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Broken Link Building: Turn Other Sites' Dead Links Into Yours

Intermediate Medium impact A few hours Links, PR and brand

Updated · First published

Short answerBroken link building means finding a dead page that other sites still link to, creating a better replacement, and emailing those sites with a working link to swap in. It helps the site owner too, since dead links hurt their readers. Use Ahrefs or Semrush to find the dead pages, the Wayback Machine to see what they covered, and one personal email per site.

Broken link building is a way to earn backlinks by finding links on other sites that point to a dead page (a 404), offering your own working page as the replacement, and asking the site owner to swap the link. The owner fixes a problem on their page, and you get a link from a relevant source.

Ahrefs describes it in four steps: find broken pages that have backlinks, vet the prospects, create a replacement page, and do the outreach. The idea is a fair trade. A dead link frustrates readers and makes the site look neglected. Your email points to the exact link and offers a fix.

A fictional example: a resource list on “email deliverability” links to a checklist page that returned a 404 two years ago. You publish a current checklist, email the list’s owner with the dead URL and your page, and they replace the link.

Why does it matter for SEO?

You get links from pages written by people in your field, which Google’s link guidance describes as a descriptive link inside real content. The tactic also lacks the main risk of other link building, because you are not buying or trading anything. The site owner chooses to link because your page helps their readers.

Google’s link spam policy still applies. Don’t ask for exact-match keyword anchors across many sites, and don’t pay for the swap without rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".

  1. Find dead pages with backlinks. In Ahrefs Site Explorer, enter a competitor’s domain, open Best by links, filter for 404 not found and sort by referring domains. Semrush Backlink Analytics offers the same view for broken pages. Pick pages in your own topic.
  2. Find broken outbound links on target pages. Open resource pages and “best of” lists in your niche (see resource pages) and scan them with the Check My Links extension or Ahrefs’ broken-links report.
  3. Check what the dead page said. Paste the old URL into the Wayback Machine and read the last good version. Note the topic, the format and why people linked to it.
  4. Vet the prospects. Keep links from active sites that fit your topic and where a link would make sense. Drop spam sites, link farms and pages with dozens of dead links.
  5. Build a replacement that beats the original. Don’t copy the archived page. Cover the same question with current facts, better structure and your own data or examples (see linkable assets). If you already have a fitting page, use it.
  6. Redirect if the dead page was yours. A dead URL on your own site is a different job. Restore it or redirect it, as covered in broken links and link reclamation.
  7. Write one personal email per site. Name the person, give the exact page and the dead URL, say what the link used to cover, and offer your page as a replacement. Add a screenshot of where the link sits. A short template:
Subject: Broken link on [their page title]

Hi [Name],

I was reading your page on [topic] and noticed the link to [dead URL] now returns a 404.
We published a current guide on the same subject: [your URL]. It covers [one line].
If it suits your readers, it could replace the dead link. Either way, thanks for a useful page.

[Your name]
  1. Follow up once after a week, then move on. Track replies and wins in a sheet.
  2. Group your emails. Ahrefs suggests a hybrid: personal where the page recommends the dead link for a specific reason, and a standard template for general lists.

How do you measure the result?

  • Links won divided by emails sent, per prospect type.
  • Referring domains and the pages they link from, in Search Console or your backlink tool (see backlink monitoring).
  • Referral clicks and sign-ups from those links in GA4.
  • Hours spent per link. Replacement pages cost the most time, so reuse one page for many prospects.

What mistakes should you avoid?

  • Writing a weak replacement. If your page is thinner than the dead one, the owner has no reason to switch.
  • Spamming a mass template. Identical emails burn bridges, a risk Ahrefs names for shotgun outreach.
  • Choosing irrelevant prospects. A link on an unrelated page helps nobody.
  • Pushing your anchor text. Let the owner link in their own words. Their readers matter more than your keywords.
  • Ignoring redirects. If the dead page was yours, fix it with a 301 first.
  • Dropping the Wayback check. Without it you won’t know what the dead page offered, and your replacement misses the mark.

Where can you learn more?

The free digital marketing module of the Fe/male Switch startup school shows how to plan outreach for a young company. Next steps on SEO100: find where to apply this with resource page links, and check the competitors’ dead pages through competitor backlinks.

Earlier versions of this directory listed this as: Broken Link Building.

Learn SEO as part of building a startup

Fe/male Switch is a startup school and game where you build a real company step by step. Its free digital marketing module covers SEO, and the free startup tools help with the rest.