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How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building



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How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building

Hello all. Earlier on today our man that is Cristian, posted an excellent way of building connections and partners with big sites and people in your niche by searching out for sites that have been hacked or have problems with them and then notifying the owners about it. Then offer a solution to fix or even clean it up for them.

This puts you in a much better position to ask for a link from them maybe. Most people will be alright with that but some people may ignore you or not even get the message! But it can still be a good way to go about EARNING links from sites in your niche and they're worth their weight in gold!

How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building
This might not work for every niche. For newer niches. But for IM/SEO niches particularly it can work quite well. This is because there are literally millions of sites/blogs in that niche and many will be by rookie webmasters/bloggers and even some experienced ones too and most of them are probably running WordPress CMS or some other CMS platform like Joomla or something. And these sites are the most hacked all the time. And in time sites like these usually end up with some problems, call it an old plugin not working properly, a page not working right or loading at all. Including any broken links on that site be them internal or external links.

Broken Link Building is Relevant

Linking to broken links is really bad for SEO. And for your reputation. It's no longer relevant. Sometimes bloggers can have some very high quality pages on their site/blog they have worked hard on a while back. But it could be a site they are linking out to that is no longer up and running or the page itself on that site has been removed or even become outdated.

You can then contact the site owner/administrator and tell them about the broken link. +1 on you. But here's the thing. Instead of just telling them about the broken link, offer them a link to replace it with. Your link. Which just happens to be a much better, much more relevant and updated link. That way they wont even need to research or think of another link to replace it with as they'll already have yours in the email you sent them.

Just like telling people that their site has been hacked or doesn't work can get you some respect and good standing. Which can you put you in a better position to ask them for a link. Broken link building puts you right there with the link already. You don't have to ask them for a link, you can just offer to replace it for them with yours.

Of course, some might choose not to. They might see your email or message and not even care. They might not even get your message. Chances are if they've been hacked or their site has a lot of broken links on it they could be the type of webmaster/blogger that has long forgotten about his/her website/blog and that they even have hosting. But that's only usually a smaller percentage.

The majority of webmasters/administrators you contact about problems and or broken links on their site/blog will respond to you to say thanks at least. And when they're responsive they're much more likely to turn into someone that will retaliate and reciprocate and go on to become someone that you can network with later on too.

These sorts of people will be much more likelier to even give you a guest post on their blog and you can even offer to do the same for your blog. Hey I said earlier, if you have a fairly big blog and social media following, you can use that to your leverage. Even modest sized blogs that are in the same niche as them will be useful to them. It's just a matter of convincing them of this but your blog needs to be good obviously!

Remind me why I'm doing this again?

Remember it's all about relevance today! Getting links from sites and blogs in the same niche as yours! They are the best type of links you can get! Also think about it like this, those bloggers may have worked hard on their pages, may have done a lot of good on-page SEO and off-page SEO on them which is why they are ranking so high, or at least, found in the top 100 search results.

So those aren't new pages that aren't indexed. They can be pages on peoples sites, posts in peoples blogs, even posts in forum threads. Where people have put a link to something they once considered relevant for some reason at the time. And those will be pages that are old and aged and have a lot of link juice so can be very powerful.

All you need to do is find these links, find the sites, blogs and even forums in your niche and find the broken links on them. Then contact the owners/administrators and admins of these where there are broken links and tell them about them, tell them why its bad for their SEO and reputation. Then offer them a much better alternative link to replace it with. Your link of course. Chances are if you've got this far they will.

Possible outcomes, scenarios and objections.

The worst that happens is that they just don't respond. Maybe they were kidnapped by aliens or went swimming with sharks and end up on the back of a carton of milk. Some will just say thanks and not do anything still. Some will say thanks and do something about it immediately but not use your link. Some will go as far as immediately doing something about it and using your link as suggested to them. Winner!

If someone doesn't respond to your email. Try sending another or try sending one from their contact us page. If they still don't respond lookup their sites whois and see if there's any emails there you can send one too. If there's no response you can wait a while and send another from another email address pretending to be a buyer or something just to see if they respond to you. From here you can see if they were just ignoring you or not lol.. But you can also maybe then ask them why they didn't reply to your emails sent to them and see what they say as you might be able to get them on board along the lines of your thinking.

Don't give up on no responders if it's a good site/page you want the link on. Find some other way around it even speak to their host if you can. They might have an other way of contacting them or might even do it for them. No host wants their clients sites users to have a bad experience and broken links are just annoying as hell.

If someone responds but doesn't oblige right away, wait a week or so before sending another message just to ask how its coming along and then here you can also pitch the idea of doing a guest post for them and asking them if they want to write for you too. Make sure they get the idea that you're a good person/blog to network with!

You know say something like oh by the way about me, My site is this one as you know and my blog has x readers per month I have x subscribers and a fairly big social media following and am always looking for other similar awesome sites and blogs to network with. Make them realize you mean business and they'll be much more likelier to oblige!

