What is Broken Link Building, and is it useful for SEO?

Broken link-building is one of the most sought-after link-building strategies around. The most effective link-building strategies are those that help you to earn excellent backlinks from other websites to your own. Broken link building improves search engine optimisation (SEO) by gaining links from relevant web pages for your website.

What Is Broken Link Building?

Broken link building is a tactic that involves finding broken external links and pages on the web and taking advantage of them. Once a dead page is found, it reaches out to you and asks linkers to swap the links to a page on your site for content of your own as a replacement. This is done in order to stop sending visitors to a dead resource.

This is an effective tool that can be used in your link-building journey. Keep reading to find out more about broken link building and how to use it effectively.

How Does A Broken Link Happen?

Broken links can happen for several reasons. For example, when linking to outside content, a website might have made a mistake, or the linked website might have removed the particular page.

For anyone browsing the website, broken links can hinder the site’s SEO and user experience. This is when broken link building becomes useful. You are providing value by offering a replacement for a broken link to the webmaster. So that way, you are offering to help improve their site quality as well as increase your site’s visibility.

Why Does Broken Link-Building Work So Effectively?

Usually, most outreach emails do not offer anything in return for a link or share they are asking for. In broken link building, the opposite is true. You should provide help first instead of just asking for something.

This is why a broken link-building tactic is an effective tool. Broken link building is reliable, and when used appropriately, it works great. However, to achieve your goals, you need to first put together an excellent link-building strategy using a variety of tactics.

To make broken link building successful, your process should involve the following three steps:

• Find broken links from relevant web pages
• Create or identify content that is worth linking to
• Reach out and convince the website owner to replace the dead link on their page with yours

Though it sounds quite simple, finding opportunities at scale can be the most challenging part of the process. There are many ways in which you can simplify the task of finding opportunities and developing a proper broken link-building plan. Let us help you do so through this guide.

Why Should Broken Link-Building Be A Part Of Your Link-Building Strategy?

Broken link-building doesn’t necessarily have to be the only link-building tactic you must use, but it should be a strategy you may want to include to gain a competitive advantage. Instead of just earning backlinks for new content, you can now work on broken link building and use it to your advantage. By working on broken link building, you can:

• Build links on web pages that already have authority
• Push your SEO strategy forward by obtaining links that were pointed to competitors earlier
• Build links from relevant content that supports the growth and visibility of the targeted pages
• Make use of other link-building strategies as opportunities arise

How To Find And Turn Broken Link-Building Opportunities Into Useful Links

To make use of the opportunities that come along with broken link building, first, you need to understand how to find them and turn them into links. You need to have a proven process to discover pages with broken links. You should also know certain strategies that will allow you to scale up.

While you can sometimes find a broken link opportunity, wouldn’t it be great if you could turn that into many more to chase after?

Yes, broken link-building generally has a better hit rate than any other link-building strategy.

For effective broken link building, consider these tips:

Find Dead Pages With Backlinks

Usually, the best way to start a broken link-building campaign is to find dead pages that are being linked to. These are web pages that have earned links but then been deleted and return a 404 error on relevant websites.

It is pretty easy to find these. For a starting point, check out your competitors. Such links are already relevant since they belong to a competitor and would cover similar topics that link to your website.

Create A Suitable Replacement Page

You wouldn’t want to copy a dead page word by word, but you must create something similar. That means you must create a piece with the same purpose that talks about the same things.

Everything you include should be accurate and also contain a recent statistic if the deep link reference needs to be updated. Finally, improve your content to strengthen its value.

Outreach

To make people add your link, point out all the broken links and details of the relevant page in the dead link. It’s good not to be pushy, as it won’t help when doing outreach.

Find the right person to send your outreach emails to. Of course, the right person will be the one who maintains that particular page. This way, you are contacting the person who can swap the dead link with your link.

Conclusion

Broken link building is an effective strategy and a great way to build relevant links to your own by swapping your working link for a broken link from the pages that others might have already removed.

Since no one would want to click a link and end up on a dead page, through broken link building, you will be helping others as well as getting a working link in return.

To ensure you are using this strategy to the fullest, you should engage an experienced digital marketing agency in Singapore, as they would understand the local market.