Whilst healthy backlinks are prevalent for a business’ organic website reach, broken backlinks provide a company with a deluge of problems. Some of these can lead to lower Google ranking and a decrease in page views. An influx of broken links on a website can also emit a sense of unrest to a user. A good UX is vital for a business. Wasting time clicking on links that lead to nowhere is simply not effective and shows a lack of diligence in the maintenance of their website.
The reality is that when spending time and effort on link building, most digital marketers think of the standard process. This is often achieved by linking within a post or through mailings but other methodologies have proven results. To boost your ROI, you must ensure you are using reputable services. This way you can avoid the problems that arise from broken links and generate your new sources and leads organically. If you dedicate an element of your marketing technique to a strategy that focuses solely on broken backlinks, you can be sure that your ROI will increase.
Photo: Unsplash
How Is This Achieved?
Identifying a broken link, is in essence, determining what links don’t work anymore. These are internal links that may have been established for months, if not years. These may occur when an external link from one site points to a non-existent or 404 error page on another domain. If this link has been previously changed, an incorrect URL may have been placed, which subsequently causes broken links. These issues occur on a range of websites, including all industries which include e-commerce. Linking to a product that is no longer stocked or shared, is disappointing for a user and can slowly decimate your reputation.
Wasted Exponential Rate
If we take into account the exponential growth of broken backlinks over time, the glaring issue is that a high rate leaves a good number of wasted links. Many businesses focus simply on rectifying this issue by ignoring the broken links and adding new ones. However, obtaining fresh backlinks to offset the broken ones may be a futile cause. Fixing the broken ones can offer greater benefits. A painstaking effort indeed to tackle a mammoth list of broken links, however reviewing these backlinks that have been growing exponentially can offer advantages. They already have some SEO standing that can be salvaged and whilst this may be contradictory to some strategies based on the generation of fresh links and new content, you can work with companies that can do this for you.
Photo: Unsplash
Recovery vs Construction Of Your Broken Links
Recovery and construction are both different procedures. Broken link recovery aims to recover the value whilst reconstruction will focus on a new link in replacement of the old. When we place greater value on this strategy, we can detect numerous recovery routes, and these corresponding efforts will deliver valuable results. A business must pay due diligence to where the broken links point to. This stark difference between the two is a subjective discussion in itself, but when used together or in conjunction with one another, they can directly offer you more control over your link-building outreach tasks.
How To Achieve This In Four Simple Steps:
1. Analyze the backlinks
This should be the subject of a systematic study. The vital point here is to strictly observe how many backlinks are broken. Three or four is unlikely to be the case; there are often hundreds and you must acquire the best tools to help you obtain this information.
2.Organize broken backlinks
When you use the right tools, you can adequately visualize the broken backlinks of the website. You can collate this information according to different criteria. For example, you can organize them in such a way that the one with the highest value is at the top. Later, you can download them as a spreadsheet or another format of your choice for a more thorough review.
3. Choose the broken backlinks
The list of broken links that you have probably obtained through the use tool will show you where the backlink originates, what anchor text it has, and what URL it points to. A business can then analyze the external domains and decide if it is worth recovering any links. This analysis can be divided into subsections: low authority, spam, or irrelevant links.
4. Retrieve the value of the broken link
When you have decided which are worth recovering, you can continue forward with determining which links will replace the broken ones. If you are aware of the websites that these link to, you can make contact with their host and arrange for the link to be replaced. This is a viable option and one with great benefits. However, when this is not achievable, the lost link value can be recovered with a redirect. Simply, this can be obtained by conjuring the redirection to a relevant page on your website. Internal links are a vital step for organic SEO growth and you can simply add value with this alone.
Conclusion
It is undoubtedly a great way to amplify your SEO efforts for optimum results. It offers you a chance to heal your broken links and ensure a stringent strategy for future success.