Developing a successful link-building strategy takes time, and there are a lot of methods to consider. One of the first methods that should be considered is broken link-building.
If conducted correctly, this can significantly increase your website’s authority and, in turn, increase organic traffic to your site.
In the past, Google ranked websites based on the volume of inbound links it had from other external websites. However, since Google’s 2012 Penguin algorithm update, this has changed, and now the quality of the link matters far more than the quantity of links. That is why it is important to be selective about which sites you target for broken link building.
In this article, I will provide you with a step-by-step guide on why broken link building is so important and how to go about successfully achieve links to your site by using this effective SEO strategy.
Why Consider Broken Link Building?
This method carries significant SEO value and, if done correctly, it can increase your website’s authority and, in turn, grow your online presence. When you fix a broken link, you are gaining a link from a page that has already hopefully been indexed and “seasoned” a little, which may include ranking for some key terms and have some page authority.
If a website has broken external links, it can harm the site’s SEO. This is a key point you need to get across to webmasters when pitching to fix broken links. If a webmaster leaves a broken external link on their website, then this is bad for their own site.
To successfully build broken links to your site, there is a process that you need to follow. You must make a plan before executing your strategy if you want to achieve your SEO goals. One of the main goals of generating links using this strategy is contextual relevance. This means that the sites that you are aiming to build links from are as relevant to your website and business as possible. For instance, if you own an online pet store, you would not aim to generate links from an online office furniture trade magazine.
Use SEO Tools to Find Broken Links and Reclaim Them for Your Site
There could be many reasons for a broken link, such as the specific page the link is connected to no longer exists, or there is an issue with the server hosting the site.
The best way to find out if you have broken external links is to use an SEO tool such as SEMRush, Ahrefs or Moz. They all come with site audit tools that allow you to investigate what issues you have with your website, including broken links.
To make the process clear, I will demonstrate how to use SEMRush’s Backlink Audit tool. This is a quick and easy way to find what broken links your site has on external pages, which will help you to begin structuring an efficient broken link strategy:
1. Open the Backlink Audit in SEMRush
SEMRush is a fantastic way of finding broken links. To do this, you will need to navigate to the Backlink Audit tool on SEMRush’s dashboard menu, located on the left-hand side.
2. Open the ‘Lost & Found’ Section
From here, you will want to click on the ‘Lost & Found’ section, which will give you three different types of links to your site New, Broken and Lost. You will want to untick ‘New’ and ‘Lost’ and only select the ‘Broken’ tickbox.
Selecting this presents broken link data. This chart shows exactly how many broken external links your site has and the date that these links were disconnected.
3. Click on the ‘Broken’ Tab to View Your Broken Links
Once the tab has been opened, you can locate where the broken links are, the anchor text and the server error attributed to the link, e.g. 404, 403, 500, etc.
The list also provides the date of the most recent server status update, as well as the domain authority (AS) and the toxicity score of the site hosting the link.
You can also export the broken link list as a CSV file and open it in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel as a spreadsheet.
How to Find Broken Link Opportunities From Your Competitors
SEMRush also has a fantastic tool for discovering broken link opportunities through your competitors. Using the Backlink Analytics tool, you can search a competitor’s domain and discover the external links that are broken, as well as the type of server error that’s causing it.
To do this, use the following step-by-step guide:
1. Search for Your Competitor
In SEMRush, click on the ‘Backlink Analytics’ section on the left-hand side of the dashboard. Once this has opened, enter your competitor’s URL in the search bar and click analyse.
2. Click on the ‘Indexed Pages’ Section
Once you are on the Backlink Analytics section of SEMRush, open ‘Indexed Pages’ to view all of the crawled external pages linking to your competitors’ website.
3. Tick the ‘Target URL error’ Box to View Broken Links
This section will initially open all results of the indexed external pages linking to the competitors’ site. Once you tick this checkbox, it will only show results for broken links, alongside the server error that’s caused the issue.
4. Click on the ‘Backlinks’ Column and Begin to Seize Broken Link Opportunities
You will want to click on one of the numerical figures under the ‘Backlinks’ column to open the page results for your chosen broken link. This will take you to a list of all the indexed pages that contain these links to the chosen site.
From here, you can target the pages that contain links back to the site. This section includes the page source, the number of links on the page to the website and the hyperlinked anchor text. These are all valuable resources to help you contact the webmaster and provide them with the correct information when trying to replace the links.
