The most efficient and powerful link building strategies include those that support you in obtaining high-quality, topically pertinent backlinks from other web pages to your own.
A successful link building strategy carefully balances several different tactics to consistently earn excellent links.
Broken link building is a tried and true strategy to incorporate into your link building strategy. Luckily, the digital marketing agency with SEO link building service can help you with it.
What is Broken Link Building?
Broken link building is a strategy that sees opportunities in broken pages. Performing this link building strategy entails looking for dead pages online and reaching out to web owners to swap links to your brand’s website.
Identifying broken links helps clean the web as you don’t want to lead visitors to a dead page, right?
While these attributes are appealing and have the potential to improve your ranking in the SERPs, broken link building can be a time-consuming strategy that is heavily reliant on external factors.
What Causes Broken links?
Backlinks can break or be misaligned for a variety of reasons, and they are likely to build up as strategies develop publication materials multiples, and a larger backlink profile develops:
- Broken plugins and code on the page
- Removal of the original link’s referring domain or it goes offline.
- Webpage redirected to new URL.
- Alteration of the URL structure during a CMS migration.
- The link takes you to interactive content that has been downloaded from your website’s server. (such as videos or PDFs )
- The URL of the referring domain contains missing characters, underscores, etc. from which the link originated.
Benefits of Broken Link Building for SEO
Broken link building should not be your only link building strategy. It should be a part of your overall strategy, and regularly analysing and utilising available opportunities can help you achieve a significant competitive edge.
To help you better understand why broken link building can be an advantage to your brand. Check this out.
Get Backlink from Site with the Proven Performance
GIGO. Garbage In Garbage Out.
This phrase will remind you that acquiring links from questionable sites may compromise the integrity of your website. Is this something that you want?
We don’t think that you would spend thousands of dollars on something that would make your business’s page trashy online.
Never underestimate the process of this type of link building. Research and consult a digital marketing strategist on link building on how to perform this properly, or else your website will suffer from untrusted links.
Not just that, it will also cause your website to get a suspension or warning on Google once they detect suspicious link building activities on your website.
Build links or reclaim links only on sites with good standing in SERPs to avoid violating guidelines.
Be meticulous enough to earn or acquire backlinks from reputable sites with unmatched performance. A low-performing link can do more harm to your brand than good.
Get Backlink from Relevant Page
Broken link building boosts your SEO authority by obtaining links from highly relevant web pages.
If it was a popular resource page gone inactive, these are web pages on relevant websites that once had links but have since been removed and returned a 404 error, you may be able to obtain several high-authority links for your piece of content from it.
Finding these dead pages that are being linked to is usually the ideal place to begin in a broken link building campaign.
Opportunity to Improve Domain Authority Score
Practising the first two points above will lead you to attain a favourable domain authority score.
As you know, a domain authority score predicts how likely a website is to rank in search engine result pages (SERPs). It ranges from one to 100, with higher scores indicating a better chance of ranking.
How to Do Broken Link Building
No one likes clicking a link only to find themselves on a dead page; you can think of your efforts as helping others, which will hopefully earn you a great link in return. Here’s how.
Find Broken Pages with Backlinks
You don’t want broken backlinks to go unnoticed. Patching broken links is heavily dependent on whether the broken link is either internal or external.
Find Broken Backlinks Using Ahrefs
- Go to Ahrefs Site Explorer;
- Paste in any URL or domain (e.g., https://competitor/blog/blog-post/ or https://competitor.com)
- Select the “exact URL” (for web pages) or “*.domain/*” (for websites) mode from the drop-down;
- Go to the Backlinks report (on the left-hand menu)
How to find replicable backlink opportunities from your competitors:
1. Find a relevant page with lots of backlinks
To begin, let’s look at which pages for one of our competitors, moz.com, received the most backlinks. We’ll use Site Explorer’s Best by Links report for this.
Site Explorer > enter a competing domain > Pages > Best by Links > add a HTTP 200 filter
2. Filter and sort the backlinks
Filter these out by adding the following filters:
- Language → English
- Link type → Dofollow
- Platform → Blogs
3. Find replicable links
Remember that Ahrefs isn’t the only tool for detecting broken links on your website.
You can also check the crawl errors in Google Search Console, use crawling tools like Xenu’s Link Sleuth and Screaming Frog SEO Spider, or install a Broken Link Checker plugin if your website is powered by WordPress.
Find Broken Backlinks Using Semrush
Use the Backlink Audit tool by Semrush to perform a backlink audit.
1. Return to the dashboard for your project. Click the Backlink Audit card. Before your audit begins, you will be prompted to configure the tool.
- Set the scope and other properties, such as the target country, using the panel.
2. When the audit is finished, go to the targeted page tab.
3. Choose “Target URL Error:”
4. Choose active keywords
You can now see any backlinks pointing to URLs on your website that return an error.
Analyse the Backlinks Opportunities
Begin with checking out top referral sources – some websites link to your content and give you a backlink.
If you want to maximise the advantages of working on a broken link to your website. Ensure that you do the following:
Check the Site DA/PA
Domain Authority (DA) is determined by several factors and it is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on search engine results pages (SERPs).
Page Authority (PA) is a Moz score that predicts how well a particular page will rank on search engine result pages (SERP). The scores range from one to one hundred, with higher scores indicating a greater ability to rank.
DA and PA played a crucial role in link building. It matters that you check the site’s DA/PA before you attempt to incorporate or use the website.
Check the Backlink Setting; Dofollow or Nofollow
Of course, it’s not easy to engage with other business websites for a single link. There are crucial steps that you should take to gain one.
Some web owners are cautious to give backlinks when we reach out to them. It matters that first you know their guidelines or terms of condition.
