Author: Michael Brenner / Source: Marketing Insider Group Let’s talk link building – broken link building that is. Should you be doing it
Let’s talk link building – broken link building that is. Should you be doing it? Is it a magnificent and creative inbound marketing technique, or a waste of time?
Earning quality links through the production of relevant, value-driven content is one of the best ways to improve your domain’s organic search traffic, while also:
- Boosting referral traffic
- Building brand authority and trust
- Expanding your exposure beyond your industry
- Establishing yourself as an influencer
With so much inbound impact, it’s no wonder that link building has become a world unto itself. A recent survey questioning 435 link building professionals found that, while over a third of clients have monthly budgets under $1000 for link building, another 43% allocate between $1,000 and $5,000 a month. Nearly 10% have budgets ranging from $5,000 to $10,000 per month, just for link building.
You can do it successfully through a number of white hat techniques, from writing guest posts on relevant sites, to creating compelling infographics and SlideShare presentations that other content producers will want to use.
So, why go out there and fix all those orphaned links on the web if there are other ways to get quality links? After all, this entails finding the broken links, creating your own replacement content, and contacting webmasters to replace the links. Is it worth the effort?
Cleaning House for the Web
Broken link building is basically the lost art of cleaning up the web. Think of it this way – there are, give or take a few hundred thousand, one billion websites at any one time. But, as many as three-quarters are inactive. Every time someone links to content and that page is removed or deleted, another broken link is formed.
With new sites being created, left to ‘die,’ and so many more being reborn when a webmaster decides it’s time to give their website a makeover, there are probably as many broken links out there as there are stars in the sky.
Aside from everyone going in and taking care of their own redirects when they do a website relaunch, broken link building is the only way that some of these lost links are ever going to be corrected. You are essentially doing a favor for other webmasters and helping to make your niche’s corner of the web more relevant.
Cleaning the cobwebs is not a thankless job, however. Broken link building is a powerful way to create your own quality links and reap the SEO rewards in the form of an ongoing increase in web traffic. If there are that many broken links out there, if you can find a method that works for you, broken link building could be page rank gold for your brand.
How to Do It
Broken link building isn’t something to pour your heart into at the sacrifice of other SEO techniques. Nor is it something you should do casually. You need a happy medium where the time invested is bringing…
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