When you think of link building, then you probably think about creating content, promotions, reviews, mentions and securing links from friends and partners. It is a great way to go about it and many marketing professionals will tell you to adopt these methods but there is one way that no one talks about, which can change your SEO game is broken backlinks.
Yes, you heard it right. Now, you must be thinking that how a broken backlink can up your game and not affect SERP ranking. Well, a broken backlink results in you, indeed, missing out on a lot of link juice but you can bring that ball in your court. Read the article to know about the strategies to use broken backlink to increase webpage traffic.
What is a broken backlink?
An incoming link that leads to a 404 error page of a target website is a broken backlink. Due to a broken backlink, you will lose the referral traffic that the page could have generated and will result in a bad user experience. As per a Woorank report, 12.2% of backlinks in e-commerce website lead to a broken backlink. It could be a possibility that other industries will show similar trends. A Harvard Law Review in 2014 pointed out that 20% of backlinks become inactive after just one year. This causes a loss of a huge amount of link equity.
How to use broken backlinks?
Now, marketers have two ways to utilize these broken backlinks – reclamation and building. With broken backlink reclamation, you reclaim the value of broken links pointing to your websites while broken backlink building implies recreating content to replace competitors’ broken backlinks.
These methods are unique and will be beneficial in providing better SEO services. Many companies have seen exponential growth through these methods and do save a lot of time in creating content and promoting while missing out on an opportunity that is already present.
Reclaim Broken Backlink
- Determine your website’s backlinks– You can use Ahrefs Site Explorer to seek a broken backlinks report. It will display all the referring pages that link to 404 error pages of a target site along with the anchor and surrounding texts.
- Manage your broken backlinks– The report will list the links as per their value. You will have the option of exporting these links in a spreadsheet to organize them better.
- Select the broken links– Choose the broken links that are worth pursuing especially the ones that are originating from authoritative domains and contain relevant anchor texts.’
- Reclaim the value– After selecting the links, review your website and choose the links that will be ideal to replace the broken links. Now, you can either contact the site owner to replace the link, which the owner would be happy to do as it improves the user experience for their site also you’ve pointed out a broken link hosting on their site. Another way, if you are unable to get in touch with the site owner or there is no response, then you can regain the value through a redirect. The error link value will be reclaimed and visitors will land on an active page.
Build Broken Backlink
- Check your competitor’s backlink– Select a list of competitors and by using the Ahref tool, you can check their broken links with the method mentioned above.
- Search for relevant backlinks– Analyze which broken backlinks can work in your favor meaning you need to review your website and look for pages that are similar to the topics required for backlinks. These pages will serve as replacements for error pages on the third-party website.
- Offer the replacement content– If you do not have content and are starting from scratch by creating content then take a note of the content of the third-party site and the anchor text. If you already have the relevant replacement content, then you can directly reach out.
- Connect with site owners– Once you are ready with replacement content, then you can get in touch with the third-party site owners and report the issue of broken backlinks. Provide your content as a replacement and show them that how your content is relevant to the anchor text and topic available on their website. They will be interested in taking up your article because no one wants to feature links that lead to error pages.
Broken Backlink Opportunity
As a broken backlink is half the work done. You just need to be creative to transform an error page into a useful backlink. This is significant in generating referral traffic, improving search ranking, building digital marketing services and providing a better user experience. So, do not miss out on an opportunity that provides you so many benefits and reduces your marketing efforts.
