Broken link building is a popular link-building strategy, for a good reason - it focuses on quality content and arguably has a goal of improving the website rankings.
Broken link building can be a slow-moving tactic that relies heavily on uncontrollable variables, though these characteristics may be appealing and may increase your visibility in the SERPs. This article will provide you with a thorough view of what broken link building is, how to implement it, and how it compares to content marketing.
Broken link building is a technique that is based on the practice of discovering "broken links" on websites and reaching out to webmasters to obtain a backlink from the identified broken link.
A broken link is any situation in which a website wants to link to another website but the link is not there. Professional link building companies use this tactic to generate more backlinks with relatively low effort, and it is also considered a "white hat" practice, which facilitates client involvement and avoids Google penalties.
The destination site deleted the linked web page (resulting in a 404 error)
The destination website has been permanently moved or no longer exists
A firewall, interstitial, or login is preventing access to the destination website
The destination website has closed or ceased to exist
The URL structure of the page receiving the link was changed
The link was never properly implemented in the first place
As you can see, broken links are common on the internet in a variety of ways. The question becomes not only how to fix them, but how to find them. How do you find your own broken links to repair?
First, you have to find the broken link. There are two techniques for prospecting for and finding broken links. First involves claiming links for non-competitors from your niche and second involves claiming your competitor's broken links.
Both techniques have similar fundamentals, but the first method involves identifying websites you would like to receive a link from while the second method requires that you list websites that you are competing within the SERPs.
Begin with a list of 30-50 sites - all non-competitors - that appear to have a high PageRank, Domain Authority, or whatever metric you wish to use.
Run these websites through a dead link checker to see if they are linking out to any 404s. Broken Link Check, Dead Link Checker, or other similar tools may be useful.
List the web pages with broken links, along with their webmaster, their contact information, and the content you already have that would replace the broken link.
Contact webmasters by email to ask that your link be placed on the site to replace the broken ones; follow up as necessary to ensure you gained the link effectively.
Use backlink-auditing tools to determine which websites had broken links pointing to them in the search engine results pages. Mozs Open Site Explorer, AHrefs, and SEMrush are just a few of the examples of tools that allow you to easily extract all the backlinks to pages related to your content.
Compiled a list of the top five websites you want to beat in the SERPs and used backlink-auditing tools to analyse broken links for each of them. By using tools like Moz’s Open Site Explorer, AHrefs, and SEMrush, you can easily discover all the backlinks to your content-relevant pages.
Prepare a list of websites with broken links, along with the webmaster, their contact information, and the content you already have that would be able to replace the broken link. If you use this strategy and the one above, you'll need to identify which competitor previously owned the link.
Conduct outreach and email webmasters to ask that your link be added to replace the broken links. The route you choose could depend on the terrain of your vertical or the tools you already have. Alternatively, if you already regularly use backlink-tracking software, this can be easily integrated into your process.
You can increase SEO rankings by getting more quality backlinks if you fully evaluate the opportunities and obstacles involved. But, we know that Google prefers content that is naturally shared and syndicated. It is, of course, very difficult to improve SEO without building backlinks. Broken link building is less dangerous in theory than many other black hat tactics that Google monitors and can cause penalties.