Have You Spotted Some Broken Links Online?

There are millions of broken links on the Internet. When you type in the name of a website and you receive an error in your browser, it could be because of a broken link. There are many reasons why links get broken. These include:

1. After website hosting expires, the link to that site become broken.
2. Webmasters can make fatal mistakes while migrating their websites from one host to the next. As a result, the link to that site becomes broken.
3. When you make a mistake while typing the name of a website in your browser’s address bar, you have broken that link.

Broken links are an ideal opportunity for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) link building. This strategy of using broken links to accomplish this has been around for many years. Wonder how you can use broken links to perform SEO? Read on.

How Is This Done?

When you find a link that is broken while trying to access a particular website, you can proceed to contact the owner of the site and inform them about it. Since you have done them a favor by pointing out a link that is broken, they might return the favor by putting a link to your website in theirs. If it is appropriate, you can offer a replacement link.

This is a simple SEO tactic. Basically, all you have to do is search for and find broken links across the Internet. Once you do, contact the respective webmasters and thanks to the principle of reciprocity, you will get links to your website posted in these sites. Here is a case study on this principle.

Case Study:

Cialdini came up with the principle of reciprocity. It states that if you do something nice for someone, they are very likely to pay it back by performing a favor of similar proportion. This principle fits firmly in the strategy of broken link building. Do you want to fully exploit this strategy in performing SEO for your website? Here is how to go about it.

Finding Broken Links In Bulk Is The Way To Go:

For your strategy of using broken links to improve the SEO San Francisco for your website, you must scale up the process. There are other types of website promotion for the purpose of getting backlinks. Examples of these are email outreach and blogging. Compared to these strategies, broken link-building does not return as much success. For example, you will get 5 to 10 backlinks for every 100 emails that you send when you use broken link-building. For you to get more backlinks, you need to scale up the volume of broken links that you discover.

It is entirely possible to find hundreds of broken links and minimize the amount of time that you spend sending emails to the owners of websites. You can send in excess of 100 link requests every day. This is without spamming. Such a volume will definitely bring back more backlinks. When conducted regularly, this strategy will boost your SEO success through finding broken links. It is important to note that this strategy relies on specially made tools.

The Tools That You Need To Find Broken Links In Bulk:

1.) The Check My Links Chrome Tool:

This tool is an extension for Google Chrome. It can easily and quickly analyze a web page to find broken links. You can install this extension in your Google Chrome browser for free. After installation, it appears as a small checkmark icon located right next to your address bar. If you click on it, the tool will begin to scan the links in the active webpage. If a link is broken, it becomes highlighted in red font color. Moreover, the specific error in the link is indicated right next to the text. For you to find all the red, broken links, you have to scroll through the whole webpage. This helps you to find these links and leverage them into boosting SEO for your website.

2.) The Domain Hunter Plus Tool:

This is also an extension for your browser. It is generally an alternative to Check My Links. This extension works in a similar manner. You simply click on the icon and the extension begins to perform its job. It scans all the links in the web page and finds the ones that are broken. Domain hunter plus is more effective in that it finds broken links and checks to see if the domain of the broken link is available to purchase. In addition to that, the tool also finds out how many links lead directly to that domain.

While using this tool, you could find a domain that is available for you to register. When you do, you can proceed to register it and redirect links to it as much as you need to. In addition to that, you can email all the Internet users who link to that particular domain and request them to link to your website. This can help you to gain hundreds or even thousands of backlinks in one swoop.

3.) Xenu’s Link Sleuth Tool:

This tool will help you to perform broken link building in large scale. It is available for free and is superbly robust. You can use it to check hundreds of web pages for broken links all at the same time. Once you get this tool, most of the functions that you need are located under the File menu option. The tool allows you to upload text files that have lists of URLs on them. The tool can read these URLs and check each one for broken links that you can capitalize on.

Conclusion:

Finding and capitalizing on broken links is a great way to boost the SEO of your website. The webmasters behind these broken links are often willing to give you a backlink in their site for pointing out a broken link. The tips and tools above can help you to achieve SEO success using this method.

About the Author:

Derek Iwasiuk runs national digital search engine optimization firm headquartered in Minneapolis. He also spends a lot of his free time educating the minds of thousands of young SEO’s and top SEO San Franciscoagencies.

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