Generally though, you can expect quite a high success rate from broken link building if you apply yourself to it and it can be very beneficial as well both in the immediate it happens and in the long run to for building rank and traffic to your site/blog.

Most people don't really have much time. They're in a rush or don't have much time to do other things like find a new link to replace a broken with. So by giving them the link to replace it with including why it's a much better link/page/site than before, they will just go ahead and swap it with yours! Winner winner chicken dinner!

How to Find Sites in Your Niche with Broken Links?

This is where tools like ScrapeBox and some other broken link checker tools come in handy. Using ScrapeBox you can harvest hundreds of blogs in your niche. Scan all their blog posts and run the broken link checker on them. From here you can find out what link you could replace their broken link with and go about contacting them. While ScrapeBox can automate and speed up the task considerably, you will still need to put some manual footwork in and send customized tailored messages to people and respond and work with them.

And even if you don't get a link, you can get that person in conversation, add them on something like whatsapp or whatever and just be their buddy for a while until you get in their good books. Talk to them about things they are interested in. Offer them your tips and insider knowledge. Find out what issues or problems they have. Even any obstacles they're trying to overcome and goals they're trying to reach and help them with that just out of the goodness of your heart. Strike up friendships with them and then later on when the moment is right and they're in a good mood, ask them if they'll reconsider replacing that broken link with yours or even letting you guest post for them.

Once you're on this level with people, it's much easier to get these things from them. You could say oh hey, when you going to let me write for your blog? I'd love to do that and can provide something your readers will love. Plus it shows your community side too you know and people love that. What friend will say no that? How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building

It's all psychological but it's not rocket science! It's called "social engineering". Getting what you need by using peoples naturally friendly nature against them. But not in an evil way. In a way that is beneficial to both you and them!

If you don't have ScrapeBox you can just search in Google. Just search for your keywords and things related to your blog. Check through this sites blog posts and pages. Find and identify problems or issues with them and any broken links. Keep a record in a spreadsheet or simple text file of the site, it's problem or broken link page and the broken link itself and the your link they should replace it with.

Including a record of your contact history with that site, what the outcome or pending state is. This will help you later on down the line as this isn't something you do only once for a few days. This is something you an keep doing over and over again all the time to keep the links coming in from high quality pages in the same niche as yours.

Remember. The link doesn't even have to broke! It could be that they are just linking to an older less relevant and less quality page and you could give them a link to a much better page that is much more relevant and higher quality. Most people will go for that!

Also this can be done for broken images too. If you find a broken image, you can use that as a reason to contact the owner/admin and strike up a relationship with them.

And that's Broken Link Building 101!

How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building

Do you build links using the broken link building method?

What are some other ways to get links from related sites and blogs as yours?

Comments

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TommyCarey
This is pretty awesome How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building

It reminds me of a guy I use to know who would DDOS websites and then email them a few weeks later saying something like "Has your website been down lately? We can help!" and then he would charge $50 a month for server monitoring or whatever he wanted to name it How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building He would get about 10 sign ups a month doing this lmao How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building

Anyways, I use to target websites with broken pages in order to convert them into a client. The work was usually very minimal and I could charge them a small monthly fee to fix anything that went wrong. I called it a retainer, but it was more of a "pay me $100 a month to fix stuff that I might accidentally break when I add new pages to your website" How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building

I like to use scrapebox for pretty much anything when I'm online. I'm pretty sure scrapebox can make me coffee in the morning if it had hands lol How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building That's how awesome it is haha How to Help People and Build Powerful Backlinks at The Same Time: Broken Link Building You can scrape together huge lists of almost anything you want with it. I recently scraped together a list of 250 or 300 of my competitors clients who are paying them $79 a month for their services. I coincidentally have a similar service being programmed right now that will charge $35 for the same thing... I might just have to get in contact with all of those people who are paying too much for their service ;)

You can pay a little less for scrapebox using this link: http://www.scrapebox.com/bhw
That's the URL for members of blackhatworld, but it will work for you since you don't have to add your username ;)



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Lynne
Thank you Mike! This truly has been a helpful post.

I have read so many articles where people mention building links in this way and it all sounds great, that is until I have asked HOW to go about finding these broken links. This is the first time someone has given me the exact method and tools that I can use to find broken links.

I love learning how to do things but when I get told that I should use a certain method but I only get given half the information to do it then I start to get annoyed.

Thank you for taking the time to cover this subject properly, the first time I have seen the HOW for broken link building.



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Cristian
Great topic Mike, real good piece of advice you have there. Anyways, I've tried broken link method to get backlinks. It works great for the right type of blog. But only for blogs as far as I know.

Haven't been able to duplicate this method for online stores though. Immediately as you involve actual products with prices or listing pages of products, most bloggers will refuse you on the spot.
I think is different with content and information in general, way easier to convince them since most don't realize how much you have to gain. But when it comes to products, they immediately figure out you are turning a profit around eventually.



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