Broken Link Building: How to Use It as Part of Your Backlinks Strategy

Broken link building is a great way to get high-quality backlinks. By finding broken links on other websites and suggesting your own website as a replacement, you can increase your website’s authority and improve your SEO ranking. In this blog post, we will discuss how to use broken link building as part of your backlinks strategy. We will also provide some tips for finding broken links and getting the most out of this powerful SEO technique!

What are Broken Links?

The first step in building a successful backlink strategy is to understand what broken links are and how they affect SEO rankings. A broken link can be any hyperlink on a website that points to an invalid URL address or nonexistent page title tag, which means it will not go anywhere if someone clicks on it! Broken links also include external websites that don’t load properly because of server errors like 404s (file not found) or 500s (server error).

How to Use Competitor Broken Links?

One way to use broken links as part of your backlinks strategy is to find them on other websites and blogs that are currently linking back to your competitor’s websites. You will want to replace these backlinks in an effort to gain new backlinks leading to your website. Ultimately, you are replacing broken links with functional ones that link to your website, instead of your competitor’s.

How to Use Broken Links as Part of Your Backlinks Strategy

You now know that competitor broken links are a great tool that you can benefit from, but how do you apply this newfound technique?

Finding Broken Links

The first thing you will need to do to get started with broken links is to find these broken links on your competitor websites. This can be done by using a tool like the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool (as recommended by Moz for this exact purpose) to find broken links on your competitor websites.

Once you have this list, you can start going through each broken link that the tool gave you to ensure that they are indeed broken. You will also want to keep in mind that not every broken link is worth replacing if you do not feel that you have a suitable page link to replace it with.

Create a Spreadsheet

Because you will be working with so many different links, it is great to use a spreadsheet that can help you stay organized throughout this process. This way, you can highlight any links that will be worth replacing and you can ignore the other ones. This can help you work more efficiently and avoid wasting time on links that you do not actually plan to replace.

Detecting Competitor Backlinks

Once you found broken links on a competitor’s website that you plan to target, you will want to use another tool that can detect any other websites linking back to that broken page. A great tool for this purpose is Link Explorer which is a free tool, created by Moz. Such tools will give you better insight into which websites are using your competitor’s broken links as hyperlinks, which helps you know which websites to contact later.

Reaching Out to Replace Broken Links

Of course, you won’t be able to replace broken links on someone else’s website without their consent, therefore, you will need to contact the websites that you want to edit their outbound links. There are a number of different ways you can go about this, but you will want to make it clear that the website is currently linking to a page that does not load. It is even better if you are able to provide a screenshot of where the hyperlink brings you to show the website owner that having a broken link does not offer an enjoyable user experience.

Most websites will want to take down broken links as soon as possible, so make sure that you send them a new functional link to your website that can replace the broken one. Usually, the page you link to should have the same purpose as your competitor’s broken page. For example, if a hyperlink leads to a list of hotels in Toronto on your competitor’s website, you should replace it with a new list of hotels in Toronto on your own website. This way, the link serves the same purpose but will actually allow readers to find the information they are looking for on your website, instead of reaching a broken page that does not help anyone.

Is it Legal to Replace Broken Competitor Links?

Yes, it is legal to replace broken links on competitor websites. When a link breaks and no longer leads anywhere, the owner of that site may not realize it! If you find one that does not go anywhere or points to an invalid URL address, then suggest your own website as replacement instead of theirs – this way both parties benefit from having their content linked together under one roof (as well as being able to share traffic between each other). There is absolutely no harm in this as you are actually doing the website a favour by pointing out a broken link and offering them a solution to fix it.

Final Thoughts

All things considered; many businesses do not take the time to look into the benefits of a broken link building strategy. With so many broken links on the web today, what are you waiting for? Start replacing broken competitor links with your own links today! Contact our team at Outreach Bee to help you perfect your backlink strategy today!