Another thing worth mentioning is that you need to select pages that have a high Authority Score. The higher the domain authority that contains a link back to your site, the better SEO value it carries.
You also want to ensure you target more “NoFollow” links, rather than “DoFollow”. NoFollow links carry less value, so you want to avoid these. To do this, click on the ‘Follow’ tab, which will open all of the pages that contain ‘DoFollow’ links, which carry more value on Google.
You can also export the list as an Excel or CSV fil,e and you can also open these in Google Docs. From here, you can open the Link Building Tool in SEMRush and import this list along with an outreach strategy that includes contacts of the webmasters for the pages that have broken link opportunities.
Use Chrome Extensions and WordPress Plugins
You can download Google Chrome extensions that can provide you with more information about broken links. Tools such as Check My Links are excellent for searching through websites and pinpointing any links that lead to an invalid page. To find broken links through Check My Links, all you need to do is install the Chrome extension and pin it to your Google taskbar. Once activated, you can see broken links that are highlighted in red on web pages.
Tip: You can also find broken internal links on your own website by using the Broken Link Checker plugin on WordPress. You will be able to find the number of broken links on your site, where they are located within your site, and also have the option to customise your notification settings by receiving emails when a broken link has been found.
Create an Outreach Strategy
There is one question you need to ask yourself before developing your broken link-building outreach strategy ‘How will I achieve my goals?’. That is the question you need to keep in mind. If you do, you will structure a coherent plan that will keep you engaged with relevant webmasters. As a result, this can increase your likelihood of replacing a broken link with an outgoing link to your site.
It is also important to ask yourself the following questions when structuring your outreach strategy:
- Do I have a list of targeted broken links?
- Do all of the sites meet the criteria that work with our strategy
- Identifying the webmaster – Who do I need to contact?
- How many email templates will I need?
- Are there any alternative contacts?
- What pages on my site are the most important?
- How often should I follow my initial email up?
- What are the timescales for my broken link-building project?
You will need to include the following information in your outreach strategy to help you execute your campaign:
- The page on your website you want to build links to
- The page on the webmaster’s site you would like a link from
- Contact name
- Their role
- A log of the dates when the webmaster was contacted
- The status of the link
Implementing Your Strategy and Contacting the Webmaster
Now that you have completed all of your research and structured an outreach strategy, you can begin to contact the webmasters of the sites you have identified in your audit.
The best thing you can do is to prepare a well-structured email template to send out to your targeted contacts.
You need to make sure that the webmaster is convinced from the beginning. These are the key things to consider when opening dialogue with your key contact:
- Learn about the contact beforehand – a quick search on LinkedIn or on the website’s ‘About Us’ page can provide a lot of information on the webmaster
- Don’t sound too formal, but make sure you are polite at the same time
- Build rapport – talk about your interest in their website and make them feel valued
- Make sure your message is clear – you want to replace broken links, so they need to understand this early within your email
- Stand out from the crowd – say something that catches their attention, such as how you can help them as opposed to them helping you
- You also want to come across as helpful, so make sure this comes across in your email to the webmaster
A good example of a link-building email would be the below:
“Hello (webmaster’s name),
I was recently searching through some Digital Marketing websites for some reading material, and I came across (webmaster’s URL). I love the website, and the content on it is excellent. However, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a broken link on your site, and I thought it was best to let you know about it.
The broken link can be located here (page URL and anchor text)
I do happen to have a similar page on my website. Would you like to replace the link with the below page instead?
(your page URL)
Let me know if this works for you.
Kind regards,
(Your Name)”
Ultimately, there are dozens of ways you can do this, but more times than not, the above approach will at least open dialogue with the webmaster. From here, you are one step closer to building a broken link back to your website.
Remember, Broken Link Building is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Search Engine Optimisation is never a short-term process. Most methods can take weeks and even months to take effect, and broken link building is no different.
Once you have launched your campaign and started to implement your broken link-building strategy, it is important to make sure you dedicate your time to this on a monthly basis.
It is also important to check your organic traffic on a weekly or monthly basis. This will be an indicator as to whether your link-building strategy is working or not, based on your conversion rate.
If it’s been a month and you haven’t seen any big changes, remember DO NOT PANIC! This will take time, and the more broken links you replace on external sites, the more organic traffic you will generate back to your website.
Need help with a broken link-building strategy to boost your website’s SEO? Get in touch with us today.
