Plan your broken link building campaign by setting a link acquisition goal and forecasting the required time, resources, and cost to achieve it.
Total Estimated Campaign Cost
$916.67
Total Hours Required
13 hrs
Effective Cost Per Link
$91.67
Total Outreach Needed
200
Est. Timeline (Full-Time)
0.3 wks
Broken Link Building (BLB) is a tactic where you find a resource on another website that is linking to, but the link is dead (it leads to a 404 error). You then recreate a better version of that dead resource on your own website. Finally, you contact everyone who was linking to the dead resource and ask them to update their link to point to your new, working resource instead. It's a win-win: you provide value by helping them fix their site, and you earn a high-quality, relevant backlink with measurable ROI.
You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs' Content Explorer or Site Explorer. In Ahrefs, you can find a competing website, go to the "Broken Links" report to see all their pages that have dead external links. Alternatively, you can search for a broad topic in Content Explorer and filter for pages that have "Only broken links."
A success rate of 2-8% is typical for broken link building. It's a time-consuming process that requires a lot of outreach to secure a handful of high-quality links. The quality of your replacement content and the personalization of your outreach email are the biggest factors in improving your success rate.
Yes, but it requires a well-defined process and often, dedicated tools. It's more of a targeted, quality-focused approach than a mass-quantity tactic. The goal is not to get hundreds of links, but to get a few highly authoritative and relevant links that can significantly move the needle on your SEO.
Focus on evergreen, comprehensive resources. Look at the original broken page on the Wayback Machine for inspiration, but aim to make yours significantly better: more up-to-date, better designed, and more in-depth. Infographics, data studies, and 'ultimate guides' work very well as replacement pieces.
Keep it short, friendly, and to the point. 1) Briefly introduce yourself. 2) Gently point out the broken link you found on their specific page (include the URL). 3) Suggest your resource as a helpful replacement. Frame it as helping them improve their site for their users, not just asking for a link.
This calculator measures the *cost* of the campaign. To measure the return, you need to assess the *value* of the links. You can do this by: 1) Tracking referral traffic from the new links and any resulting conversions in Google Analytics. 2) Using a tool like our Authority Site Link ROI Calculator to model the long-term SEO impact of the new links on your page's authority and rankings.