– 8 min read –

July 16, 2020

How to check donor links for server response codes

The server response code consists of three digits that the browser receives when the page is requested. Checking the server's response code is a must when purchasing links. Otherwise, the webmaster can buy links from low-quality donors and spend the budget inefficiently.

Contents

1. What are link donors
2. How to upload donor links
3. How to check link donors with Serpstat
4. HTTP Headers
5. Serpstat Website SEO Checker
6. Xenu tool
Conclusion

What are link donors

Donor sites are resources that place an external link to acceptors on their pages, passing them the link weight and thus improving their positions in search.

It is necessary to verify site donors to avoid buying external links on low-quality resources. Such investment doesn't accelerate the SEO-promotion of the acceptor; it may even threaten him with sanctions from search engines.

As a result, a mass verification of response codes is of particular importance when placing links. Donors must have the correct code to pass the scan and send the link weight successfully. If you don't check the response codes from time to time, then you'll get a situation where the budget was spent on links, but there was no result. It also puts the site at risk of being sanctioned.

In this article, we'll look at how to check donor response codes.

How to upload donor links

You can find some links in the Google Search Console. To do this, go to the panel and select the Search traffic section in the menu on the left, it contains the necessary report Links to your site.

Links to your site in Google Search Console

How to check link donors with Serpstat

The completeness of the report directly depends on indexing. This means that not all links will be displayed. You can get a similar report using, for example, Yahoo services.

To check all link donors, you need to upload them to a separate document. Go to Serpstat Backlink Analysis → Backlink Dashboard. In the upper field, specify the link to your site for which the external links are checked.

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To upload a list of pages, click on the Referring Domains report. In this report you can find the number and list of pages that link from domains. Click on the number of pages and the Active Backlinks report will open. You can download it by clicking the Export button in the upper right corner.

You can check for server response codes with the downloaded links.

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HTTP Headers

When you need to check only a few pages, it'll be enough for you to use the HTTP Headers Google Chrome extension. Go to the page of the site you want to check and click the button in the top browser bar:

The server's response code for the URL is displayed on the second line. The places where you can see the code are highlighted red. You are to do it with each link manually. If you find the code is not 200 OK, then you should think about link removal. When it comes to hundreds and thousands of pages, manual verification is impractical, since it'll take too much time and effort. In such cases, you need to use other tools.

Serpstat Website SEO Checker

To get even more data about the URL or website, try Serpstat SEO checker. It lets you read the Serpstat reports without having to leave the site you are analyzing. Click on the icon and you'll get multiple SEO metrics about a domain or page: visibility, traffic, number of keywords, top competitors in the region, etc. Now it is available for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Microsoft Edge!

Install for Google Chrome

Install for Mozilla Firefox

Install for Opera Browser

Install for Microsoft Edge

There are 4 reports in this tool:

On-page SEO parameters
Page analysis
Domain analysis
Services

To learn more about this tool, read the article written by the Website SEO Checker developer.

Updated Serpstat Website SEO Checker

Xenu

To use the free Xenu tool, you must first download it to your computer. Then the algorithm is simple: create a file by clicking on the document tag and paste the URL of your site.

You'll get a table where the status of the code is highlighted in green. If the page is found, and its status is OK, this corresponds to the server code 200 (OK) response.

The disadvantage of this verification method is the time that takes the service. You'll have to wait a bit. The tool analyzes the results of checks on links to the site. In the end, an HTML report will be generated.

Conclusion

To check donors of links for response codes, prepare a document to store links to these donors. You can get a report on donors through the Console and Webmaster panels, if we are talking about indexed external links, or using Serpstat if you need a complete list.

To test multiple donors, you can use HTTP Header Google Chrome extension. There are many tools for mass checking of the server response code.

You need verification to:

leave only those donors that might benefit. But it's worth considering that this is not the main factor in determining the quality of a link;
check the previously purchased link for activity. It has to continue providing the link weight.

Donor analysis needs to be done periodically, and the more links you purchase, the more serious you need to be.

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