Learn How Broken Link Building Can Enhance Your SEO

Ankit Thakkar is a Group Head here, at Infidigit. He is associated with us for the last 4.5 years. He takes care of more than 15 client deliveries, manages a team of more than 40 people and also takes care for product delivery at Infidigit. With his SEO strategies, he has won more than 7 awards in the SEO space. Ankit has always loved taking up new challenges and is focused on managing tasks efficiently and effectively. Helpful and Hardworking are a few of his skills that we love. When not working, he loves reading books, listening to music and watching series. In

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    What is Broken Link building?

    Broken link building is a technique that involves researching and finding various resources in your domain that no longer exist or are live. After finding these inactive resources, a similar version of them is recreated, and webmasters who linked to the previous resources are reached out to, so they can be requested to replace the found broken links with the new resource you have created.

    This is a neat way to build links for your website and provide value to the various webmasters by helping them refine their website and SEO. Broken link building methods have existed for a long time now and grown exponential in the last decade. With an explosive evolution of websites in recent years with redesigns and newer technologies, broken links have become quite common nowadays. Hence, there has been no better time for broken link building for your website than now.

    Why Broken Link Building Works? 

    The reason is actually quite simple and relates to the positive human affliction. With broken link building, you flip the script of asking something out of someone during the outreach process without having built trust with them first. With broken link building outreach, you offer help to businesses first by pointing out the broken links on their websites. After offering this assistance to businesses for free, you build a level of trust, which these businesses can reward in the form of giving your website one or multiple backlinks.

    Moreover, this tactic can also help you in building valuable connections with high-authority businesses in your domain, which can prove quite fruitful for your business in the long run.

    Why Should Broken Link Building be a Part of Your Link-Building Strategy?

    In a broader link-building strategy, broken link building should be at the forefront. Regularly evaluating potential opportunities and leveraging the gaps left by them can significantly help you in gaining valuable backlinks on high-authority websites.

    Here are a few more reasons why broken link building can play an important role in your strategy:

    • Increases your website’s visibility and brings in organic traffic
    • Inheriting competitors’ links and gaining a competitive advantage in SEO
    • Building domain authority and becoming more noticeable for search engine algorithms

    How to Find and Fix Broken Links on Your Website?

    While it is great to find broken links on other websites to potentially get your website backlinked, it is also helpful to regularly check your website for them. Here is how you can find broken links and fix them:

    • Using Tools for Finding Broken Links

    There are many tools you can use to find broken links on your website. One of the most effective tools that you can use for free is Google Analytics.

    The first step is to log into your Google Analytics account and visit the Behaviour Tab. Then select the “All Pages” button under “Site Content”.

    Once there, set an evaluation period based on how often you are checking for broken links. Checking for broken links once a month is the best way to go.

    After this, you’ll see many items under the viewing options. Here, select the “Page Title” option. Now, you can create a filter on the Page Title option and select the advanced feature, where you can put in “404 Page” to find the broken links on your website after clicking “Apply”. Export the list of all the broken links found, and fix the links by either replacing them or setting up redirects to take visitors to the intended page.

    • Create Reports to Track Changes

    After identifying the broken links, create a report in an Excel sheet that makes tracking the link redirect process easy. If you use Google Analytics, the tool lets you directly export the data as a report in the form of CSV or Spreadsheet. This report contains data on unique page views, broken links, and much more.

    Creating these reports can help you in tracking all the changes you make on your website and ensure a seamless link-building process. Moreover, these reports can also highlight any discrepancies in your link building process that you can avoid in future content publishing.

    • Assess Reports and Decide Which Links Should be Redirected

    Now comes the most important step. The tools you use for finding broken links will give you a list of all the links on your website that might be broken. But before you make a decision to redirect them, you should assess these links and your web pages to find out why these links are not working.

    There are some instances where users are redirected to a stray URL. This might occur due to human error or an incorrect URL being put in the address bar. These are negligible instances. However, broken links which are recording multiple clicks from the users should be fixed. 

