Broken Link Building: A Step-by-Step Guide That Still Works

Every website decays.

Pages get deleted, businesses close and domains expire. The links pointing at them stay behind, sending readers to error pages.

Broken link building turns that decay into an opportunity.

You find the dead pages, build something that replaces them, and help site owners fix their broken links by pointing to you.

It isn't new, and it isn't easy. But done properly, it still earns relevant links from sites that would never respond to a cold pitch.

Here's the seven-step process I use.

What Is Broken Link Building?

Broken link building is an outreach method where you find links on other websites that point to pages that no longer exist, then offer a relevant page of your own as the replacement.

The value exchange is simple.

The site owner gets a working link and a better experience for their readers. You get a backlink from a page that has already shown it cites content like yours.

When It Works and When It Doesn't

It works best in niches where:

• Resource pages, guides and reference lists are common
• Older content gets cited for years
• Organisations, tools and publications come and go

It works poorly when the dead page covered something you can't credibly replace, or when the linking sites are abandoned and nobody reads their inbox.

Before You Start

You'll need:

• A backlink tool that can filter a site's pages by 404 status and list the pages linking to them. Ahrefs and Semrush both do this.
• A broken link checker browser extension for checking individual pages.
• The Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, to see what dead pages used to say.
• A spreadsheet for prospects, contacts, dates and replies.

Set aside time to build content too. The replacement page is where most of the work goes.

Step 1: Choose Topics You Can Genuinely Replace

Start with what you can offer, not with the broken links.

List the topics where you already have a strong page, or where you could write the best page on the web with your own experience.

Those topics become your search themes.

A heating engineer might pick boiler maintenance, heat pump sizing and radiator balancing. An accountant might pick allowable expenses, VAT thresholds and payroll deadlines.

This keeps the whole campaign relevant.

A broken link on a site you have nothing in common with is not an opportunity, however many links point at it.

Step 2: Find Dead Pages That Relevant Sites Still Link To

This is the prospecting step, and there are three good ways to do it.

Competitors' and publishers' dead pages. Enter a competitor, an industry body or a defunct publication into your backlink tool. Open its pages report, filter for 404 status, and sort by referring domains.

Pages with many referring domains are the prize. One replacement can earn links from several of them. My guide to competitor backlink analysis shows how I pull and sort those reports.

Resource pages in your niche. Search for your topic plus phrases like "useful resources" or "recommended links". Run each page through your broken link checker and note any dead links on your topic.

Closed businesses and retired tools. When a company in your field closes, rebrands or retires a free tool, its old pages often keep links for years. Industry news is a good source of leads.

Record every dead URL with the number of sites linking to it. If you want to automate this kind of search across many sites, I cover the approach in my explainer on link prospecting.

Then drop the ones with only one or two weak links. They rarely justify the work.

Step 3: See What the Dead Page Used to Say

Before you write anything, find out why people linked to the page.

Paste the dead URL into the Wayback Machine and open a capture from when the page was still live.

Note:

• The topic and angle. Was it a guide, a tool, a statistic, a checklist?
• The depth. A one-page explainer or a long reference resource?
• What sites cited it for. Open a few linking pages and read the sentence around the link.

That last point matters most.

If ten sites linked to a dead page for one specific table, your replacement needs that table, updated and accurate.

Step 4: Build a True Replacement

Your page has to do what the dead page did, and ideally do it better.

Here's the test I use: if the linking site swapped the link today, would their reader get what the original sentence promised?

If yes, you have a replacement. If not, you have a pitch with a broken link as an excuse.

Make the page:

• Cover the same core topic the linking sites cited
• Use current, checked information, especially if the original contained figures or rules that have since changed
• Add something of your own: a worked example, a clearer structure, a tool, experience the original lacked
• Load fast and stand alone, without forms or pop-ups between the reader and the content

Don't copy the archived page. It was someone else's work, and copied content rarely earns links anyway.

If you're not sure which reference pages your site should own, a content strategy is the place to decide that before outreach starts.

Step 5: Pull Every Page Still Linking to the Dead URL

Now build the outreach list.

In your backlink tool, open the dead URL's backlinks and export every referring page.

Then cut the list down:

• Remove pages that are themselves dead or redirected
• Remove scraper sites, spam directories and sites in unrelated topics
• Remove sites whose own content shows they sell links
• Keep pages where the link sits in the main content, not a footer or sidebar

My process for checking backlink quality covers each of those checks in detail.

A short list of real, relevant sites beats a long list you can't vet.

Step 6: Find the Right Person to Email

A good email to the wrong inbox earns nothing.

For each prospect, find the person who can edit the page:

• The author named on the article, for blogs and publications
• The page owner or web team, for organisations and associations
• The editor of the section, for larger publications

Check the author bio, the contact page and professional profiles.

Generic info@ addresses work for small businesses, where the owner usually reads them. For bigger organisations, they are a last resort.

Record the name and the source of each contact in your spreadsheet.

Step 7: Send a Short, Honest Email and Follow Up Once

Lead with the help, keep it short, and make the fix easy.

Here's a template you can adapt:

Subject: Broken link on your [topic] page

Hi [Name],

I was reading your page on [topic] and noticed the link to [description of dead resource] in the [section] section now goes to an error page.

I recently published a guide on [topic] that covers [what the original covered], updated for [year]: [URL].

It might work as a replacement, but either way you may want to fix the link.

Thanks, [Your name]

What makes it work:

• The exact location of the broken link, so they can check it in seconds
• Your page offered as an option, not a demand
• No anchor text request. Let them choose the wording.

Wait about a week, then send one short follow-up. If there's no reply after that, move on.

Log every outcome. After the first batch, the replies tell you whether the problem is the email, the prospects or the page.

Reclaim Your Own Broken Backlinks Too

Before you chase other people's dead links, check your own.

If your site has been redesigned or restructured, other sites may be linking to URLs of yours that now return a 404. Those links are already earned. They just land nowhere.

Filter your own site in a backlink tool or the Search Console Links report for linked pages that now return errors, and redirect each one to the closest live page.

No outreach needed. My guide on how to create a redirect map shows how to stop this happening in the next relaunch.

Common Broken Link Building Mistakes

The mistakes I see most often:

• Pitching a page that isn't a replacement, such as a service page offered in place of a free guide
• Chasing single broken links instead of dead pages with many linking sites
• Skipping the archive check, so the replacement misses why people linked in the first place
• Mass emailing an unvetted list, which burns good prospects and lands you in spam folders
• Asking for a keyword-rich anchor, which Google's spam policies associate with manipulative links
• Offering payment for the swap, which turns a legitimate fix into a paid link

Pick One Dead Page and Run the Full Process

Choose one topic you know well, find one dead page with several relevant sites linking to it, and take it through all seven steps.

That single run will show you whether broken link building suits your niche better than any amount of reading.

It works well alongside other methods in my list of link building strategies, and it is one of the techniques I use when I run link building campaigns for clients. If you'd rather hand over the prospecting, vetting and outreach, here's how my link building service works.