Broken Link Building: Steps On How To Do It

Broken link building is a link building tactic where you recover broken links and replace them with your unique content and links. Broken backlink building usually works when you reach out to sources that are relevant to your niche. The idea of broken link building is simple- finding dead sources online and collaborating on updating them in your imagined way.

In order to do classic broken link building, you need an SEO tool like Ahrefs. You can use Ahrefs as a hunter of those dead sources and divide the data into parts to reach out with your unique approaches. So, to do broken backlink building via Ahrefs, you need to follow these steps:

#1 Open Ahrefs content explorer

In Ahrefs’ site explorer, you can add keywords that are relevant to your niche. Let’s say it is “SaaS”. As you can see in the image below, there are around 10 million results. There are no filters done on these search results, plus this is not a real number of sources where you can find that keyword, as Ahrefs has limited sources.

                        Screen done on September 15, 2025

#2 Filter Results

Here, we should filter results to find the type of sites we are looking for and the metrics we desire to see. In the image below, you can notice how I did it, and here are the steps:

• First thing, just change the category “everywhere” to “title”. This will prevent finding topics where the system just found your keyword. When we choose the title section, this means that it generally will fit with your niche.
• Second part, I just prioritize getting backlinks from the websites that are higher DR30, and traffic is higher than 500. This part depends on your imagination about websites. So make it as you like.
• From the section “live and broken”, make only broken.
• Below you will also see sections where you can filter and exclude homepages, subdomains, and repetitions. As an action, it is optional, but I always do.
• Click “Show Results”. The number of results decreased to around 6500. Better and clearer data after making a filter.

                                                Screen done on September 15, 2025

#3 Confirm that it is a dead source

Sometimes happened in my career, I extracted data from Ahrefs as a dead source, and after outreach, I just noticed now they are updated. So the reason for that is that Ahrefs has not updated the status yet, but the change has been made. So to prevent similar situations I had I just recommend checking whether they are dead. In the image below, you can see some examples of how some dead sources. Popular, and I am sure you heard about Error 404. To understand correctly what the page was about, carefully look at the URL name. So I purposely show you an example of the URL where the company just opened a page for hiring an employee. So, as there are no relevant positions in that company, the URL returns a 404 error. So skip this type of error, too. As we are a link building agency, we have our own automations to prevent time wasting. So if you want to prevent this type of issue and not do outreach to this company ,you should check it manually.

           Screen done on September 15, 2025, from https://www.aha.io/company/careers/current-openings/ux_designer_us 

#4 Extract the data

Ahrefs provides some options for formats on how to extract it for you. Choose which one works best for you. Also, there are 3 options regarding the number of rows. Some people ask what we can do if our account is not designed for custom things on extracting. In that scenario, I always recommend that they extract the data, dividing the metrics of your filters into parties. As an example, you can extract the first batch only of websites with a Domain Rating from 30 to 40, then from 41 to 50, and so on.

#5 Link Building Outreach

Once you extract the data, divide it into parties for customization and do outreach for link building. Find relevant contacts from these websites to pitch to them. Mostly for dead link building, you need to find people from the marketing or SEO departure, but if there is no one on your radar, try to find people who are responsible for technical facilities. It can be a website admin, some staff from support, or even a developer.

In your outreach campaign, you should rather catch the problem and suggest your solution, so your message readers will appreciate you for your advice and notice. And once you get an answer, make sure to suggest your desired keyword for getting the best contextual link for your target.

Some Template by GoPeak.io for broken link building

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hey John, 

I was searching for a great article on “How to promote SaaS business with AI” and found your article. 

I just opened your URL and noticed a broken link.

I have an explanation about “what is SaaS“, and I guess your readers will be interested in learning more.

We have updated information about the SaaS business perspectives, and we have included corrected questions about popular SaaS companies.

Kind Regards

Dmitri 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

This is the most worthwhile link building process I have ever had in my career, doing competitor broken link building. Let me explain to you why. I was just trying all the strategies of link building.

I thought that if I find broken links going to my competitors and if I make an outreach to ask for a replacement, website owners will do it as I solve some issue and I make a signal to resolve it. However, I got some messages of appreciation as they added the link with the same targets they had.

The reason is that the links added to the websites were part of some agreements. It was link exchanges or guest posts. I got some links from those sites too, but not using the broken link building strategy; better to say I did competitor backlink analyses.

I stopped working on it as I was recovering backlinks of my competitors, and they do not pay for my work. This is really a funny thing, and whether to do it or not, I just keep it for your consideration.

The advantage of broken link building from other link building tactics is that you can make an outreach to anyone from the broken link website and get a result, building backlinks for you.  In other link building strategies, we always skip the websites where we can not find individuals who are connected with SEO or marketing.

Sharing my experience, I want to underline that a broken link building strategy works great doing link building for SaaS companies. These types of companies are very careful with any of the links as the competition is very tough in this niche, and to win the long-term game, they always look at their website health score and try to keep the site as clear as possible.

That is why, sometimes using a broken link strategy can be a good fit for hunting some opportunities that no one had before. In short, you will get backlinks from the sites that have never added a backlink before for anyone else. Truly unique thing.

However, as I mentioned, my personal opinion about competitor broken links, as they did not work for me, I do not want to force you not to do that. Try it, and if it works, keep it going.

At the same time, you can watch the case study of broken link building shared by Ahrefs. I think this will help you complete the information you need to know about broken backlinks.

We spoke about broken link building strategy, but we missed one thing: sometimes our links disappear, and at the same time, when we want to hunt broken links of other companies and replace them with ours, we lose them too. That is why I just pointed reasons you should know why your links can be broken outside of your website to understand how to pitch them again and recover your lost backlinks. All points from my experience.

• A new page was created, and your link URL was not included in the new page. It is hidden in a redirected page.
• Wrong URL insertion. Even one letter will change the position.
• A website is changing a CMS system, and in the process, your link disappeared.
• A website is hacked.
• They have new SEO rules, and they just deleted all the links going outside.
• They updated the content with fresh information, and your link is not a good fit for fresh news.
• In the past, the anchor type of backlinks was acceptable for search engines, but now it’s not, and they just delete your link or update it with the new one, but mistakenly.

To conclude, broken link building is a uqnie strategy for hunting backlinks. But you need more time to get results from this strategy than from other strategies. To do broken backlink building, you need knowledge of some SEO tools and be patient with your timelines.

As expert advice, use and combine all the link building strategies you can utilize for and you will get results from multiple channels and tactics.