What Is Broken Link Building?
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Abdul Wadood
Broken link building is the practice of finding broken or dead links on other websites and replacing them with relevant live links from your website. As a result, your website gains valuable backlinks. Brocken link building also fixes the problem of 404 errors on third-party sites at no cost to them, thereby increasing the user experience on those sites.
Broken link building has emerged as one of the low-hanging fruits of SEO, as it requires effort and outreach. It is a powerful technique for improving website SEO rankings and increasing organic traffic. Many SEO practitioners have overlooked broken link building.
Table Of Content
Exploring the Power of Broken Link Building in SEO Strategies
Understanding Broken Link Building
The central concept behind broken link building is that many websites contain non-existent pages, causing a bad user experience. Those pages might have existed earlier. The website owners could have intentionally or accidentally deleted these pages. Website owners might have been renamed and forgot to add a redirection. Website owners sometimes merge similar content pages into one page, resulting in broken links.
When a website link no longer exists, it creates a frustrating user experience. Broken links also cause negative SEO effects on that website. The idea of broken link linking is to replace the broken links with live links from your website to gain an SEO advantage.
The Benefits of Broken Link Building
- Quality Backlinks
Once you thoroughly research and identify quality websites, you will surely get quality backlinks from broken link building.
- Better User Experience and Organic traffic
By replacing broken links with new backlinks, you can improve the user experience and prevent users from encountering error pages. This can result in lower bounced pages, increased website traffic, and improved website rankings. When you replace broken links with working links, all backlinks from that page will also see an increase in rankings. This means that your page, as well as all other pages linked from that page, will benefit from better rankings.
- Improved SEO Rankings
If you replace a broken backlink on a third-party website with a live URL from your own website, you can gain a valuable backlink from that website to your own. This can directly impact your website’s ranking in search engine results pages (SERP), ultimately improving your overall SEO rankings.
- Brand Visibility
Broken link building provides valuable opportunities for website owners like you to connect with fellow website owners, industry influencers, etc., within your niche. Using these connections, you can expand your brand’s visibility, attract new audiences, and increase your online reach.
Effective SEO Strategies for Broken Link Building
- Identify Broken Links
You must do thorough web research to identify broken links in your niche. For this purpose, you can use different methods like Broken link checker, Dead Link Checker, Backlink analysis tools, and search operators in search engines. Identified websites should be authoritative and align with your target audience and website content. Check if the webs site has a professional design and the web page contents are well-written.
- Check the Website’s Quality
You need to ensure that the websites where you plan to build broken links are valuable. They should be authoritative websites and rank high in MOZ Domain Authority (D.A.) ratings. It would help if you also analyzed the website backlink profile using tools like Moz Link Explorer or Ahrefs. You should never attempt broken link-building from non-authoritative websites that have low rankings.
- Analyze the Webpage Metrics
To determine if a webpage is suitable for broken link building, it’s important to analyze its traffic and engagement parameters such as average time spent on the page and bounce rate. Higher levels of traffic and engagement suggest that the webpage could be a good fit for this strategy.
- Analyze the Social Metrics
Analyze the social metrics, like the number of shares on different social media sites, especially on the social media platforms where you perform well. You should also check the quality of the comments and whether the website owner answers the comments.
- Evaluate the Relevance and Quality of the Planned Replacement Content
Evaluate the relevance of the content on the identified page to the content on your web page that you are planning to replace. Check if your content would be a suitable replacement for the previously existing content on the broken page. You can determine the relevance of the contents by examining the slug, anchor text, and the content around the anchor text on the page that links to the broken content page, etc. You can also use web archives to find the contents on the broken page.
Note: If your content meets the criteria for being a suitable replacement for the previous content, you can skip the next optional bullet point.
- Create Compelling Content [optional]
If you don’t have any content on your website that can replace the broken page content, you should generate new and engaging content that can replace it. To do this, create a new webpage with the content that you plan to replace. Make sure that the new content adds value for your users.
- Outreach Website Owners
Once you’ve identified the relevant, high-quality webpage with a broken link, craft a personalized outreach email to the website owner or website admin. You should explain the broken link you found with its URL, the URL you plan to replace, and why it’s valuable to their website users.
- Monitoring Links
Sometimes websites undergo structural changes or update their content pages where they have placed your link, which can result in broken backlinks to your website. Look for such instances and get them fixed at the earliest by writing to the website owners.
How To Find Guest Blogging Opportunities
Finding broken link guest blogging opportunities can be a valuable strategy to build backlinks and relationships with other websites in your niche. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to find such opportunities:
Step 1. Understand Broken Link Building: Broken link building involves identifying broken links on other websites and reaching out to the site owners to suggest your content as a replacement. This can benefit both parties: the website gets a functional link, and you get a valuable backlink.
Step 2. Identify Your Niche: Determine the niche or topic you want to focus on. This will help you find relevant broken link opportunities that align with your expertise.
Step 3. Use Search Engines: Use search engines like Google to find websites in your niche. Use targeted keywords along with terms like “resources,” “links,” “useful links,” etc., to find resource pages that might have broken links.
Step 4. Use Broken Link Checkers: There are tools available that can help you identify broken links on websites. Some popular ones include Ahrefs, Moz, and Check My Links (a Google Chrome extension). Enter the URLs of websites you’ve found and let these tools identify broken links.
Step 5. Analyze Competitor Backlinks: Use tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush to analyze the backlinks of your competitors. Look for pages that are linking to your competitors but have broken links. These are potential opportunities.
Step 6. Scour Resource Pages: Many websites have resource or “links” pages that list helpful websites or articles. These pages can often have broken links that you can identify and suggest replacements for.
Step 7. Check Outdated Content: Look for outdated content on websites. Content that is several years old might have broken links that have accumulated over time.
Step 8. Use Google Alerts: Set up Google Alerts for specific keywords related to your niche. You’ll receive notifications whenever new content is published that matches those keywords. This can help you stay updated on potential broken link opportunities.
Step 9. Social Media Monitoring: Monitor social media platforms, especially Twitter and LinkedIn, for posts or discussions where people are looking for resources. You can jump in with your suggestions and include your content as a replacement for broken links.
Step 10. Contact Site Owners: Once you’ve identified broken link opportunities, reach out to the website owners or webmasters. Politely inform them about the broken link and offer your content as a replacement. Explain why your content is valuable and relevant.
Step 11. Craft a Compelling Pitch: Your outreach email should be personalized, concise, and clearly explain how your content can replace the broken link. Highlight the benefits of your content to their audience.
Step 12. Follow Up: If you don’t receive a response initially, consider sending a follow-up email after a reasonable time. Sometimes, website owners might overlook your initial message.
Remember that broken link building requires patience and a respectful approach. It’s a win-win strategy when done right, as it not only helps you gain backlinks but also contributes to the quality and usability of the internet as a whole.
Conclusion
Broken link building is an effective SEO strategy that involves finding broken links on relevant web pages and offering your content as a replacement. It can result in valuable backlinks and increased visibility. However, the success of broken link building depends on thorough research to find the right broken links. You can succeed in broken link-building by following the strategies in this blog post.
