One of the perks of being an Amazon.com Associate is free error reports from their other property, Alexa. I pulled one of these yesterday, and I was simply shocked to find 12 404s (ironically, the subject of this interview is having trouble with her page as I write this). Of these 12, two are obviously my mistake, while the other 10 worked at one point.

Webmasters and bloggers, heed well: a cardinal rule of the web, as expressed by Jakob Nielson, is “never let any URL die.” No excuses – I’ve heard them all before.

So, while I go clean up all the dead links, here’s some advice:

1. Don’t kill a perfectly good link.
2. If you must kill a perfectly good link, use mod_rewrite to send the visitor to the new URL.
3. Don’t kill a perfectly good link.
4. Have a good search engine so people can find what they’re looking for.
5. Don’t kill a perfectly good link.
6. Have a good 404 page with common links and tips for helping your visitor find what they’re looking for.

Oh, and one more thing – don’t kill a perfectly good link.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. In the meantime, please excuse me – I have some dead links to clean up.