The Ninja Guide To Broken Link Building

t o p5se o .co .uk
http://www.to p5seo .co .uk/bro ken-link-building/
The Ninja Guide To Broken Link Building
Today I’m going to share my personal strategy f or implementing one of my f avourite white hat SEO tactics
– broken link building.
I’ll be walking you step by step through a real example of how you can use advanced broken link building to
build solid, white hat links to your content pages and boost your organic search engine traf f ic.
You will learn…
How to easily pick up strong, white hat, authority building links
How to take the guesswork out of which content will be popular
How to use advanced google search operators f or research
How to conduct your email outreach to maximise your success (with template emails)
And best of all… the only thing you will need to spend is your time as all the tools we will use are
completely free.
Are you ready? Let’s get started!
Why Broken Link Building Rocks
Broken link building is one of white hat SEO’s most powerf ul tools and a simple way to pick up authority
links in any niche.
T he process will only work if you are providing real, valuable quality content and are willing to spend time on
outreach (the f undamentals of white hat SEO), but trust me the rewards will be worth it. T hese are the
links that will stand the test of time and f uture proof your site against f uture algorithm updates f rom
google.
Spammers want shortcuts. Shortcuts don’t work.
But getting those high quality authority links is easier than you might think.
Here’s how!
1. Step Back In Time
Firstly, we’re going to make use of a little known, but extremely usef ul search operator – daterange:
Firstly, we’re going to make use of a little known, but extremely usef ul search operator – daterange:
I’ll explain how to use this in a second, but bef ore that let’s take a look at what it does and why we’re using
it.
Dat erange Operat or
T he daterange operator will limit the results of our query to content published within a specif ic period of
time.
Why is it usef ul?
T here are two advantages here: 1. Older content is more likely to have external links to sites which have been deleted, or posts which
have been moved.
2. Since we are going back a f ew years, even if there are no broken links, there are likely to be links to
resources which are now out of date – particularly usef ul in industries which are f ast moving (such
as SEO).
How t o use it
In the example shown above we have entered the f ollowing query: “best of 2009″ seo daterange:2455197-2455561
T he f irst 2 parts of the query are pretty straight f orward; we are looking f or posts which contain the
phrase “best of 2009″ and the word SEO.
We then use the operator daterange:2455197-245561, which might seem a little unintuitive to begin with,
but that’s because the daterange operator uses the Julian calendar.
Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not too hot on my Julian dates, so we can nip over to this page and
convert the date into Julian f ormat as shown below.
We enter the date we want, hit ‘Compute Julian date’ and the site will return what we need as shown below.
Ignoring the bit af ter the decimal point you can see the 2455561 in our daterange operator ref ers to the
31st December 2010.
So basically, you want: daterange:{f rom}-{to}
Which means that in our example query we are limiting the results to content published between the 1st
January 2010 (2455197) and the 31st December 2010 (2455561).
Some More Query Ideas
Bef ore I continue with our example, here are a f ew other phrases you might want to try in your search query
along with the daterange operator: “roundup”+your keyword
“top blog posts”+your keyword
“links”+your keyword
“f avourite posts” +your keyword
“recommended resources” +your keyword
T hese are all good f or locating ‘hubs’, which are prime locations f or f inding broken link building
opportunities
2. Let’s Find Some Broken Links!
T hat f irst result looks pretty tasty!
It’s a roundup post of the best internet marketing posts f rom 2009 – ancient history in the world of SEO!
Let ’s Save Ourselves Some Time….
We’re not going to waste our time clicking all the links on the page to f ind out which ones are broken.
T here’s a neat (and f ree) chrome extension called ‘Check My Links‘ that will do that f or us!
If you don’t have it, go ahead and add it to chrome here.
Perf orming The Scan
Once you have the Check My Links extension added, it’s a doddle to scan any web page f or broken links.
Just click on the button which will be added to chrome and in a f ew seconds you’ll get a result like the one
below…
Nice
As you can see there are 32 broken links on the page… there’s gold in dem hills
If we scroll down the page, we can see that Check My Links has conveniently highlighted the broken
links f or us in red, along with a status code. We’re looking f or 404s, which means that the page is not
f ound.
T his one looks interesting. Let’s f irst of all conf irm it is broken…
Excellent, on we go…
3. Mining The Gold
Ok, we know that this resource is no longer there. What’s next?
Well f irst, let’s hit up opensiteexplorer (my link analysis tool of choice) and f ind out a little more about the
page. For the purposes of this tutorial I won’t be signing in, but if you are not registered you should do so
as otherwise you are limited to 5 searches a day.
Paste the url of the broken link into the box and hit search.
We can see (below) that there are 33 linking root domains. Nice.
Let’s take a look a closer look at those linking domains by hitting the ‘linking domains’ tab.
We can then click on individual domains to see the linking pages.
We’ll take a look at the link on gillin.com and once there we can run Check My Links again to quickly f ind the
broken link.
Here’s another page linking to the broken resource…
And another…
If we do our job right, then we’ve got a great chance of picking up these links.
So what’s next?
4. Let’s Jump In The Time Machine Again…
Ok, bef ore we go ahead and try to pick up these links we need to know what made that content so damn
good in the f irst place and why it picked up the links.
To do that we’re going to use the internet archive.
Paste the broken url into the internet archive’s ‘wayback machine’ and click ‘BROWSE HIST ORY’.
We can see that the page has been cached a number of times, the last of which was in 2013.
Let’s look at a cached page f rom 2009 as that is what was cited in our original roundup post.
