Broken Link Building: Find Dead Links and Offer Your Page as the Fix
Websites decay. Pages get deleted, companies shut down, blogs move to new domains and forget to redirect. Every one of those dead pages may still have dozens of other sites linking to it, and each of those links now sends readers to a 404 error. Broken link building is the practice of finding those dead links and telling the site owner, "this link is broken, and here is a working page that covers the same thing." Ideally, that working page is yours.
It works because you are doing the site owner a small favour. You are pointing out a problem on their site and handing them the fix. That is a very different conversation from asking for a link out of nowhere.
Two ways to approach it
There are two broad methods, and they suit different situations.
Page-first. You find resource pages, guides or roundups in your niche, scan them for broken outbound links, and pitch a replacement. This is quick to start and good for small sites with limited content.
Dead-page-first. You find a single dead page that used to attract lots of links, build something better on your site, and then contact every site that linked to the dead page. This takes more effort but can produce many links from one piece of content.
Method 1: scanning pages for broken links
Search for pages that tend to link out a lot:
your topic "useful resources"your topic "helpful links"your topic inurl:resourcesyour topic "further reading"
Open each result and check its outbound links. Browser extensions can highlight broken links on a page, or you can paste the URL into our broken link checker to get a list of links returning 404s or other errors. When you find one, look up what the dead page used to contain. The Wayback Machine at archive.org usually has a snapshot.
If you already have a page that covers the same topic properly, you have a pitch. If you do not, decide whether it is worth creating one.
Method 2: finding dead pages with many links
This is where backlink tools come in. Most of the major SEO tools let you look at a competitor or an authority site and filter its pages by HTTP status, showing pages that return 404 but still have referring domains. You can also look for whole expired domains in your niche: an old travel blog that shut down, a defunct software company, a government scheme page that moved.
For example, say a popular page titled "Complete list of GST rates for small sellers" on an accounting blog was removed during a redesign, and 60 sites still link to it. If you run a bookkeeping service, you could build an updated, accurate version, then contact those 60 sites. Even a small conversion rate from that list is a good result.
Is the dead page worth replacing?
Check three things before you invest time:
- How many unique referring domains link to the dead page, rather than total backlinks. Our explainer on referring domains vs backlinks covers why that distinction matters.
- Are the linking sites real and relevant? Fifty links from scraper sites are worth nothing.
- Can you make a page that genuinely replaces it? If the dead page was a free calculator and you offer a blog post, the swap will not make sense to the site owner.
Writing the replacement content
Your page does not need to be a copy of the dead one. It should serve the same purpose for the same reader, so the linking site can swap the URL without rewriting their sentence. Look at the anchor text and surrounding words the linking sites used. If most of them say "see this guide to monsoon trekking in Uttarakhand", your page should clearly be that guide.
Then make it better than the original: current information, clearer structure, better examples. Do not copy text from the archived version. That is someone else's work, and it gives editors a reason to distrust you.
The outreach email
Keep it short and lead with the help, not the ask. Something like:
Hi Priya, I was reading your post on planning a Ladakh road trip and noticed the link to the "high altitude acclimatisation guide" goes to a page that no longer exists. I wrote an updated guide on the same topic last month, in case it is a useful replacement: [URL]. Either way, thought you would want to know about the broken link. Thanks, Arjun
A few points that make a real difference:
- Name the exact page and the exact broken link, so the owner can find it in seconds.
- Mention other broken links you spotted on the same page, even if you have no replacement for them. It shows you are being helpful rather than purely self-interested.
- Send one follow-up after about a week, then stop.
Our article on link building outreach emails has more on subject lines and tone.
What results to expect
Broken link building has a lower response rate than people hope. Many resource pages are abandoned, so the owner never sees your email, which is also why the link is broken in the first place. Focus on pages that show signs of recent updates: a "last updated" date, recent comments, or an active author on social media.
The links you do get tend to be good ones: editorial, contextual, on relevant pages. That is why the method has lasted while flashier tactics have come and gone.
Check your own site while you are at it
The same decay affects you. Pages you deleted may still have external links pointing at them, wasting whatever value those links carried. Find them in Google Search Console or a backlink tool and either restore the content or set up a 301 redirect to the closest relevant page. The article on lost backlinks and link rot explains how to keep on top of this.
Start today with ten resource pages in your niche. Run each through a broken link checker, note every dead link and what it used to point to, and see which ones match a page you already have.