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Link building is one of the most powerful tools in any SEO toolbox. It can be one of the biggest generators of quality, natural links on the Web when properly executed. On the other hand, link building can get you into trouble quickly when done poorly or with bad intentions. Here at NickMetrics, we are all for white hat link building, and it is a valuable SEO link building strategy. Today, we will be looking at the broken links strategy to build quality backlinks.
Broken Image: An image without any ALT tag attributes and with missing or empty ALT tags; an image within a link with no ALT tag attributes.
Broken Link: Any link that is not valid or the destination page isn’t found.
One of the tricky parts about link building is getting links back to your money site(s) and making sure they are safe links, not spammy links. Make no mistake, though; even Google will tell you that broken links are wrong for your site. There are some circumstances where creating broken links can help you with this task. It allows you to gain a valuable backlink and enable us to pass authority/trust through linking out (which Google seems to like). The best part of this method is it doesn’t matter if the site is big or small, it can work, and you can start gaining valuable links right away.
One of the best ways to use broken links as a link building strategy is to find sites that link to your competitors and leave the destination page 404ing. You then contact them and ask if they would like one of their pages linking out (that doesn’t currently do so) to be linked back to them by leaving a contextually relevant message on an existing page which contains a broken link. The main thing about doing outreach for this scenario is making sure you don’t show any signs that you are trying to game the system and be 100% honest with people about why you want their help and why you think they would like to do it. The page linking out to your competitor will often have a high PageRank or Domain Authority in this scenario. They could be an excellent way for you to get some natural links from high authority sites and pass equity through linking out. In either case, both parties should stand to gain from getting their content linked back to them, even if it’s just for a link that points directly back at them or passes trust/domain authority via pointing at another relevant page.
First, find sites that currently link out to your competitors. You can do this by using a free tool like Linkody or Majestic SEO. Next, use the broken links report within either of those tools to find pages linking out but having errors themselves. It will be easily recognizable as it can look something like this: http://www.example.com/pagetheregoesyourlinkurl-theurlfortheaddress
An excellent place to build your list of outreach targets would be on these pages (you’ll likely see blogs and news sites with many external backlinks), but you could also look at other types of pages if you have a more extensive list. In any case, it can be helpful to sort the results by Domain Authority & PageRank when possible so that you can see which sites are likely to link back to you from bigger/better authority pages. In this example, we’ve got a news site that’s linking out, but one of their links is broken, and the other goes nowhere. Once you’ve gathered your outreach targets and created an email template, it’s time to do some outreach!
Broken link building is a way to get authoritative and trustworthy backlinks and build relationships with other web admins. As long as you keep your emails friendly and find something that works for both parties, it’s probably worth a shot, even if you don’t think they’ll agree.
Tags: Broken Links, Broken Links Strategy, Link Building, Link Building 101
