How to Use the Broken Link Building Strategy to Get Links

Posted by Sanket Patel

April 24, 2013

SEO 17 min read

Broken link building is sometimes also called dead link building. It is a strategy or technique that points out a link on a website working no longer and asking for a link to your own website. In many cases, when a dead link is clicked on your website, the broken links end up on a 404 page. Broken link building creates a bad reputation for your site. While many other people think of it as a straightforward strategy, but it is not. You should think twice before you apply any strategy. You can find broken links on links pages and blogrolls, by letting the webmaster of the target source of the site’s link know about the broken or dead links. You can also give an option for replacement of those broken links and prevent their visitors with this strategy.

Broken Link Building Strategy - Blurbpoint

There are a few strategies for broken link building that you probably haven’t heard of before:

1) Build links from Resource Link Lists

You can build this strategy in combination with broken link building very nicely. If your site contains a link from the specific site which you are targeting or feel that the link is a bit shady, sending spam signals then you should ask for a link to a site or post already linking to you. This is the most common way to find broken links. If still, it passes the value to you then you just check the links in your content. But, here you should point out one more important thing that you only change in some situation in which a highly reputable site or post would act as the replacement link. If We said half of our prospects to link to one of our SEOmoz posts and the other half to link to our other posts hosted on the blog then It is obvious, We will have much more success with the first half. Because “Trust plays a huge Role when asking for links”.

2) Don’t find a broken link on the page from you want to get a link

You just need to find one or two broken links somewhere on the site to get clear attention. A Broken link as “in” . “in” is a value-adding reason for contacting someone and it is also fixing as a spelling or grammar. When you have one, this is just your chance to get someone’s attention, if it doesn’t have to be broken links on that specific page from where you want to a link. I know the success rate might not be as high but finding a broken link on that specific page isn’t an option.

3) Record all the broken links URLs which you’ve fixed

You should keep track of all URLs of broken links that you have corrected. When you find broken URLs, just plug them into OSE to find other places linking to that URL. Export the CSV and start making a master spreadsheet. Once you do this, you are going to immediately tweet@me showering me with Thank You message.

I will explain you through an example: If you come across a links page with 20 broken links. You need to plug them into OSE to find who’s linking to them. You check out 200 or total pages which are linking to them, come across one additional broken link per page. So, now your list grows up with 220 broken URLs. Just rinse and repeat it and build your spreadsheet.

4) Don’t forget Broken Link building is quite bigger than links

Finding broken links is not necessarily used only to obtain links but also used to start relationships or to get in touch with someone with regards to other link opportunities, such as Guest Posting and other crowdsource applications. In short, it all depends on you, if you using broken links for more than just one time links then you can easily take advantage of these opportunities for getting great rewards.

5) To find broken sites to their Top pages into OSE

Sometimes it happens that you will come across an entire broken site and if it has a decent amount of link equity then it will be an opportunity for you to take it as an advantage, just adding it to your master spreadsheet, plug in the site to OSE to find their top pages to determine the link equity. Then visit the Wayback Machine to find what was on those pages. This is a very good option to save your time. You just drag this link to your toolbar Wayback. Whenever you come across a broken page you just need to go to the Wayback machine website.

There are many free web-based tools also available to check dead links. Monitoring dead links of some influential businesses on your niche could be a lot easier if you will use a broken link checker. Hope that now you have a clear idea about building a broken link building strategy and follow it as it is very important for every webmaster. Thanks, and I can’t wait to hear your thoughts in the comment below!!

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