If you want your website to get more traffic every day, so you can ultimately get more customers for your business, you need to prioritize SEO. Search engine optimization is one of the most important marketing strategies for all types of businesses, regardless of industry.
And there’s a lot that goes into a proper SEO campaign. The first step is getting your site optimized so that search engines like Google know what your website is all about. Once that is in order, it’s all about your link building strategies.
Broken link building should be one of the first strategies you pursue because it’s free and can open the door to some powerful links that can really give your search rankings a boost.
Wondering what broken link building is, what the benefits of broken link building are, and how to get started today? Keep reading to find out now.
Why You Need Links in the First Place
If you are new to SEO then you are probably wondering why link building is so important. Links, otherwise known as backlinks, are hyperlinks from one website, often with more domain authority, back to your website.
The most common occurrence of a backlink is when a website publishes a blog post and links to another website within the content of the blog post. For example, if a website publishes an article of the 10 best Italian restaurants in Chicago, and they write about and link to your pizza restaurant, then you get a backlink.
These links essentially act as votes when it comes to determining search rankings. There are tons of other pizza restaurants competing with you for the top spots on Google search results. Whichever website shows up first when people type in “best pizza restaurants in Chicago” is going to get all the new customers.
The more links you have, the more votes you have from other websites, telling Google that you should rank higher. So when it comes to SEO and getting higher ranks, getting as many backlinks as possible is the name of the game.
What Is Broken Link Building?
There are many different strategies when it comes to link building in general. First off, you could pitch other websites and write guest posts for them, linking back to your site in the content.
While this strategy can be very effective, it is quite difficult and very time-consuming. A better way for beginners to get started is with broken link building.
With this strategy, you’ll look for websites that are linking to a piece of content (related to your business). But you are looking for links that are no longer working and lead to a blank page or to an error message.
This happens all the time, as the original content may have been taken down, or the URL has changed. Either way, the article has a dead link, which creates a poor reader experience.
When you find these broken links, you then recreate the content that was originally linked to. Once you have it on your website, you email the publishing site, inform them of their broken link, and offer your new resource as an alternative.
Websites don’t want broken links on their site, but they often don’t know they have them. They are too busy creating new content to go back and scan their old content.
So when you inform them of a broken link, they are usually happy to make the edit, linking to your website, as a token of appreciation for finding the dead link on their site.
Voila, you’ve just earned a backlink.
How to Find Broken Links
The first step in this whole process is to find the broken links. And no, you don’t have to spend countless hours reading blog posts, clicking every link to see if it’s broken or not.
Instead, you use broken link building tools offered by the top SEO software to do this for you. The best tools (of which many require a fee to use) will let you create a list of websites that are in direct competition with your business. So in the pizza example, that would be other pizza restaurants in Chicago.
The software will then scan these sites, looking for pages with lots of backlinks pointing to them that no longer work. You will then be able to see what sites these backlinks are coming from.
Once you have that list, you can then send an email (which is essentially a pitch), letting them know your new resource is working and that they should switch the link.
Getting busy people to actually read your email, and to make the change, is both an art and a science. Check out https://blog.justreachout.io/broken-link-email-template/ for tips on sending an effective email.
Broken Link Building Tips
Building backlinks to your site this way is a powerful strategy. Not only are you getting new backlinks, but you are helping existing sites offer better experiences for their users.
However, just because it’s a simple process doesn’t make it easy. You’ll find that more often than not, site owners and editors won’t respond to your emails.
And it’s not because they don’t care, it’s just because they are too busy. So tip number one is to master the art of the follow-up. It might take two or three emails to the same site before you finally get a response.
You may want to create a spreadsheet to track what sites you are emailing and when, so you can manage your follow-ups with ease.
Also, broken link building, as with any SEO strategy, is a numbers game. The more links you pursue, and the more sites you reach out to, the more chances you give yourself to actually land a new backlink.
Boost Your Search Rankings Today
Should you give broken link building a shot? Absolutely. It’s one of the best ways to get new links while at the same time helping someone else out.
Sure, it takes time, and you’ll need some paid software in order to do it, but once you start getting better search rankings, it will all be worth it.
You can find other helpful articles like this on our blog today.
