The new Link Patrol plugin from Search Engine Journal looks quite good, especially for those of us who don’t pay anywhere near as much attention to outbound links as we should. At $25 for a soft launch on one site I might have to give it a try.
It’s always a good sign when a company builds something for their own use, then launches it as a full product. It gives the developers of the plugin a focus and it tends to make the product’s market and uses very clear. It also shows a confidence in the plugin and there’s an extra level of testing involved.
It’s great working in a community where companies are willing to share their in house products, like the Link Patrol plugin, with everyone, including competitors.
I also like that in the description for the product they pretty clearly label that it’s not a replacement for Broken Link Checker:
Also, LinkPatrol does not identify links that redirect or are broken links. For identification of broken outbound links, we suggest Xenu Link Sleuth or paid auditing tools such as Raven Tools or DeepCrawl.
If continually developed in the right direction, this plugin couldjoin Gravity Forms, Yoast, ACF (not for much longer…), Akismet or WP Doge as plugins to install as the first task on every new site. I’ll probably pick this plugin up over the weekend before the price goes up on the 22nd, have a play and report back.