Broken external links: the links that die when other sites change.
Your site links out to your booking platform, the national park, the hot springs, the fishing report, the weather. Those sites change their addresses and never tell you. A placeholder check finds links that were never set; this check finds links that used to work and now do not, including the one that takes bookings.
IN ONE PARAGRAPH
An external link points from your site to another site. When the other site moves or deletes the page, your link returns a 404, and your guest lands on an error. The link that matters most is the one to your reservation platform, which changes when the platform updates its addresses. The rest are the attraction and area links that make a park page useful. A crawl of your own pages only flags placeholders; finding real dead links means fetching every outbound link and checking its answer. We do that on every site we maintain.
Which links break on park websites
- The booking link. Platforms restructure their addresses; the old "reserve now" link starts returning an error or a generic page. This is the expensive one.
- Government and park service pages. The national park, the state park, the forest service, the county boat ramp. They reorganize constantly.
- Attractions and businesses. The hot springs changed domains, the brewery closed, the outfitter moved to Facebook.
- Weather and river reports. Deep links to a forecast or a gauge that get retired.
- Your own old domain. Links to the park's previous site or a former booking system.
What it costs a park
A dead booking link is a guest who tried to book and could not. That one is measured in reservations. Dead attraction links make the area page look abandoned, which is how a guest reads a park that does not maintain its site. Google notices too: a page full of links to errors is a lower-quality page. And every one of these breaks silently, because the park never clicks its own links.
How to check your own
- Click your book button. Every month. From a phone.
- On the area or attractions page, click every link. Note any that error or land somewhere unexpected.
- For a full check, a free broken-link checker will fetch every outbound link on the site and list the ones that fail.
What we do about it
We check every outbound link on every site we maintain monthly, starting with the booking link, and fix or remove the dead ones. When a platform changes its addresses, the sites we maintain are updated the same week. It is unglamorous, and it is the check most likely to recover a booking that was quietly being lost.
Questions about this.
How do I find broken links on my RV park website?
Click every outbound link, starting with the book button, from a phone. For a full sweep, a free broken-link checker will fetch every outbound link and list the failures.
Do broken links hurt SEO?
Yes. Pages full of links to errors read as lower quality to Google, and a dead booking link loses reservations directly.
Why did my booking link stop working?
Reservation platforms change their addresses when they update. The old link then returns an error or a generic page. Get the current link from your platform's dashboard and update the site.
How often should I check my links?
Monthly, with the booking link first. Other sites change without warning, so a link that worked in April can be dead in June.
Want this checked on your park site?
Send us the address. We run the full check and tell you what we found, in plain words. SEO for parks starts at $250 a month.
Part of the RV park SEO guide, section: What a script cannot see. Previous: Keyword targeting: does the page say what guests search?. Next: Redirect chains: what happens to old addresses when a park site is rebuilt.