Case Study: Time to Understand and Employ Broken Link Building

Links are one of the best ways to reach relevant search information through the Internet. It acts as a ranking factor for your landing websites also. Moreover having the links is not enough. The quality of the link should matter all the time. The high-quality link may lead you to get desirable results.

If you complete your actions on this high-quality link, email link building and so on, then another option is to be considered here is broken link building. And this is the time to understand and employ broken link building.

The problem may be an improper use of URL, destination website removed the linked web page and so on. This broken-link is also known as a 404 error.

In a nutshell, Broken means “not working properly”, Link means “connecting one part with another”, Building means “Construct something”.

Hence, Broken Link Building is a method of constructing not properly working links on your website.

This broken-link is harmful to your landing website. Because broken link decreases the popularity of sites, poor website user experience, turn the audience away, develop a negative impact on search engine ranking, reduce all your SEO efforts.

In this dangerous scenario building, the broken link of your landing website is very essential to you. I think this is the time to understand and employ broken link building.

Broken link building is nothing but if you find any broken link on your website, then you can contact the webmaster or the owner. You can also ask a favor of pointing out a particular broken link, and they will also include that broken link to your website. Then that webpage will be visible to everyone. At this time you can also prefer any suitable replacement link to that webpage. Now you may understand what is meant by broken link and broken link building.

Broken link building can be done in two ways, by using specific tools and by manually. When you are using tools to build a broken link, you may lose your content quality. In my point of view, the manual process of broken link building is better for you. And it will evaluate the broken link building process decently.

Let us move our attention to broken link building strategies and their stages. 

Selecting the right tools:

A proper broken link building strategy can be implemented effectively when you are using the proper tool for that. It will help to cut down the time to fix and locate broken links as well as it will help to contact the website owners.

Here, I will discuss some useful tools to find out a broken link on your landing web sites. And within those tools, I will explain some samples by using one tool. The following tools are used to find a broken link:

• Domain Hunter Plus
• Check My Links
• Broken Link Checker

Here I will explain with the tool Broken Link Checker to check with your broken links. In the below screenshot u can see the red arrow mark. In that box, you can enter your landing website and check which link is getting broken. That is which one is getting a 404 error on your website.

In the box enter the URL of your website. Also, type the security code which was displayed on the page. Then press the “Find broken links here” button. In the below screenshot you can see the details.

When you are pressing the broken link button it will search your mentioned website. In the below screenshot you can see broken link checker checks your website’s broken links.

After completing the process of all the web pages of your mentioned websites, an online broken link checker will display all the broken links of your website.

After finding the broken links of your website, you can replace it with the relevant content. 

Developing E-mail Template: 

Now you may get some ideas to find the proper tool for locating the broken link of your website. Now let us move on the tool that makes emailing the site owners easier. If you are using Gmail, then there is a built-in feature availed by Gmail for this purpose. This feature is known as Canned Responses. It is under the “settings” tab of your Gmail.

This tool reduces the time of email making and it allows you to create a template for contacting site owners. You must enable this feature in Gmail to create the template. You can enable this setting using Gmail Settings->advanced->canned response. And then enable it.

Once if you are enabling it, then you can write the template message and you can save it as a template. In the following screenshot, you can see how to save the template as a canned response.

When writing the email, keep in mind the quality of a good email. When you are developing the email for the broken link, write it as a personalized message, short message or as a professional language.

Even though you are making use of templates using canned response. Make the template like a personalized message with the specific company name or business name. Make the template with a short message. Try to save the time of the audience as well as make your point as a short one and reach it.

Nowadays people don’t like reading long email messages. Make the template in your professional language as in a friendly manner. Never pull the owner of websites to use your link.

Instead of that make them feel like you are trying to help them with your link. Through this email template, make sure about your tactics of exact link replacement to the broken link. Mention the URL details in the email which was as in the broken link.

Focus your email messages that how it will help their business. Based on all the above-mentioned points develop the customized template message and analyze it before sending it out.

Once after completing your template contact the site owner directly. Every quality websites mentioned their contact details on their website itself. If the contact number is not available on the website, then make use of their LinkedIn account for making the professional bonding with the website owner.

Because social media like LinkedIn can develop a better way of touch with the site owner. When compared with the email messages, LinkedIn messages stand out from the crowd. 

Broken Links Targeting:

Now you may find your broken links through some tools. And now you can target broken links either by replacing bad links with the existing real content or by developing new content around broken links.

In the case of the first method of choosing from your existing content is quit easier. In this case, there is no waste of time to create content. But you can simply find broken links that are directly related to your content.

On the other hand, if you are running any business blog, and if you find broken links on quality websites. Then you can write a short post that would be the best fit for the broken link and add more information related to that. If it is a quality website, this can be definitely worth your effort.

Evaluate your Results:

When you are applying SEO strategy you will analyze the effectiveness of your strategy. In the same way, analyze the result of the broken link building strategy. It will be helpful to better understand whether it is valuable to your time and effort for your business.

If you are going to employ this broken link building process, then make a clear plan about your execution. Never waste your time contacting the same sites again and again. Instead of wasting your time like that, make a clear business plan of your process.

Develop the database with the field such as a website with the broken link, broken URL, your replacement or suggestion for that broken URL, Contacting way (through Email, LinkedIn, etc), Date of contact, Date of reply, interaction content, Follow update, did the process getting completed or not. When you are maintaining that such database then it will be good for your time spending.

In this process, you can also find the ROI (return of investment). Here you can find ROI by using the below formulation such as,

ROI = (number of links) / (time spent * hourly rate)

You can also improve the success rate by fine-tuning your database details, broken link building strategies again and again. From this, you can understand that you can get a better ROI for your better-broken link building strategy.

Conclusion: 

Practice makes your broken link building strategy as a better one. You can master this process by using different strategies which will be suited for your practices. The above process can lead you on the right path. At the same time keep your focus clearly in your way of broken link building.

Author Bio:

[thrive_testimonial name=”” company=”” image=”https://dsim.in/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/2017-02-14-13-58-05-980.jpg”]Fazeela is a Digital Marketing Executive at Bright Bridge Infotech, a Lawyer Website and she enjoys learning about the Digital Marketing field. She specializes in guest blogging, blog publishing, and social media. She is an avid reader and loves writing impeccable content pertaining to digital marketing. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Engineering.[/thrive_testimonial]