One of the most sought-after link-building tactics that SEO experts swear by is hyperlinking. It is a strategy that has helped millions of digital marketing professionals upscale their performance. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds! A broken backlink can ruin the possibility of you ranking well on Google. This is why mending a broken link and building it again is crucial for digital marketers.

 

What are Broken Backlinks?

Backlink building is an effective SEO strategy that helps bring organic traffic to the website. It is scalable and offers a content-focused plan to the programmers. However, a broken backlink is a website page that does not show any content but showcases the message of a 404 error. It is a hyperlink that doesn’t offer you any information whatsoever. In other words, it’s an error page that may be broken owing to some changes on your website. The link that connects two websites is broken and is referred to as a broken backlink.

 

Opening a webpage showcasing a blank 404 page could frustrate your prospective client greatly—which is why you need to build it soonest possible, even if you have to contact an SEO company for that.

 

What Do You Mean By Broken Link Building?

 

As the term specifies, the link could be broken between two links within your website, known as internal linking, or between two links of different websites, referred to as external linking. If you look forward to building broken internal links, you are lucky as it’s relatively easy. With the help of a WebCrawler tool, you can fix it efficiently.

 

However, building broken external links is a little tricky. It would require extensive maintenance and proper auditing. One primary reason behind it not being easy is that the webpage owner doesn’t control it directly. Instead, the link originates from somewhere else and goes by a different URL.

 

Is Broken Link still Beneficial?

A broken link is still beneficial, despite showcasing error 404 to the visitor. It is a tactic that benefits from the broken pages available on the internet. Simply searching for the dead pages on the web and inquiring the owners about it would aid you a lot. You just need to ask the linker to swap the broken link with a working one on the site, which would work in your favor.

 

However, link building is important, and you need to make it work for your benefit than the expense.

 

How to do Broken Back linking in Easy Steps?

 

Broken backlinking requires you to find the broken links and do something to build them back. For that, you have to look for the links related to your niche that are now broken. Once you have them, you need to reach out to the website owner and inform them about the error. Also, suggesting the web owner replace the non-working link with a working one will help you and him equally. Create an entire Link building checklist, and things will get faster.

 

There are four easy steps, using which you can fix broken back linking quite easily. These are as follows:

 

Find Broken Pages with backlinks.

First, you need to find all the broken pages that come with backlinks. Doing this would require some effort on your part. However, once you can get the hang of it, it will help you immensely.

 

Look for your Competitor Broken Pages with Backlinks

The first strategy you can follow to find the broken links is to check out your competitors’ websites. Over time, your competitors must have performed an action that would have led to at least one or a few dead pages. It could be any content update or movement leading to a dead link.

 

Sometimes, the web owner might delete a URL but forget to redirect it to a new one. This is when the backlink breaks, leading to a 404 error. Your task is to find all the broken links of the competitor he probably has forgotten.

 

Doing this is not as tough as many people think it to be. You just need to go to the site explorer and write the name of a competing domain. Check out the links reports and highlight the ones that come with backlink errors.

 

A spreadsheet document can help you make this process much more manageable. You can write the names of pages on each competing domain page and have this extensive research work in your favor. Now that you have the entire data related to dead pages, you can easily plan your future content according to it.

 

Look for broken pages about a topic.

You can also look for broken pages specific to some topic. It is one of the most common ways broken backlinks are checked out. As it is an easy way to find broken pages, many people opt for it. However, it tends to limit the searcher and lets him check out only a few web pages which are relevant to the topic being searched.

 

To look for backlinks related to a particular topic, you can use a tool known as Content Explorer. Over the years, it has had enormous popularity in helping people look for web pages on a particular topic. It is a massive database, which one can easily use for extensive search purposes.

 

To search for the broken pages, you need to follow a particular method, with each step following the other precisely. First, you must write the broad topic on the content explorer search bar and then change the search mode to ‘In the title.’ Next, you need to click the ‘search’ button. Here, you will get an option to filter the broken pages. This will limit your efforts, making it easier for you to look only for the broken links within that topic.

 

You can use other tools, apart from Content Explorer, at your convenience. However, this one is undoubtedly easy to use and saves you from a lot of hassle and additional effort. Once you learn how to use it properly, it would get a pretty reliable option to opt for.

