Broken link building is where you find a page with broken links and email the webmaster to inform them of the problem and request your link be added as a replacement for, or in addition to, one of the broken links. Broken link building is a great method because it’s a more advanced technique that has been largely ignored by web spammers and because it allows you to target your niche so that all of your links are relative. Broken link building combines technical work with marketing, making it an interesting and fun method of link building.

1. Install Chrome Extension: Check My Links

Link Building Method 2: Broken Link Building Craig Murray Digital

2. Find broken link building targets

Search Google using a search operator such as:

  • “keyword” + inurl:links

Go through each site starting with the first:

Link Building Method 2: Broken Link Building Craig Murray Digital

Start Check My Links by clicking the icon in your Chrome toolbar. It will automatically scan every link on the page to find any that are broken.

Link Building Method 2: Broken Link Building Craig Murray Digital

3. Copy the URL of up to 3 broken links per page into a spreadsheet.

Email Outreach

Once you have created a list of pages with broken links it is time to start emailing about them. You will need to customize your email template as much as possible for each site you email.

Subject: Found a small problem with {!SITE NAME}

Hi {!NAME},

I was looking through some {!TOPIC} websites today and came across {!SITE NAME}. You have an excellent website, I can see that you put a lot of work into it.

But I found a few dead links that I thought you might want to fix. On {!SITE URL} these links are all broken:

{!BROKEN URL 1} {!BROKEN URL 2} {!BROKEN URL 3}

I run {!URL} which might make a great replacement for one of your broken links.

But either way, keep up the great work!

Thanks, {!NAME}

Advanced Tip

Instead of just emailing one site owner who has a broken link you can increase the effectiveness of your broken link building exponentially by contacting every site owner who has the same broken link. Often, a broken link is broken because the website it points to is down. This mean the website is down for every site that links to them. Use Ahrefs to find a list of every site with the same broken link and add them to your email outreach list.