Broken link building is an SEO tactic that has been around for years. There have been “bibles” written by SEO providers about broken links. As links age, the quality diminishes. It becomes more and more likely that link may not have anywhere to land any longer. Understanding broken link building, the process to find broken links, and the process used to reach out to try and get these links will improve your SEO strategy overall and lead to more potential links you can build. We will talk about that process here.
Finding Broken Links
The first step in the initiation of a broken link building campaign would be to find the links themselves. You are looking to find links that no longer point to live pages and have the potential to link to you. This can be done in a variety of ways, but our favorite process is using your competition to your advantage. AHrefs has a great tool you can use by inputting a domain and seeing if there are any links pointing to it which are broken. Since you are a competitor in the space it makes sense to request this change. This also makes sense from the 3rd party website’s perspective because it does not look good in the eyes of Google to be sending a link to a page that does not exist.
Requirements to Fix a Broken Link
There are a few items you should submit when you reach out to repair a broken link. If the page had content on it previously, it would be worth producing a similar piece of content to submit. This keeps you from going back and forth on needs. If they say no, you’ve got a high quality piece of content prepared for the next time you reach out with a similar request. Tools like Wayback Machine allow you to see what content was found on a page in the past. Having an idea of what the website you are reaching out to might want will keep your focus tight and the process from getting out of scope.
Checking Broken Links
Once you have gone through the process and submitted whatever information you may have needed to, a visit to the new page/link will tell you if the broken link has been fixed or not. If you have any type of backlink tracking software it would be worth putting the domain into your system to track. The functionality you are looking for is a clean link on a well built page that sends traffic from their website to yours. If you are able to click on the repaired link and it brings you to your site, your broken link building job is done!
Checking Your Own Site for Broken Links
While using your competition to gain a competitive advantage is a major pillar of SEO, the technical health of your site is equally important. Taking the time to make sure all of your links, internal and external, work properly will keep your competition from employing broken link building tactics for links pointing to your site. To learn more about technical SEO and it’s importance, read this blog.
Broken link building can be extremely impactful if implemented properly. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, contact us today.
