the webpage. All of the highlighted links show up as green. Not sure if it's a website problem or a problem with Check My Links. Any advice? Would also like the ability to download the links list to a spreadsheet.”

• In August 2023, Daniel said, “Good extension, but why is it age-restricted?”

• In June 2022, Brandon said, “I've been using this extension for several years now. It's working awesome. I just now noticed that the green colors for 200 and 302 are very similar; therefore, it is hard to tell which one is 302. Would be awesome if you could customize or change that light green to something else. Maybe Dark forest green :)”

While the tool does have a relatively high score of 4.1 stars (out of 5), there are quite a few negative comments. Again, this is a free extension, so the Check My Links features are limited. As long as you have realistic expectations about what this tool can and can not do to improve your content and resource allocation, then it’s worth exploring. In contrast, if you’re seeking more comprehensive website maintenance tools or a more advanced link health check tool, it’s best to dive deeper into Check My Links vs. competitors.

Alternatives to Check My Links

Overall, Check My Links performs its job well. However, when it comes to a thorough web page link analysis, it may not be the best option. Its limitations make it less useful for agencies and developers who need a time-efficient way to audit several pages at once. If you are trying to scale your content, you may want to look for another solution. 

If Check My Links doesn't meet your needs, you may want to try some of the following free and paid alternatives.

Free Alternatives to Check My Links

Free alternatives to Check My Links often have the same limitations as the Chrome extension. Since they’re free, though, you risk nothing by trying them.

Broken Link Checker

Many people say Broken Link Checker works faster than Check My Links, but it can only audit one page at a time.

Link Audit Checker

Link Audit Checker is another Chrome extension that validates and identifies broken links. It gets predominantly positive reviews, although some say it mistakenly reports valid links as broken.

Paid Check My Links Alternatives

Paid alternatives to Check My Links usually work faster, produce more accurate results, and give you more insights into how a page’s links affect search engine optimization. Explore the following services and SEO optimization tools if you’re willing to pay for your link audits.

Ahrefs 

Ahrefs gives you a comprehensive view of your content’s links. You can use it to analyze the links in a specific domain or prefix. For example, you can check your entire site by pasting “mysite.com” into the site explorer field or focus on your blog posts by pasting “mysite.com/blog” into the field. Regardless, you learn a lot about your links, including how many other pages connect to them and whether the links seem spammy, in which case you might need to replace them.

Moz Pro

Moz Pro takes a similar approach as Ahrefs. Its site crawler will look at several aspects of your content, including keyword success and broken links. The great thing about Moz Pro is that it ranks your issues by priority. That way, you can get the biggest results quickly. Later, you can clean up the low-priority issues to help your content rank a little better.

Let Scripted Manage Website Content for You!

After discovering more about Check My Links, what’s your thoughts?

Does checking your website for broken links sound like a waste of time? Would you rather spend that time doing more productive things for your business? Many people feel that way. You don’t have to waste time optimizing old and new content to help your pages rank well. Instead, you can rely on Scripted to do the job for you.

Sign up for a Scripted membership to have a dedicated manager handle your optimization, analytics, content creation, and marketing tasks. Your manager will work with professional writers and editors who have spent years learning how to write content that appeals to human readers and search engine crawlers.

With the support of Scripted, you can use your time more effectively, focusing on building your brand and business. 

Scripted will check your links, optimize your content, and help your website reach the first search engine results page. The key is to publish quality content consistently. It’s one of the easiest ways to maximize your content development and SEO strategies.

Plus, with the help of Sripted’s AI-powered tools, you can further automate the content creation process. Need blog ideas? Want to generate headlines with ease? Scripted’s free tools can assist with those tasks and more. So, whether you opt for a self-serve plan or invest in a dedicated account manager, Scripted will help you improve the quality of your content, boost your ranking, and help you create an online presence people notice. 

Learn more about Scripted’s end-to-end solutions, ranging from the content strategy process to the optimization phase — and everything in between. 

Check out Scripted reviews and get started today!