Broken Link Outreach – Finding and Fixing Broken Links on High Authority Sites
Broken links on a website negatively impact user experience and cause sites to miss out on potential referral traffic and backlinks. By identifying authoritative sites with broken outbound links in your industry, you can help fix these broken links while earning new high-quality backlinks in the process.
This technique, known as broken link outreach or reclamation, transforms broken links from a problem into win-win SEO opportunities.
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Why Broken Link Outreach Works
Reaching out to fix broken links taps into site owner motivations in multiple ways:
- Improves site quality – Fixing their broken outbound links enhances their content and user experience.
- New referral pathway – Your content fills in their content gap and provides a fresh resource for their audience.
- Saves work – Site owners don’t have to hunt down and create replacement content for the broken link themselves.
- Link equity restored – A new working link helps regain SEO equity lost by the broken link.
As mentioned on StartupNoon, 25% of successful link building outreach stems from properly executed broken link prospecting and reclamation emails.
Best Practices for Broken Link Outreach
Follow these guidelines to maximize your broken link building results:
Use the Right Tools
- Broken link checkers like SEMRush and Ahrefs help identify broken pages efficiently across sites.
- Prioritize discovering broken links on sites with high domain authority and traffic in your space.
- Use G Suite alerts to find when your existing links break so you can proactively reclaim them.
Analyze Link Context
- Assess if the broken page is still relevant and valuable for them to link out from.
- See if your content offerings align with the topic of the broken link and page subject matter.
- The higher relevance your content has as a replacement, the more likely they will link back.
Craft a Mutually Beneficial Request
- Explain you noticed a broken link on their page that you can provide an updated resource for.
- Outline the benefits for their audience in getting a working, informative link restored.
- Offer to create new content tailored to the broken page context if no current pieces fit.
Provide Easy Next Steps
- Do the legwork of providing the exact anchor text and URL needed to replace the broken link.
- Follow up over time if needed, offering to get on a call to diagnose any linking difficulties.
- Once successful, notify them if the new link ever breaks again down the line.
Fixing broken links earns goodwill with site owners while securing valuable backlinks over time. With persistence and compelling outreach, broken links transform into SEO wins.
