The ultimate broken link building guide
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2025 5:48 am
Finding broken links is the first step in a successful broken link building strategy. But what happens after you identify them?
Follow these tips to make sure your efforts as a broken link builder are as rewarding as possible.
Identify broken links
Start by looking for pages with lots of links. The more links you see, the higher the chance that you’ll find one that doesn’t work.
Blog posts, resource lists, or industry guides tend to have many outbound links. Because they’re resource-heavy, they’ll be around a lot longer than your typical page.
So, they’ll likely have quite a few outdated links you can replace with your content.
An SEO tool can help you identify dead links. Ahrefs and other solutions have a broken link checker feature that gives you a quick snapshot of the broken links on a page. You can do this for a wide range of sites, whether yours or a competitor’s.
According to Backlinko, Wikipedia is another good source czech republic mobile numbers list for finding broken links. And you can bet that many sites are linking to those 404 pages.
Use this search string on Google to get started: site:wikipedia.org “keyword” intext:”dead link”
Screenshot of Google search for broken inks on Wikipedia
Screenshot provided by author
The search engine results will turn up pages on Wikipedia with at least one broken external link.
Screenshot of Google search results for broken links on Wikipedia
Screenshot provided by author
You’ll end up on a Wikipedia page when you click on one of these results. Scroll down to the bottom to the References section.
Screenshot of Wikipedia references section that shows a broken link
Image source
If the link to a source is broken, you’ll see the phrase [permanent dead link] next to it.
Follow these tips to make sure your efforts as a broken link builder are as rewarding as possible.
Identify broken links
Start by looking for pages with lots of links. The more links you see, the higher the chance that you’ll find one that doesn’t work.
Blog posts, resource lists, or industry guides tend to have many outbound links. Because they’re resource-heavy, they’ll be around a lot longer than your typical page.
So, they’ll likely have quite a few outdated links you can replace with your content.
An SEO tool can help you identify dead links. Ahrefs and other solutions have a broken link checker feature that gives you a quick snapshot of the broken links on a page. You can do this for a wide range of sites, whether yours or a competitor’s.
According to Backlinko, Wikipedia is another good source czech republic mobile numbers list for finding broken links. And you can bet that many sites are linking to those 404 pages.
Use this search string on Google to get started: site:wikipedia.org “keyword” intext:”dead link”
Screenshot of Google search for broken inks on Wikipedia
Screenshot provided by author
The search engine results will turn up pages on Wikipedia with at least one broken external link.
Screenshot of Google search results for broken links on Wikipedia
Screenshot provided by author
You’ll end up on a Wikipedia page when you click on one of these results. Scroll down to the bottom to the References section.
Screenshot of Wikipedia references section that shows a broken link
Image source
If the link to a source is broken, you’ll see the phrase [permanent dead link] next to it.