Today I wanted to do a quick post about xenu link checker. It is an amazing tool that I’ve been using a lot lately. It is very valuable to find expired domains. Here is what you can do with xenu link checker:
Check for broken links
If you are a domainer and you are trying to buy expired domains for your private blog network, this tool will be invaluable. Just find a list of URL with possible broken links on them and let xenu link checker do its magic. It will go through every links and report back if the link is broken or not. You can even set to how deep you want it to check. 9 levels deep? No problem! You can go up to 999 level deep! Just make sure you don’t go over 1 millions url crawl in one session or you will most likely make it crash. (you can go beyond 1 millions with the x64 version)
Analyse the competition
You can use xenu link checker to crawl your competition website. Ever wonder how the competition can rank a keyword with almost no backlink to that page. Tips: internal link. You can set xenu link checker to crawl only internal link. You’ll be able to dicover pretty quickly which pages are heavily internally linked. So you can see what keywords and content they are gunning for and how they are ranking it.
Check your own domain
Ever wonder if you have broken link on your domain? Check your own domain with xenu link checker and find out if you have any broken links. Did you change the URL of one of your page and forget to redirect the old page to the new one. Link sleuth will let you know. You can also see how much of a good job you did with internal backlink. Most people dont do it enough. So make sure to let the link juice flow!
Xenu link sleuth and VPS
I use xenu link sleuth on a VPS because it can be very resource intensive. Just make sure the VPS you are getting will not limit your connection. Because you wont be able to run your tools to their full capacity if there is a bottle neck somewhere. A VPS is a very good investment to anyone oing SEO. I usually look through 500K URL at a time and it usually run for more than 12 hours. So I can just set it and forget it… I don’t have to stay up all night!
Conclusion
Xenu link checker is a great FREE tool to have. Once you start playing with it i’m sure you’ll come up with new ways to use it. So tell me, how do you use xenu link sleuth? Answer in the the comment below!
Leave a Reply