Broken Link Building

Broken links occur when webpages link out to resources that are no longer there.

For example, CitationLabs links out to a post entitled “Broken link building with Raven’s Link Manager and local directories” from this blog post:

But, when you click the link, you’re taken to this page:

Oops, it seems the post was deleted (which means the link is broken).

Most webmasters will make every effort to fix broken links as they give their visitors a negative experience.

It also makes it look as though their site is rarely updated.

Broken link building is a three-step process that involves:

• Finding industry-specific webpages with one or more broken links
• Reaching out to the webmaster and alerting them of the problem
• Suggesting they replace the broken link with a link to your site

Note: The link that you suggest as a replacement to the broken link MUST be as close to the original piece of content as possible. It’s no use finding a broken link to an epic blog post, then suggesting your ecommerce store homepage as a replacement. That would be like replacing an iPhone with a rotary dialler.

Here’s how to do it:

First, you need to find industry-specific webpages that you would like to obtain a link from.

These are almost always resource or links pages.

Here are a couple of Google search operators you can use to find these pages:

And…

This should return a search results page that looks something like this:

When you find a page that fits the bill, you need to check it for broken links.

Install the Check My Links Chrome Add-on to do this:

Once installed, click the button to run it on the page:

All broken links will now be highlighted in red.

Make a note of each page and any broken links in a spreadsheet. Try to find the webmasters contact details (i.e. email address) if possible, too.

Reach out to each webmaster with this script:

“Hey [NAME],

I’m [YOUR NAME], [POSITION] at [WEBSITE].

I’m was just reading your post about [TOPIC] and noticed one of the links wasn’t working.

Here’s a screenshot of the dead link: [INSERT SCREENSHOT]

Just thought I’d give you a heads-up.

[YOUR NAME]

PS. If you’re looking for a replacement for the link, this page might be good: [INSERT LINK]”