Broken Link Building: A Step-by-Step Guide (With Templates and a Worked Example)

Broken link building is a link-building method where you find links on other sites that point to pages that no longer exist, create a resource that does the job the dead page used to do, and ask the site owners to point their link at your page instead. The site owner fixes a broken link on their page, their readers get a working resource, and you earn an editorial link.

It works best when you target a dead page that lots of sites linked to, because one well-built replacement can be pitched to all of them. It's slower than paying for placements, but every link you win is chosen by the site owner, which is the kind of link that holds up.

This guide covers the method step by step, the tools and search operators for finding broken links, an outreach template, a follow-up schedule, a worked example for a fictional niche site, and link reclamation, the quickest wins of all.

What is broken link building?

There are two flavors. In the single-page version, you scan relevant pages, such as resource lists and guides, for any dead outbound link, and pitch whatever you already have that fits. In the dead-resource version, you find one dead page with many backlinks, rebuild it properly, and pitch every site that linked to it. The second takes more work up front but scales much better.

Why broken link building works

• Links break all the time. Businesses close, sites get redesigned, URLs change, and blogs get abandoned. Every niche has dead resources still linked from live pages.
• You lead with help, not a request. Telling someone about a broken link on their page is useful whether or not they use your suggestion. That changes the tone of the email.
• The link already exists. The editor once decided this topic deserved a link. You're not asking them to add something new, just to fix something old.
• The links are editorial. They sit in real content, chosen by the site owner, with no payment involved.

The broken link building method, step by step

1. 1

   Find dead pages with links pointing at them

   Look for 404 pages, expired domains and moved content in your niche that still have backlinks from relevant sites. These are your opportunities.
2. 2

   Work out what the dead page offered

   Use the Wayback Machine to see what was on the page, and look at how linking sites described it. That tells you what your replacement has to cover.
3. 3

   Create or improve a page that does the job better

   Either adapt a page you already have or build a new one that's more complete, more current and easier to use than the original.
4. 4

   Build a prospect list

   Export every page linking to the dead URL, remove irrelevant or spammy sites, and find a contact for each.
5. 5

   Reach out, briefly and helpfully

   Tell them which link is broken and where, then suggest your page as a replacement. Follow up once or twice, then move on.
6. 6

   Track and verify

   Record replies and live links, and check each new link is in place, followed and on an indexable page.

How to find broken links

Browser extensions (for single pages)

A broken-link checker extension scans the page you're viewing and highlights links that return errors. It's the fastest way to check a resource page you've found through search. Open the page, run the extension, and note any dead outbound links that relate to your content.

Site crawlers (for whole sites or lists of pages)

A desktop or cloud SEO crawler can check every outbound link on a site. Crawl a big site in your niche, or upload a list of resource pages, with external link checking switched on, then filter outbound links by status: 404 (not found), 410 (gone), 5xx server errors and DNS failures, which usually mean the domain has expired. Many crawlers have free tiers that are enough for a few hundred pages.

Backlink tools (for dead pages worth rebuilding)

This is how you find the dead-resource opportunities. Look up a competitor, an industry association, or a site that's shut down, and filter its pages by HTTP status 404. Sort by referring domains. A dead page with dozens of referring domains is a ready-made prospect list: export the pages that link to it and you know exactly who to contact.

The Wayback Machine (for what the dead page said)

Paste the dead URL into the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine at web.archive.org and open a snapshot from before it died. You'll see what it covered, how it was structured and how deep it went. Use that as a brief for your own version. Don't copy it: the original is someone else's work, and editors need a reason to prefer yours.

Search operators for resource pages

Resource pages, curated lists of useful links on a topic, are the natural home of broken link building. They link out by design and they're often maintained irregularly, so dead links pile up. Replace [topic] with your niche:

"[topic]" inurl:resources
"[topic]" intitle:resources
"[topic]" "useful links"
"[topic]" "helpful resources"
"[topic]" "recommended resources"
"[topic]" "further reading"
"[topic]" intitle:links
"[topic]" inurl:links -inurl:tag
"[topic]" "resources" site:.edu
"[topic]" "resources" site:.gov
"[topic]" "resources" site:.org
site:wikipedia.org "[topic]" "dead link"

The last one is worth a note. Wikipedia's own links are nofollow, so a Wikipedia link isn't usually the prize. But articles marked with “dead link” point you at dead sources that were cited widely, and those dead pages often have many other backlinks you can pursue.

Creating the replacement resource

Your replacement only wins if it's an obvious upgrade. Before you write anything, check whether you already have a page that fits; adapting an existing guide is faster and builds on authority you already have.

• Cover everything the dead page covered. Linkers chose it for a reason. Make sure those reasons still apply to your version.
• Update it. Old resources often have outdated prices, regulations, products or methods. Current information is an easy win.
• Make it more useful. Add a checklist, a template, a comparison table, photos or a worked example the original lacked.
• Keep it neutral. Resource page editors link to helpful pages, not sales pages. A product page is a hard sell; a guide is an easy one.
• Use a clean, permanent URL. You're asking people to link to it for years. Don't put a date or campaign name in it.

