Image of a broken link sign.
Every day on forums, people inquire about ways to build links to their websites. Among the various strategies, broken link building stands out as deserving of a modern revamp. SEOs should enhance this method to maximize efficiency rather than dismissing it as ineffective.
What is broken link building?
Broken link building involves identifying inactive resources within your niche, creating a new version of the content, and contacting webmasters to replace the broken link with one to your resource. This adds value by helping clean up websites and the internet, while also building links to your site.
Although not a new tactic, broken link building has become less popular despite the increasing number of broken links due to the internet’s rapid growth and frequent website redesigns. Some report low outreach success and time-consuming research. When effectiveness wanes, reevaluating the entire process can lead to improvements.
What’s involved in broken link building?
In his comprehensive guide, Russ Jones outlines three main steps: Prospecting, Content Creation, and Outreach. While these steps sound straightforward, prospecting alone requires significant time and expertise in search queries and web crawling.
How do we make broken link building easier?
Link building can be challenging, especially for newcomers. Fixing broken links to your site is often easier than acquiring new ones. I have often recommended fixing links to older pages, which can provide quick wins for established websites. Now, an even simpler method involves using Ahrefs to identify broken links on your site, allowing prioritization based on equity loss or page importance.
This process, more aptly termed link reclamation, guards against others exploiting broken links on your site through broken link building.
Using link reclamation on competitors to perform broken link building
Applying this strategy to competitors’ broken links can save considerable time. For example, Apple has millions of links leading to non-existent pages. By exporting and grouping these by the pages they link to, competitors can find numerous broken link building opportunities, bypassing complex queries and crawling.
Creating content is the next step, often simplified by having existing materials similar to those of competitors. If existing content aligns, this significantly reduces the time required.
Gathering contact information for those linking to broken pages allows for efficient outreach. Hours can be saved in the link-building process by leveraging existing data from Ahrefs, in addition to reducing content creation efforts.
For outreach tips, consider resources from Julie Joyce and Andrew Dennis.
TL;DR
Accelerate broken link building by using Ahrefs’ broken links report to discover and capitalize on broken pages within competitors’ websites for which you already have similar content.