    In essence, it is imperative to redirect the links that have many visits after a thorough assessment of the reports. It is easy to figure out which stray URLs are present on the website and correct them by putting in a tentative URL. Links that have underlying errors and broken links with high visit rates should be worked on priority.

    • Redirect Broken Links in Your Content Management System (CMS)

    Now that you have identified which broken links you need to resolve and redirect in the first three steps, it is time for the final step. Redirecting broken links in the CMS you are using will complete the process of finding and fixing the broken links on your website.

    For example, if you are using Drupal CMS, go to “Site Building” under Administration. Click on “Redirect” and fill in the sections of “From” and “To” with the broken links and redirects.

    How to Use the Broken Links to get Better Results 

    • Exploring and Discovering Dead Links on the Top Ranking Websites in Your Domain

    The first and foremost step to finding broken links that can bring you value is creating a list of the most authoritative websites in your niche, along with competing websites. 

    After creating this list, a broken link finder tool can be of significant help. Some of the most effective broken link finders are Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, Semrush, and Dead Link Checker. 

    Using these tools, you can conveniently find any dead links or 404 pages on any website. Now, it is time to test these tools by utilizing the broken link finder tools with one website on your list and repeating the process with all the remaining websites.

    This can help you in collecting a pool of information about broken links on these websites, which you can then leverage for your broken link-building campaign. Using this strategy, you can obtain a sleuth of backlinks on high-quality websites and sail past your competitors’ visibility and domain authority.

    • Finding Broken Outlinks and Finding Websites with the Most Backlinks

    While the mechanical work of analyzing each website to find broken links can be fruitful, being smart with the process can bring in even better results. Finding broken outlinks on the same websites in the aforementioned points can bring in more opportunities for broken link building.

    For instance, you run a test on a website “X” for finding broken links and find 100 broken links on the website. If you are able to identify 2-3 links that had content possessing similar information to content your blogs/articles might have, they can be a very suitable replacement for those broken links. You can even write fresh content about the topics covered under those broken links as a potential replacement for them.

    However, this tactic goes even further. You can analyze these broken links in the tool you are using and find which other referring domains were using those links. This will help you find even more websites that can use a link replacement to your website. Ultimately, you will be able to find websites with the most backlinks that are no longer useful and tap into the opportunity to replace those backlinks with your own. Since search engines consider backlinks as a reliable source of trusted websites, this strategy can help you in establishing your website as a trusted source in your niche and help it rank higher in SERPs.

    Benefits of Broken Link Building 

    • Broken link building in SEO has a significant effect on websites in the eyes of search engines. Not only does it help you in getting quick wins in securing valuable backlinks, but also in increasing your visibility for search engine algorithms. Since you have a relevant piece of content being linked on relevant websites, it increases the website’s SEO authority in your niche and makes it rank higher on SERPs.
    • Broken link building is a tested and proven method of getting ahead of your competitors. Securing backlinks on high DA websites against competing websites that still sport broken links helps you in getting a head start against the competitors. In addition, webmasters can be incentivized with good quality content to switch the broken links out with yours, which helps you gain more relevance in search engines’ eyes.
    • Broken link building methods also help you tap into a whole new audience. Since you are finding broken links, you explore various new sites along with topics and keywords that you may not even have discovered yet. This helps your website expand its wings and also uncover websites that can have your ideal audience waiting to be reached out to. Broken link building strategies bring in many new opportunities and increase your connections with highly relevant businesses in your niche.

    Time to Construct Your Broken-Link Building Strategy

    Now that you know the various ways broken link building can play in your favour, it’s time to put in the effort and go the extra mile to reap those benefits. However, broken link building can be quite a tedious task to take onto yourself, and the assistance of SEO professionals can take you a long way into making a foolproof and rigid strategy. Hence, availing services of an SEO company like Infidigit can be of great value. With a multitude of SEO services under its catalogue, Infidigit can help you build broken links with precision and elevate your website’s rankings on SERPs. Contact us today to learn more.

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    Learn How Broken Link Building Can Enhance Your SEO