Broken Link Building: How to Build High Quality Backlinks

High-quality backlinks are one of the most important SEO factors that helps any blog to rank high in search results because they represent a "vote of confidence" from one blog to another.

Instead of ranking, They also help to increase blog Domain Authority, Moz rank, Alexa rank and indirect traffics.

In reality, Building a high-quality backlink takes a lot of time and efforts which is the main reason why most of the digital marketers or other people spend hundreds of bucks for a single link from other sites.

But don't worry, You don't need to spend any single penny of money from your pocket and also you don't need to spend lots of time & efforts but you need to understand the art & concept of broken link building to get success.

What Exactly is Broken Link Building?

Most of the blogger are so confused about this term. No, it’s not as it sounds like! Broken link building is not building broken links.

As a link building tactic, broken link building is an effective, white-hat, scalable, content-focused link building strategy that builds links through finding broken links, recreating that broken content, and helping webmasters replace broken links with your corrected link.

The conversion rate of broken link building is very less - mostly under 10% but still, SEO experts like Neil Patel and Brian Dean use this strategy to boost their blog search rankings.

You may be thinking, This is a waste of time but this is also recommended strategy from most of the SEO expert to boost your blog search ranking. To clear my words, Just give me the answer to one question. What you need to rank high in search engines?

• High-quality Backlinks or
• Any type of Backlinks

In my opinion, 20 high-quality backlinks are far better than 2000 GSA blasted links to your main site. What do you think? Just comment on the comment section below the article.

Broken link building is not a quick process and It takes time. I have divided this process into several sections or you can say steps so let's get started...

Step 1: Finding the Targets

Off course, First you need to have a list of high-quality sites where you want to get links from and off course which is a mandatory step. What do you think? Don't it?

Generally, Target finding can be done in three ways - Keyword, Domain and Single URL based. Now let's understand this term.

• Keyword Based: Here, you hunt for broken links on pages targeting the same keyword. So, you need to be extra vigilant in selecting the keyword.
• Domain Based: You search an entire domain for broken links. Say quicksprout.com. Your quest doesn’t go out of it.
• Single URL Based: You select a URL, for example, xyz.com/an-article. And, you check every link on it to find a broken one. 

While finding the targets, I always recommend going with the 1st option which is Keyword based because it brings the number of opportunities. 

Now let’s find out how to unleash the broken links having an example keyword - "SEO link building strategy". Well, To find broken links we need to get a search result. Am I right? Let's do it now.

There are about 3,07,00,000 results in Google search page and We don't need more than 20 pages because after that you may find low-quality sites in search results which we don't need.

Generally, There are many ways to grab the URL from the search result page like you can do it manually or you can use Scrapebox. The first method is time-consuming while the second one is expensive.

But don't worry, I have found an easy & free way to export the URLs from the search results page.

Free Way to Bulk Export the Search Result URLs:

LinkClump is a Chrome extension that allows users to bulk export the search result URLs in a freeway.

After successful installation of this Chrome extension, You can see a new Y-like button on the Chrome toolbar. Now just click on this icon and click on "Options" which will open a setting page in a new tab or window.

In the setting page, You need to add an action so Just click on the "Add Action" button.

On the next screen, Choose the pair of activation keys then select "Copied to Clipboard" in the action field then copy format to "URLs only" and finally click on "Save" button.

After that, Just search your query on search engines like Google and then press the activation keys. 

When you press the activation keys, You can see a rectangle on each link and keep in mind, Don’t release the keys unless you select all the links.

Now, Just open any text editor like Notepad and then press " Ctrl+ V" to paste the all copied URLs to your opened text editor.

You can follow the same steps, again and again, to collect more URLs from the next search result pages.

It's so easy to collect URLs from the search results page in a freeway. Am I right? If you have any query related to it, Just comment on the comment section and also share your method to collect URLs from the search page.

Bulk Check URLs for Broken Links:

As you have successfully collected the list of sites, Now you need to check each URL for broken links.

You may have more than 50 URLs and visiting each of them manually to check the broken links will not be an easy task but thanks to Xenu Link Sleuth tool that helps to bulk check URLs for broken links.

Just download & install this tool. After successfully installation of this tool, Just open the tool and then go to "Options" then "Preferences".

If you only want to check the exact URLs for broken links then you must keep Maximum level field to Zero otherwise you can raise the number but keep in mind, the Higher value of Maximum level field allows deeper checking.

The next step is to load your TEXT file where you have collected a list of sites to Xenu Link Sleuth tool and to do that, Just go to File >> Check URL List.

After successfully loading all site URLs, The tool will automatically check the URLs for broken links.

Keep in a note, You will get red results for broken links and green for healthy.

Domain or Single URL Based Link Hunting: Xenu Link Sleuth tool also allows their users to check broken links for domain-based and what you have to do is, Just increase the Maximum level for the deep check as already said.

Now if we talk about Single URL-based link hunting then there are many other tools available like Check My Links and Domain Hunter which are chrome extensions that helps to check broken links for a particular page. Alternatively, You can use W3C Link Checker as well.

Bonus Tip: This will allow you to get more links with relevant broken links but you need a backlink checker tool like Ahrefs, Moz or Majestic to work. As you have already got some broken links from the above methods, Now just copy these broken links to one of these tool one by one which allows you to get URLs of web pages linking to the non-existing page.

