Somebody linked to a useful page five years ago. The page no longer exists. Their article still carries the link, and anyone clicking it hits a 404. They almost certainly do not know.
Broken link building is telling them, and offering your page as the replacement. The reason it outperforms most outreach is simple: you are reporting a problem on their site rather than asking them for a favour.
What is broken link building?
Broken link building is the practice of finding dead outbound links on other websites, then contacting the owner to report the broken link and suggest your own page as a replacement. It works because the email is useful to the recipient before it asks for anything, which is unusual in link outreach.
It also requires that you already have, or are prepared to build, a page genuinely equivalent to what was lost. That requirement is where most attempts quietly fail.
Why does it work better than ordinary outreach?
A typical outreach email asks a stranger to do unpaid work for the sender's benefit. Reply rates reflect that. A broken link email leads with something the recipient wants to know, because a page full of dead links reflects badly on them and costs them nothing to fix.
| Standard outreach | Broken link outreach | |
|---|---|---|
| Opening | A request | A problem on their site |
| Benefit to them | None, usually | A fixed page |
| Typical reply rate | Low single digits | Noticeably higher, still modest |
| Effort per link | Low | High, because of the research |
Worth saying plainly: higher than very low is still not high. Expect most emails to go unanswered, and judge the tactic on links earned per hour rather than on reply rate.
How do you find broken links worth pursuing?
Three approaches, in rough order of how well they work.
- Find a resource page in your industry, run it through a link checker, and look for dead outbound links. Resource pages exist to link out, so the owner has an active interest in keeping them working
- Find a competitor or industry site that shut down, then look at who linked to it. Every one of those links is now broken and every one needs replacing
- Check the backlink profile of a page that moved without a redirect. The links still point at the old URL
The second is the most productive and the least used. When a well-linked site in your sector disappears, it leaves dozens or hundreds of broken links behind, all pointing at content somebody once judged worth citing.
Note - Check whether the dead page is on the Wayback Machine before contacting anyone. Reading what it actually said is the difference between offering a genuine replacement and offering something vaguely related, which is the difference between a reply and silence.
What should the email say?
Short, specific, and useful before it is self-interested. Four sentences is usually enough.
- Name the exact page of theirs that has the problem, with the URL
- Quote the broken link and the anchor text it sits behind
- Mention your replacement in one line, without a pitch
- Stop. No paragraph about your company, no follow-up sequence of five emails
The most common failure is making the email about yourself. A recipient who can see in three seconds that something on their site is broken will usually check it. A recipient who has to read two paragraphs about your agency first will not.
When does broken link building not work?
Four situations where the time is better spent elsewhere. Most guides omit these, which is why the tactic has a reputation for being more effective than it usually is.
- You have nothing equivalent to offer. Suggesting a loosely related page instead of a genuine replacement is ignored, and writing a whole replacement article for one link rarely pays
- The broken link is old and the page is abandoned. Nobody is maintaining it, so nobody will fix it
- The site is large enough to have a process. Big publishers rarely act on an email from a stranger about one dead link
- The link is to something you cannot credibly replace, such as original research or a proprietary tool
There is also a volume problem. Finding, verifying and writing a genuinely personalised email takes real time, and the yield is a small fraction of what is sent. It suits a focused campaign rather than an ongoing programme.
How does it compare with other link tactics?
Broken link building is slow, honest and reliable at small scale. It will not build a link profile on its own, and anyone presenting it as a primary strategy is selling effort rather than results.
Our link building and digital PR work treats it as one tactic among several, and nine white-hat link building strategies covers the others, including digital PR and becoming a source for journalists.
What does a realistic campaign look like?
Numbers, so the expectation is set before the work starts rather than after.
| Stage | Typical volume | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Opportunities found | 100 | Dead links on relevant pages |
| Worth contacting | 30 to 40 | Remaining once the page is confirmed maintained and a genuine replacement exists |
| Emails sent | 30 to 40 | Each written individually |
| Replies | A handful | Most never respond |
| Links earned | A few | Good campaigns do better, many do worse |
That is a realistic shape for a focused effort. Anyone quoting a conversion rate that makes this look easy is describing a campaign they have not run.
Is it worth doing?
A business with few referring domains should do it, because the alternative tactics are slower still and the links earned are genuinely editorial. A site already building links steadily should treat it as a supplement rather than a priority.
The honest summary: a reliable way to earn a small number of real links, worth the time when the alternative is buying links, and not a strategy on its own.