Here is a snapshot f rom December 2009.
It’s a pretty good post, but here’s the thing…
DO NOT COPY IT !
What we want to do is…
5. Make It Better
T he real key to securing those links is to create a new resource that is not just as good as the original, but
surpasses it.
Take your time over it – we know it’s going to be popular as we have the benef it of the historical link data.
And the beauty is that, as we are using old content, we have a f urther 4-5 years of
data/knowledge/advancement to work with.
Taking this article as an example, perhaps we can now come up with 110 ways to f ind new ideas f or blog
posts?
How about a video to go along with it?
Create a genuinely usef ul resource f or your own site, which brings the topic bang up to date.
Publish it.
And then…
6. It’s Time To Reach Out
It’s time to contact the sites that are linking to the broken page and let them know: About the broken link
About your amazing page, which covers the same topic
T here are 2 strategies here. I will give you my pref erred one f irst and then go over the second.
For both strategies, there are a couple of constants.
Email Subject
Keep it simple: Broken link on {name of site}
is all you need.
Try And Personalise It
I would always recommend trying to personalise your email outreach, so try and use the name of the
blogger/webmaster where possible.
I would also go inf ormal, i.e.
Hi David,
Broken Link Out reach St rat egy 1: Going All In
You will send an email/f eedback f orm, which lets the webmaster know about the broken link and
recommends your new content as a replacement.
Here is a template you can use: *************************************
Hi {name of webmaster/blogger}
Hope you’re doing good.
I was reading your article on {such and such} at {url} and noticed there was a broken link, specifically: {the broken link}
If you’re looking for a replacement link, I’ve just published a post which brings the topic bang up to date. You
can find my post here: {your link}
Would be great if you could add my post to your page
If you need to discuss you can drop me an email or give me a call on the number below.
Thanks,
{your name}
{your contact details}
***************************************
I would recommend putting in a telephone number as it helps to build trust.
T his is the strategy I would recommend.
Broken Link Out reach St rat egy 2: Bait ing
You will send an email/f eedback f orm, which lets the webmaster know you have f ound a broken link and
asks them if they would like more inf ormation.
T he idea here is that you are opening communication (they need to reply to f ind out where the broken link
is), with the theory being that they will then be more receptive to your link request.
T he f irst email should go something like: ***************************************
Hi {name of webmaster/blogger},
Hope you’re doing good.
I was browsing through a couple of your posts today and came across a broken link
Would you like me to send over the details?
Thanks,
{your name}
***************************************
And when they (inevitably) reply asking f or the details…
***************************************
Hi {name of webmaster/blogger}
Sure thing, here’s the details!
The broken link I found is on this page {url} and is pointing to {broken link url}.
If you’re looking for a replacement link, I’ve just published a post which brings the topic bang up to date. You
can find my post here: {your link}
Would be great if you could add my post to your page
If you need to discuss you can drop me an email or give me a call on the number below.
Thanks,
{your name}
{your contact details}
***************************************
Increasing Your Chances Of Success Wit h Out reach
Broken link building outreach has a good success rate as it’s a win/win, but here are a couple of tip sthat
can push that yes rate up even f urther!
Tweet Tweet
A couple of hours bef ore you drop the f irst outreach email, f ollow the publisher on twitter.
Next, retweet the article you are looking to get a link on, adding a comment and a hashtag, i.e.
Great list! RT @webmaster His Post Title {the url} #thetopic
Ninja tip: To be the ultimate ninja broken link builder… post the tweet just af ter the webmaster has been
active on twitter.
Comment On The Post
Take the time to write an insightf ul comment on the post you are looking to get a link on.
Doing the above a couple of hours bef ore you send the outreach email will mean the webmaster will
probably already be aware of you when they get your email (assuming you do this within business hours
and not at silly o’ clock in the morning!).
7. Rinse And Repeat!
Broken link building opens up a bit of a rabbit’s warren and when you f ind one broken link, you will probably
end up f inding 2 or 3 more and so on…
It’s a pretty much endless way of f inding popular post ideas with a prebuilt outreach list – what’s not to like!
8. And If There Are No Broken Links…
As I mentioned in step 1, the beauty of using the date operator is that we are looking at articles that were
written a f ew years ago.
Even if there are no broken links on a page, then there is a good chance you will f ind resources that are
out of date.
If you f ind a popular post which is no longer relevant, or is giving old advice (again using opensiteexplorer
to check link popularity) then f ollow the same steps of : Writing up your own post bringing the topic up to date/surpassing the original
Reaching out to the sites linking to the outdated content
T his will also yield excellent results.
Even More Broken Link Building Advice: The Moving Man Method
Brian Dean (backlinko.com) published an excellent post a couple of days back, which went into detail on his
pref erred method of broken link building, dubbed ‘T he Moving Man Method’.
Basically Brian’s technique involves looking out f or businesses that have gone bust and targeting their
links.
It’s another great tactic and I would highly recommend reading the post here.
And… we’re done! Now it’s…
Over To You
Broken link building is one of my f avourite white hat SEO tactics and hopef ully I have demonstrated just
how powerf ul and simple it can be, but what do you think?
Have you used the tactic bef ore? Any tips of your own or questions? Please leave a comment below and
f or loads mpre white hat SEO tips and tutorials be sure to sign up f or my f ree newsletter.
Just One More Thing…
You’ve probably noticed that I’ve pretty much given away an excellent link building opportunity in this very
tutorial. Who’s going to be the f irst to write up that article on 110 ways to come up with new ideas f or blog
posts? Let me know how you get on!