 

Looking for Broken pages on Competing websites

Another great way to look for broken pages is by searching for them on competing websites. If you check your competing websites regularly, you will see that they frequently link with other web pages. Consistent checks on them will make you realize that most of these web page your competitors are linked to are broken and don’t serve any purpose.

 

Again, you can use the same tool of site explorer to look for the broken pages on your competitor’s sites. The process is somewhat similar. You need to start by going to the site explorer and then writing down the competing domain name on the search bar. After that, you will see the broken links report, saving you time and hassle. For instance, writing the name of a competing site will link you to all its dead pages.

 

Look for Broken links on Resource Pages.

If you know resource pages and have worked on them, you will know they are filled with links! So the chances of spotting some broken links would be bright on the resource page. What’s even better? Finding a resource page is relatively easy. All you need to do is to use KWs that describe your niche and search them on ScapeBox. For instance, search for resource+’KEYWORDS’, and you will see a resource page opening right in front of you.

 

This search will offer you a massive collection of relevant resource pages. You must add them to a spreadsheet and work on them later. One primary reason why you will be able to find broken links on resource pages as they are entered here for a long duration, and even if the content has been shifted somewhere else, the links are not changed!

 

This is why resource pages can turn out to be your biggest asset while finding the broken links.

 

Examine The Link Prospects

 

Once you find all the broken backlinks, it’s high time you examine the link prospects. Simply, getting a link on new pages is called link prospecting. For that, you will have to look for link sources that are brand new. Your main target is to reach the top of the link chain. For that, you can use the backlinks of the competitors and search results of Google. If you strategize it well, you can indeed have your link moved right to the top of the chain.

 

Here are a few things you need to consider while examining the link prospects:

 

Check Quality of Link

If you are looking for substantial links, ensure the link building is not broken. If this is the case, there is no reason you should opt for it. With the help of Site Explorer, you can quickly check if the dead page comes with quality backlinks or not. You need to start by going to the Site Explorer and writing down the URL of the dead page. Now, check out the backlink reports and change the mode to the online link per domain mode. From here on, change the show history to don’t show history.

 

Check Link Reasons

Another thing you need to do is to be well aware of why the broken pages aid you in gaining a better outreach. Once your link success rate increases, you will automatically be able to do so. The following action by you should be that of filtering the reports.

 

One prominent link reason includes the general links. In this case, someone might have recommended the resource comprehensively. This is why spotting the specific resource link might be a tough job for you.

 

Secondly, someone can also recommend a deep link as a whole source. You must check out the link’s content if you are confused about why it was recommended. To compose a replacement page, you need to identify the deep links. You can quickly check the extensive backlinks report by looking at the relevant footprints.

 

Create Replacement pages

Creating a replacement of the page gets necessary when the backlink is dead! For that, you need to follow the following three simple steps:

 

Create a rough outline

First, ensure that rather than creating a copy for the already dead page, you must create something similar to replace it. Replicating the content rather than using the same one is a good idea. You can use various tools and strategies to find out the content in the original broken link.

 

Bake in Linkable Points

You need to use all the content you created while vetting the links in your outreach angles. It would aid you in managing the new link efficiently.

 

Find Ways to Improve it.

 

When you don’t know what the content on the original web page was, it gets a little challenging to make new content to use there. When the dead page starts generating links, the content needs to change.

 

Start Out-Reach

This simple process of contacting those who link to the dead page and introducing them to your replacement resource. Outreach is an extensive process; people mostly opt for two ways to go about it. One is the shotgun reach, while the other is a sniper outreach.

 

Type of Outreach

Choosing the outreach depends on the aims that you have:

 

a) Short-gun Outreach

Shotgun outreach is more straightforward as it doesn’t require personalization. You can compose one simple email and send it to all the targets. It is a quantity-based approach than quality based. However, it’s not as beneficial as the short-gun outreach and may appear spam for some recipients.

 

b) Sniper Outreach

Sniper outreach is exceptionally personalized. It helps you send unique and distinct emails to every recipient. It takes extensive effort and requires you to spend extra time in the process.

 

Final Thoughts

Broken backlinks, just like toxic backlinks, tend to create a negative impact on the visitor trying to reach the webpage. Therefore, it is necessary to mend it soonest possible and avoid the risks of future broken backlinks.