Broken link outreach template

Lead with the broken link and exactly where it is, so the email is useful even if they ignore your suggestion. Keep it short enough to read on a phone.

Subject: Broken link on your [page topic] page

Hi [Name],

I was reading your [page title] page ([page URL]) and noticed the
link to [what the dead resource was] in the [section/paragraph] now
goes to a dead page:

[dead URL]

If you're looking for a replacement, we recently published
[your resource title], which covers [the same thing] and adds
[what's better: updated for 2026 / a free checklist / worked examples]:

[your URL]

Either way, thought you'd want to know about the dead link.

Thanks,
[Your name]
[Role], [Brand]

On anchors: the editor will usually keep the original anchor or adjust it slightly, which tends to produce natural, descriptive anchors. If you want to understand why that's a good thing, see our anchor text guide.

Follow-up cadence

A single polite follow-up often earns as many replies as the first email. More than two starts to feel like pressure. As a rule of thumb:

When a link goes live, check it. Our backlink checker confirms the page links to you, the anchor used, whether it's followed or nofollow, and whether the page is indexable.

Worked example: a fictional aquarium blog

Here's how the dead-resource approach plays out for a hypothetical site, Tidewater Tanks, a small blog about freshwater aquariums. The numbers are illustrative.

1. 1

   Spot the opportunity

   Looking through a closed-down aquarium retailer's pages in a backlink tool, Tidewater finds that the retailer's “fishless cycling guide” now returns a 404 but is still linked from around 30 referring domains: hobby forums, club websites, a few fishkeeping blogs and two local pet store resource pages.
2. 2

   Study the original

   The Wayback Machine shows a single long page explaining the nitrogen cycle, ammonia dosing and how to read test kit results, with a simple dosing table. Linking pages mostly describe it as “a step-by-step guide to cycling a new tank.”
3. 3

   Build the better version

   Tidewater already has a short post on cycling. It expands it into a full step-by-step guide: an updated dosing table for common tank sizes, photos of test results at each stage, a printable day-by-day checklist and a troubleshooting section the original lacked. The URL stays clean: /fishless-cycling-guide.
4. 4

   Qualify the prospects

   Of the roughly 30 linking domains, a handful are scraper sites and an abandoned forum. Tidewater drops those and keeps the pages that are live, relevant and maintained, then finds an editor or webmaster contact for each.
5. 5

   Reach out and follow up

   Each prospect gets the template above, personalized with the exact page and section where the dead link sits, plus one follow-up a week later. Club and forum admins are often the quickest to reply because they're actively maintaining resources for members.
6. 6

   Track and reuse

   Every reply and live link goes in a tracker. Even prospects who don't reply have now seen the guide, and the page is ready for future resource-page outreach on the same topic.

The point of the example isn't a conversion rate; that varies widely by niche and by how good the replacement is. It's the shape of the work: one dead resource, one strong page, one tailored list. A newer site can run this playbook without much authority of its own, which is why it features in our guide to link building for new websites.

Link reclamation: the quickest wins

Link reclamation is broken link building pointed at yourself: recovering links and mentions you've already earned but aren't getting full value from. It's usually faster than any outreach to strangers, because the site already knows who you are.

Turn unlinked mentions into links

People mention brands without linking all the time: in roundups, interviews, local news and forum threads. Find them with a search like "Your Brand" -site:yourdomain.com, set up a Google Alert for your brand and product names, and check the mention pages for a link. If there isn't one, a short note usually does it:

Subject: Thanks for mentioning [Brand]

Hi [Name],

Thanks for including [Brand] in [article title]. We really
appreciate it.

Would you be open to linking our name to [URL], so readers can
find us easily? It'd be a big help.

Thanks again,
[Your name]

Redirect your own 404s that still have backlinks

When you delete or move a page without a redirect, every backlink pointing to it now hits a 404, and the value of those links is largely lost. To find them, check the Pages report in Search Console for URLs listed as Not found (404), and use a backlink tool to list your URLs that return 404 but still have referring domains.

Then 301-redirect each one to the most relevant live page, or restore the page if it was still useful. Redirect to the closest equivalent, not your homepage by default; a redirect to an unrelated page may be treated much like a 404.

# Apache (.htaccess)
Redirect 301 /old-cycling-guide /fishless-cycling-guide

# Nginx (inside the server block)
location = /old-cycling-guide {
  return 301 /fishless-cycling-guide;
}

On WordPress and most hosted platforms, a redirect plugin or the built-in redirect settings do the same job without touching server config. While you're at it, look for backlinks to misspelled versions of your URLs, such as a missing letter or an old folder name, and redirect those too.

Recover links that were removed or changed

Links you earned can disappear when a site is redesigned or a post is updated. If you keep a list of your best backlinks, check them periodically. When one vanishes, a friendly email to the editor, offering an updated resource if the page changed, often brings it back.

Reclamation and broken link building pair well with the other approaches in our guide on how to get backlinks, and with guest posting once you've built relationships with editors in your niche.