What is broken link building and how do you do it?

Broken link building is a technique for earning backlinks by finding dead links on other websites and offering your own content as the replacement. It works because site owners want their links to go somewhere useful, and you have done the work of finding the problem for them. With success rates around 20-25% for well-targeted pitches, it is one of the most reliable white hat link building methods available.

How broken link building works

The process has four steps. First, find pages in your industry that link to resources that no longer exist. Second, check those dead links have genuine value and that the linking site is worth a link from. Third, create or identify a page on your own site that covers the same ground. Fourth, contact the site owner, explain the broken link and suggest your page as the replacement.

Step one: find broken pages with backlinks

Start with your competitors' best-linked pages. Run the URL through a tool like Ahrefs, Semrush or the free SEOSEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation — the practice of improving a website's visibility in search engine results pages. report at https://victory.digital/run-a-seo-report. Filter for 404 not found pages and sort by referring domains, highest first. A page that used to exist but now returns a 404, and had dozens or hundreds of sites linking to it, is your opportunity. Every domain linking to the dead page is a potential outreach target.

You can also search for resource pages in your industry using operators like "resources" plus your keyword. Crawl those pages for broken outbound links with a site crawler. Many resource pages accumulate dead links over time because the editors do not check them, which means a regular supply of fresh opportunities.

Step two: vet the opportunities

Not every broken link is worth chasing. Check the linking page first. Is it a trusted site in your space? Would a link there bring referral traffic or authority for your own pages? If the linking page is a low quality directory or a spammy aggregation, skip it. Focus on pages where the editor has a clear reason to keep the resource live.

Use the Wayback Machine at archive.org to see what the dead page originally covered. Your replacement must match the original topic. If the dead page was a guide to email marketing tools, your page about the same subject is a natural swap. A page about social media scheduling is not.

Step three: create or match your replacement

If you already have a page on your site that covers the topic better than the dead page did, use that. If not, write one. The replacement needs to be genuinely useful and go deeper than a thin overview. An editor who links out to quality resources will know the difference.

Step four: write the outreach email

Keep it short, specific and helpful. Name the exact dead URL you found and where it sits on their page. Suggest your page as the replacement with a sentence about what it covers and why it fits. One follow-up a week later is fine. More than that risks annoying someone who might otherwise have said yes.

Does broken link building still work?

Yes, but it takes patience. A good prospect list of 50-100 opportunities typically yields 10-15 replies and 5-10 new links. The success rate depends entirely on the quality of the replacement page. If your page is the best resource on that topic, the editor benefits from swapping to it.

Broken link building sits alongside digital PR and content marketing as a reliable way to earn links without paying for them. Our guide to earning backlinks at https://victory.digital/help-advice/how-to-earn-backlinks-without-paying-for-them covers the wider landscape, and the link building page at https://victory.digital/link-building explains how we approach it for clients.