The Internet Archive, also known as the Wayback Machine, is generally regarded as a place to view old web pages, but its value goes far beyond reviewing old pages. There are five ways that Archive.org can help a website improve their user experience and SEO. The Wayback Machine’s new WordPress plugin makes it easy to benefit from the Internet Archive automatically.
1. Copyright, DMCA, And Business Disputes
The Internet Archive can serve as an independent timestamped record to prove ownership of content or to defend against false claims that someone else wrote the content first. The Internet Archive is an independent non-profit organization and there is no way to fake an entry, which makes it an excellent way to prove who was first to publish disputed content.
2. The Worst Case Scenario Backup
Losing the entire website content due to hardware failure, ransomware, a vulnerability, or even a datacenter fire is almost always within the realm of possibility. While it’s a best-practice to always have an up to date backup stored off the server, unforseen mistakes can happen.
The Internet Archive does not offer a way to conveniently download website content. But there are services that facilitate it. It used to be a popular technique with spammers to use these services to download the previous content from expired domains and bring them back to the web. Although I’ve not used any of these services and therefore can’t vouch for any of them, if you search around you’ll be able to find them.
3. Fix Broken Links
Sometimes a URL gets lost in a website redesign or maybe it was purposely removed but then find out later that the page is popular and people are linking to it. What do you do?
Something like this happened to me in the past where I changed domains and decided I didn’t need certain of the pages. A few years later I discovered that people were still linking to those pages because they were still useful. The Internet Archive made it easy to reproduce the old content on the new domain. It’s one way to recover the Page Rank that would otherwise have been lost.
Having old pages archived can help in reviving old pages back into the current website. But you can’t do this unless the page is archived and the new plugin makes sure that this happens for every web page.
4. Can Indicate Trustworthiness
This isn’t about search algorithms or LLMs. This is about trust with other sites and site visitors. Spammy sites tend to not be around very long. A documented history on Archive.org can be a form of proof that a site has been around for a long time. A legitimate business can point to X years of archived pages to prove that they are an established business.
5. Identify Link Rot
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer plugin provides an easy way to archive your web pages at Archive.org. When you publish a new page or update an older page the Wayback Machine WordPress plugin will automatically create a new archive page.
But one of the useful features of the plugin is that it automatically scans all outbound links and tests them to see if the linked pages still exist. The plugin can automatically update the link to a saved page at the Internet Archive.
The official plugin lists these features and benefits:
- “Automatically scans for outbound links in post content
- Checks the Wayback Machine for existing archives
- Creates new snapshots if no archive exists
- Redirects broken or missing links to archived versions
- Archives your own posts on updates
- Works on both new and existing content
- Helps maintain long-term content reliability and SEO”
I don’t know what they mean about maintaining SEO but one benefit they don’t mention is that it keeps users happy and that’s always a plus.
Wayback Machine Is Useful For Competitor Analysis
The Internet Archive makes it so easy to see how a competitor has changed over the years. It’s also a way to catch competitors who are copying or taking “inspiration” from your content when they do their annual content refresh.
The Wayback Machine can let you see what services or products a competitor offered and how they were offered. It can also give a peek into what changed during a redesign which tells something about what their competitive priorities are.
Takeaways
- The Internet Archive provides practical benefits for website owners beyond simply viewing old pages.
- Archived snapshots help address business disputes, lost content, broken links, and long-term site credibility.
- Competitor history and past site versions become easy to evaluate through Archive.org.
- The Wayback Machine WordPress plugin automates archiving and helps manage link rot.
- Using the Archive proactively can improve user experience and support SEO-adjacent needs, even if indirectly.
The six examples in this article show that the Internet Archive is useful for SEO, competitor research, and for improving the user experience and maintaining trust. The Internet Archive’s new WordPress plugin makes archiving and link-checking easy because it’s completely automatic. Taken together, these strengths make the Archive a useful part of keeping a website reliable, recoverable, and easier for people to use.
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer is a project created by Automattic and the Internet Archive, which means that it’s a high quality and trusted plugin for WordPress.
Download The Internet Archive WordPress Plugin
Check it out at the official WordPress plugin repository: Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer By Internet Archive
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