The Ultimate Guide to Broken Link Building

1. Pick the right keywords

When searching for link prospect sites, the biggest mistake you can make is to simply search by your SEO keywords. Usually, great broken link sites are found by less commercial, more general-use keywords that let you dig into different aspects of your niche.

So, sift through your target keywords and pick general terms, even if they're less popular with the searchers. You can use Google Keyword Planner and other methods in Rank Tracker keyword research software to get more keyword ideas.

Generate more keyword ideas in Rank Tracker

2. Find relevant sites that potentiall have broken links

The next step is to look for websites that may have broken links (pointing to no-longer-existing sites that had specialized in your topics or to broken pages on such websites).

You are more likely to find broken links on websites having lists of recommended resources, useful links, etc.

More to that, it may be wise to give a closer look at .edu and .gov sites — those are really authoritative, yet tend to pay less attention to keeping their links in order.

I’ll use LinkAssistant outreach tool to find websites relevant to my niche that may have broken links for which I can offer a good substitute for a link to my high quality blog post. And there are two ways of finding broken link opportunities.

2.1 Finding similar websites by keyword

Step 1. Launch LinkAssistant, enter the URL and create a project. Start with the Search for Prospects module and run an Expert Mode search.

Finding similar websites by keyword with LinkAssistant

Step 2. Use Advanced Niche Research > Search by keyword option and follow the wizard to complete the settings for your search.

Select the Advanced Niche Research method

Enter the keywords you've researched in the Rank Tracker and adjust search settings to refine the results by location, user devices, and other parameters.

Define settings for your prospect search

For example, look for pages ranking in top 100 and sites that have a high Domain InLink Rank. The search mode by an exact URL will discover exact pages ranking for your SEO keywords.

Set settings to search for high-quality prospects for your broken link building

You can look through the first results while the tool still continues to search for your link building prospects. When you have all the results collected, use the quick filter, sorting the domains from old to new, or by InLink Rank.

Look through the prospects in the Feed Mode right in LinkAssistant

2.2 Finding similar websites by an exact URL

You can find similar websites with whom you occupy the same niche, and analyze them for broken links. To have a better match to your content and keywords, narrow down your search to the exact URL.

Find competitors by top ranking URLs

When LinkAssistant has finished the search, you've got:

1) a list of websites, relevant to your keyword and

2) the exact URL of the "link resources" pages on each of them.

Look through the entries to pick domains and move them to the Prospects section, to have the brushed-up list.

Compile your list of the potential broken link sources

3. Find all sites linking to the discovered domains — those are hundreds of your link building opportunities!

Now that you have a list of domains that potentially have broken links — it's time to run a quick broken links check.

What you do is take all the pages you've found with LinkAssistant and check them one by one in SEO SpyGlass for broken links.

Step 1. Create a SEO SpyGlass's project for the domain you want to check for broken links (make sure the Enable expert options checkbox is active).

Step 2. Go to the Backlinks module and look for linked pages with 404 response code, having dofollow backlinks. Double-click on the header of the column to filter the entries by response type.

Find your valuable backlinks

4. Find a broken link pointing to a no longer existing domain

Another type of Links Back response is site is down, meaning that the domain has expired and is no longer relevant to anyone who is linking to it. Every link to that site will also be broken. So if it is relevant to your niche, you may try to make use of its backlink profile, equally. You collect all the domains pointing to the expired domain, you get hundreds of broken link building opportunities!

Just launch your SEO SpyGlass and you'll see them all at once!

5. Create good quality content on your site to replace the broken page

So, you've spotted a no longer existing site that seems relevant to yours. But to play it 100% safe, you'd better check what the site's content was before it got removed.

Quite often, you can do that with WayBack Machine (or Wayback Machine alternatives), an Internet archive that records the history of the Web (to the best of its ability). Just enter the dead page’s URL, and see the snapshot of what the page looked like when scanned in the past by the search engine.

The web archive shows copies of the page as indexed by Google

If the broken page contained a piece of content similar to what you write about, that’s a treasure find for link building opportunities.

What if you don’t have a good alternative for the dead links? That’s just another content opportunity for you. If the topic and target keywords are relevant to your niche, create a new well-optimized blog post and reach out to the webmasters of the linking domains to link to your post instead of the missing page.

6. Contact the webmasters and get broken links replaced with a link to your site!

Now that you have tons of link building opportunities, just pick the most valuable of them and contact the webmasters to offer your website as a replacement for the broken link!

The success of the broken link building technique lies in the scale at which you attract new backlinks. Usually, it takes hundreds of outreach emails to build new backlinks from broken links.

You can easily and conveniently manage loads of correspondence using LinkAssistant. Just export the domains from SEO SpyGlass (that can be done in CSV format) and add them into LinkAssistant as your prospects. Select to update information about contact emails only.

Find contacts of your broken link prospects

The outreach tool will gather email addresses, if provided openly on each domain. Otherwise, look for the contact emails manually, or use email lookup services like Rocketreach to conduct the email search faster.

Besides, LinkAssistant's in-built email client allows sending bulk messages with pre-defined outreach templates that can be customized to your liking.

In-built email client in LinkAssistant

Reach out to the webmasters, drawing their attention to the broken links they have on their website, and invite to return a backlink to your content instead of the missing pages. Your broken link letter should look like a personal deal rather than a bulk spam.

Here is a template for a broken link outreach email, all you need is just compile the template in LinkAssistat and fill out the necessary fileds with relevant information (which you all discovered in the previous steps).

 Honestly, you shouldn’t expect getting a response to all outreach emails you send. You need to add some personal touch to your emails, so that it doesn’t resemble a massive outreach campaign. Do a bit of in-depth investigation of your broken link prospects and make sure that you:

And that's it! This is how you can build hundreds of backlinks in 6 simple steps. And those are the backlinks you get from just one non-existing domain you've found. Run the same steps for other domains — and your link-building opportunities get absolutely unlimited.

Looks like broken link building can be a fantastic source of quality, white-hat links for your site? That's right, and with the help of your SEO software you can run it even more effectively. So just look through the guide and start getting hundreds of high quality links to your site!