When looking to improve the search engine performance and ranking of your website one of the most important strategies to consider is link building. Link building is quite often the difference between great sites ranking on the top page or on pages 5-10, it really is that important! Having a lot of links directing to your site tells search engines that your website is trustworthy and a great source of information, which is exactly what users are looking for.
There are lots of different link building strategies you can use to improve the ranking of your website. One of the most effective methods which any type of site can use is the broken link building method. In this article our team will be breaking down what the broken link building method is and what you need to do to start using it for your website.
What Is It?
The broken link building method is one of the most rewarding link building strategies that you can employ for your website. The only problem is it is also probably the most difficult! But we promise, it is definitely worth the effort.
Put simply, broken link building is the strategy of finding broken links in your industry and writing better content to replace them. This not only helps out the website with broken links by improving their content and site functionality, but also improves your site by creating a new, and often high quality, backlink. It is a win-win situation for everyone involved! This backlink helps to transfer link juice to your website, improving your domain authority score and, ultimately, your search engine performance!
How To Do It For Your Site
To practice this method you need to first crawl through the web to find content with broken links. This could be a Wikipedia page referencing a now deleted article or really any other site which is linking to content which is no longer available for whatever reason. It is important that you are looking for broken links that relate to the content you have on your website. You don’t want to be stuck writing content about something you know nothing about! It is also true that there really is no point in creating backlinks from types of websites which have absolutely nothing to do with your website or business.
Finding broken links can take a lot of time, and this is where the broken link building strategy can become really time consuming. Fortunately there are tools you can use to speed up this process. Broken Link Checker is a free Google Chrome extension which will scan a website for you and find any broken links you can use to link build for your site. This is a great tool to use if you want to save yourself some time when looking for broken links on popular sites with loads of links. There are also lots of other tools you can use to make the broken link building method a little easier. Once you find some broken links it is time to create content to replace them. It is important to create content as close to the original broken link as possible. For example, if you are a clothing business and found a broken link for the top fashion trends of 2020, you will need to create a blog on the top fashion trends of 2020. Try to keep the blog length above 1000 words and include as much detail as you think the original broken link had. The more detailed your replacement content is, the more likely sites are you use it! Be sure to post your replacement content on your site so that the backlink you are working for will be improving you own site. Now that you have created the perfect replacement it is time to make the switch. If you are replacing a Wikipedia article you can replace it yourself with a Wikipedia account, although this could be removed if your Wikipedia account is new and looks a little dodgy. If you have found a broken link on another site you can start by contacting the support account for the site and notifying them of their broken link while recommending your article as a good replacement. No one likes a broken link on their site, so you will find most websites will be more than happy to use your replacement rather than leaving the broken link up or deleting their content altogether.
We weren’t joking, broken link building requires a lot of effort! You may even be knocked back from a few sites when trying to replace content, however it is important to be persistent as this strategy can keep you above your competitors in search.
What Are Your Thoughts?
What do you think about the broken link building strategy? Will you be using this for your website. Although it is one of the more complicated forms of link building it is certainly one of the most beneficial strategies that you can start using to dramatically improve the search engine performance of your website. Broken link building can definitely be confusing when you first get started. If you are having trouble learning how to do broken link building for your website you can get in contact with our team by clicking here, or reach us on our Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn pages. We are always more than happy to answer any questions you may have.