First, know if it’s a Nofollow or Dofollow link. Let us focus on earning the dofollow link.
Why?
Nofollow links do not pass link equity or “link juice”. In other words, this type of backlink means that the linking page does not pass authority to your page. It will not boost your rankings or transfer any PageRank because they have a designated use or intended purpose.
Unlike the nofollow links, dofollow links perform the opposite – it passes the authority.
Keep in mind to meticulously check the backlink setting of your potential broken backlink.
Create Replacement Content
A broken link building strategy is an exciting game in earning backlinks.
We look for dead pages that have good DA/PA and then turn them into a link that leads to our blogs or website.
Isn’t it fascinating to know that we can build or establish links out of an error of someone else then use it in our strategy?
Our point is that broken links affect the web and we want to provide our users with a better experience, thus we engage in this type of link building.
Cleaning the web means fewer pages that lead to an error, to ensure not encountering this, we replace those links and direct them to our internal pages with more sensible content.
We don’t do this to our advantage alone, but we want to provide users content that is reliable, valuable, and better than a 404.
Reach to the Site Owner
After you have thoroughly checked the site, ensure to maintain a database of such sites for easy tracking and monitoring. Aside from this, keeping an orderly list of sites will help you contact the site’s owners.
You may send an email to reach out to the webmasters or owners. Ensure that you clearly stated your intention in the email to avoid confusion or getting ignored. They may not respond right away, as they may be dealing with a lot of things, don’t worry it’s still a win.
Monitor
You should not skip this phase to whatever strategy you are currently trying on your digital marketing campaign.
Monitoring your brand’s performance and progress is crucial to your backlink campaign’s long-term success. Don’t take this lightly as you might regret it if there are areas you missed to cover or track.
Monitor Backlinks Using Ahrefs:
For new backlinks to competing pages:
Set up backlinks alert for these competing pages to get a steady stream of new link prospects, then reach out and try to get your page mentioned instead.
- To get started, copy one of the top-ranking pages and paste it into the “Domain or URL” field.
- Change the mode to “Prefix,” and the scope to “New backlinks.”
- Select your alert interval and click “Add.”
- To find more link prospects, repeat this process for other relevant top-ranking pages.
- You will now be notified via email whenever your target URL receives new backlinks.
When your website lost links:
- In the “Domain or URL” field, enter your domain or URL
- Select “Lost backlinks” as the “Scope.”
- Select an interval and press “Add.”
- You will now receive email notifications when backlinks to the specified domain or URL are lost.
- When you receive an email alert, review the pages and reasons for the loss before reaching out where appropriate.
Monitor Backlinks Using Semrush
As Semrush suggests, monitored domains are classified into five groups: Active, Lost, Broken, Undefined, and Rejected.
Semrush’s Monitor’s graph will show the changes in your backlink profile over the last 60 days, and the table below will allow you to filter through and identify each link.
If you are looking to check your competitor’s website using Semrush. Here’s how:
- Open Up The Semrush Backlink Analytics Tool
- Enter The Domain Whose Link Profile You Want To Analyze
- Open Up The ‘Backlinks’ Tab To Dive Deep Into The Links
- Analyze Anchor Texts On The ‘Anchors’ Tab
- Find Unique Referring Domains That Link On The ‘Referring Domains’ Tab
- See Which Pages Are The Most Linked To On The ‘Indexed Pages’ Tab
- Compare The Link Profiles Of Up To Five Domains
To improve your backlink profile, follow these easy steps:
- Benchmark Your Backlink Profile Against Competitors
- Find and Evaluate Each Backlink You Have
- Decide Whether to Disavow or Remove Harmful Links
- Cleanup Your Backlink Portfolio
- Find New Opportunities to Build Valuable Links
Monitor Backlinks Using Google Analytics (Referral Traffic)
You should be able to view and track all of your backlinks from the “Acquisition” tab once website data is available. To monitor your backlinks using Google Analytics, do the following:
- Go to “All Traffic” and then “Referrals.”
- This will take you to the “Referral Traffic” section. You can see all of the linking domains in the “Source” column.
- Then, by clicking on one of the domains and checking the “Referral Path,” you can see all individual backlinks.
Final Thoughts
Broken backlinks can go unnoticed for years and accrue to hundreds or thousands of dead links due to the variety of ways they can occur. Broken link building is a strategy that sees opportunities in broken pages and give you opportunity to “steal” the backlink value from relevant and high quality website out there.
Broken link building should not be your only link building strategy. But if you do it correctly, for sure it’ll help to improve your offpage SEO performance. If you are unsure on how to do it by yourself, you can always consult with digital marketing agency with SEO link building service.
FAQ
Does the broken link building method work?
Broken link building is a strategy you would want to learn and incorporate into your digital marketing campaign. It can be an integral tool to your goal to earn backlinks as it can pose opportunities and open valuable resources online to which you can replicate your content.
What is a broken link in SEO?
Broken link building or dead link building is the practice of earning backlinks by replacing links to 404 pages with active links to a target website
Which link building Strategy focuses on fixing broken resources?
Renovation link building.
Renovation link building is the process of acquiring links from other websites to improve your website’s visibility and ranking.
To begin the renovation link building process, you must first determine which topics are relevant to your business. Then start looking into which websites are interested in covering them.
You can contact these websites and offer to provide links in exchange for coverage.
There are several approaches to the renovation of link buildings:
Paid advertising
Social media
Blogging
How do you break backlinks?
1. Find Broken Pages with Backlinks
2. Analyse the Backlinks Opportunities
– Check the Site DA/PA
– Check the Backlink Setting;
– Dofollow or Nofollow
3. Create Replacement Content
4. Reach to the Site Owner
5. Monitor