Filtering Results:

There was a time when even low-quality links helped in ranking a site. But ever since Google rolled out its Penguin algorithm, the whole landscape of backlinking has changed.

It is important to have backlinks from quality sites, and those backlinks should be contextual. If, for example, you have a site about fish, and you are creating links from other niche sites about monkeys, these links will be of no use. Your goal should be to get links from authoritative and relevant sites.

That's why your next step should be to remove low-quality sites from your list of broken links that you have got from the above and To determine the quality, carry out the following.

• Check Link Profile: Visit the site link profile and check for spam.
• Analyze the Website: Avoid the sites having unnatural site wide and contextual links.
• Social Share: Higher social shares = better search performance.
• Site Metrics: It includes lots of thing like Alexa Rank, DA, PA, CF, etc but chooses the site which performs well in search engine. I prefer at least 20 DA.

Great, Now you have only high-quality sites in the list and congratulation for your this achievement but It's not the end.

If you are doing broken link building for pre-post article or content (already written) then you can jump directly into outreaching which is Step 3 but If you are doing broken link building for the article which has to be written then you don't need to just the next step which is content generation.

Step 2: Content Generation

You have got some high-quality sites with broken links to the next step should be to provide high-quality content to these sites.

Keep in mind, Author will add any article link to their article text if it is relevant to their article content to provide their readers with better information and the text which is hyperlinked is called Anchor text.

Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines.

To provide high-quality content to your target sites, You must read their article first from where you want to get links back so that you can understand what their article motive is. You must understand what the site owner really meant to give to his/ her audience with that broken link. Keep in a note, At the time of writing the post, It was active for sure.

Providing or creating content that either equals or betters that which your identified broken link was pointing to is essential. You must ensure that you understand the purpose of the original piece and utilize this information to help you create new content that fully meets the expectations of all sites who previously chose to link to that now a redundant resource.

There are several tactics for creating attractive and linkable content when broken link building:

• Aim to improve on the original piece of content without fundamentally altering its original purpose.
• Ensure all relevant statistics and sources are updated.
• Include additional information and citations.
• Say something new or even controversial on the subject (although always back it up and never try to be a sensationalist).

Well, No one can reject the SEO optimized high-quality content. Am I right? Do comment on the comment section below the article.

Step 3: Outreaching

The first step in the Outreaching process is to grab the contact details of site owners whose site has the broken links which are also the mandatory step.

Social media may be a good place to contact the site owners but I don't think, This is also a good place for backlink outreach so I have avoided it in this article.

Now the question is, How to contact the site owners? Well, Every high-quality site has a Contact Us page which you can find on the top navigation bar of their site or at least on the footer of their site and some admin also share their email as well.

Alternatively, You can check Whois details of their domain to get their email account which is my favorite way to get email account information of any domain. 

There are also paid tool available in the market like Link Research Tool Contact Finder, Buzzstream, etc that you can use to find the contact details of most of the site owners.

Now, After getting email address the most tricky parts comes. Just think, You are the owner of the authoritative site and someone is mailing you "Hey, I have found a broken link on your site, Can you replace this broken link with my article link" to get a backlink from your site. Will you do?

Off course, No. No one ever cares to give a backlink for a guy who says these type of words and that's the reason, You should care for each step you take but hope the below tips will work for you.

• Start by calling their name.
• Try to appreciate their content in a natural way.
• Be polite while writing mail.
• Don't do any grammar mistakes.

Here’s an example outreach email that you can use when contacting site owners to let them know about their broken link (and your replacement):

Hey, [Name]!

I was browsing your blog after finding it on [Google/social media/other]. I love what you’re posting—especially your article on [Article with a broken link].

However, I spotted a broken link that leads to an error page over the anchor text “[Anchor text]“.

I actually created a resource on this topic, which might be interesting for your readers if they’re looking for further information on this topic.

Would you like me to send it over?

Have a great evening,

[Your name]

Well, this template is taken from monitorbacklinks.com article and for more templates, you can visit this article from Moz.

Step 4: Keep Logs

Always avoid sending an email twice to the same person and To do that you need to keep the length on the safe place.

Well, You can use any tool you have to do that but generally, most of the people use MS Word to save these logs.

After sending email to the site owner, You should also manually check each web page to find out whether the site owner put the link or not after some days because you may or may not get a reply from the site owner after sending an email so It's your duty to check these links.

Wrapping Up

While reading this article, You may be thinking, It will take too much time and hard work with less success but that's not completely true.

Yes, It takes time and smart work but the success depends on the strategy you apply while writing your article content or email.

If you think, I am wrong then I am really - really SORRY for that but I want to remind you again that Neil Patel and Brian Dean believe in the power of broken link building, and you still are skeptical?

Imagine, You have got at least 10 quality backlinks which are niche specific, authoritative and non-spammy after sending 50 emails to the site owners at the starting and according to SEO, 10 quality backlinks is better than 100 low-quality backlinks.

Well, The higher the number of emails you send to the site owners, the greater the backlink you get so keep doing it continuously. 

Come on, shake off your laziness and try this for a month. You will thank me later for insisting on doing this.