{"id":48,"date":"2026-09-18T08:46:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/2026\/09\/18\/broken-link-building-an-underused-seo-tactic-explained\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T08:49:45","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:49:45","slug":"broken-link-building-an-underused-seo-tactic-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/2026\/09\/18\/broken-link-building-an-underused-seo-tactic-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken Link Building: An Underused SEO Tactic Explained"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somewhere on a Melbourne business website, a supplier page links out to a company that closed down two years ago, or a blog post cites a report that has since been taken offline. That dead link is a small SEO opportunity sitting in plain sight, and almost nobody goes looking for it. Broken link building means finding those dead links on other people’s websites, then offering your own relevant page as the replacement. It is one of the oldest link acquisition tactics in SEO, and it is still one of the most underused, mostly because it takes patience rather than budget, not because it stopped working.<\/p>\n

What broken link building actually is<\/h2>\n

The process is simple in concept. You find a page on someone else’s website that links out to a page that no longer exists, you check that you have (or can create) genuinely useful content on the same topic, and you email the site owner to let them know their link is dead, suggesting your page as a replacement. It works because you are doing the site owner a favour first. A broken link is bad for their own visitors and their own search rankings, so a polite, specific heads-up is welcome in a way that a generic “will you link to me” email is not.<\/p>\n

A simple example makes this concrete. Say a Melbourne trade association publishes a resource page listing suppliers and industry bodies, and one of those links has pointed to a defunct government safety register for three years. Nobody at the association has noticed, because nobody clicks every link on a resource page that gets updated twice a year. An email pointing out the exact dead link, with a current, genuinely useful replacement page attached, gets read and often gets actioned within days, because it costs the association nothing and fixes something that was quietly embarrassing them.<\/p>\n

This is different to general backlink outreach<\/a>, where you are asking for something with nothing obvious in it for the other person. It also sits firmly on the white-hat side of the line covered in our guide to white hat versus black hat link building<\/a>, since you are improving the other site rather than manipulating it.<\/p>\n

Not sure how many broken links are already pointing away from pages that could be sending traffic to a competitor instead of you? Our free audit will show you. Book a free consultation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Why it works: the scale of link rot online<\/h2>\n

Broken link building only works because dead links are genuinely everywhere, not just occasionally. Ahrefs analysed link data pointing at more than two million websites going back to January 2013 and found that at least 66.5% of those links are now dead. Counting temporary errors and other issues, 74.5% of the links in that sample are effectively lost for ranking purposes, and the single biggest cause, at 47.7%, is simply that the destination page was removed (Ahrefs, 2024<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Independent research backs this up. Pew Research Center found that a quarter of all webpages that existed at any point between 2013 and 2023 were no longer accessible as of October 2023, and the older the page, the worse the odds: 38% of pages from 2013 are gone entirely, compared with 8% of pages from 2023. Even reference-heavy content is not immune. Pew found that 23% of news webpages and 21% of government webpages contain at least one broken link, and 54% of Wikipedia articles have at least one dead reference link (Pew Research Center, 2024<\/a>). Every one of those broken references is a page you could be quietly slotted into, if you find it before someone else does.<\/p>\n

\n\nHow much of the web is dead links<\/title>\nBar chart: 66.5 percent of links pointing to sites since 2013 are dead, 74.5 percent are effectively lost including temporary errors, 54 percent of Wikipedia articles have at least one dead reference link. Sources: Ahrefs 2024, Pew Research Center 2024.<\/desc>\n\nHow Much of the Web Is Dead Links<\/text>\n\n66.5%<\/text>\nLinks dead since 2013<\/text>\n\n74.5%<\/text>\nEffectively lost (incl. errors)<\/text>\n\n54%<\/text>\nWikipedia refs dead<\/text>\nSources: Ahrefs 2024, Pew Research Center 2024 \u00b7 bestseoagencymelbourne.com<\/text>\n<\/svg>
At least 66.5% of links pointing to websites since 2013 are dead, 74.5% are effectively lost once temporary errors are included, and 54% of Wikipedia articles have at least one dead reference link. Sources: Ahrefs (2024), Pew Research Center (2024).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How to find broken links worth targeting<\/h2>\n

Not every dead link is worth chasing. The best targets are on pages that are topically close to your own content, still receive traffic or hold genuine authority, and are on sites you could plausibly get a reply from. Chasing a broken link on an abandoned blog that has not published in four years wastes the same amount of research time as chasing one on an active industry resource page, for a much lower chance of a reply, so qualify the site before you qualify the link. The table below sets out the main ways to find them and when each is worth the effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Method<\/th>\nHow it works<\/th>\nBest for<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n
Backlink checker on competitor content<\/td>\nRun a competitor’s best-performing page through a backlink tool, then check which of its inbound links are now broken elsewhere<\/td>\nFinding sites already willing to link to content like yours<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Resource and “links” pages<\/td>\nSearch for industry resource pages, then manually check every outbound link for a 404<\/td>\nNiche, high-authority Melbourne and Australian directories<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Wikipedia reference links<\/td>\nCheck reference sections on relevant Wikipedia articles for dead citations<\/td>\nTopics with strong original data or a detailed guide to offer as a replacement<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Old guest posts and press mentions<\/td>\nSearch for your own brand or old campaign links that have since broken due to a site redesign<\/td>\nRecovering links you already earned once<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\nThe broken link building process<\/title>\nFour steps: find a relevant broken link, confirm it is genuinely dead, prepare a matching replacement page, send a short helpful outreach email.<\/desc>\n\nThe Broken Link Building Process<\/text>\n1<\/text>\nFind a relevant<\/text>\nbroken link<\/text>\n2<\/text>\nConfirm it is<\/text>\ngenuinely dead<\/text>\n3<\/text>\nPrepare a matching<\/text>\nreplacement page<\/text>\n4<\/text>\nSend a short,<\/text>\nhelpful email<\/text>\n\n\n\nbestseoagencymelbourne.com<\/text>\n<\/svg>
The broken link building process: find a relevant broken link, confirm it is genuinely dead, prepare a matching replacement page, then send a short, helpful outreach email.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If chasing down dead links across dozens of sites sounds like more time than your team has to spare this quarter, talk to our Melbourne team<\/a> about running it for you alongside your existing content plan.<\/p>\n

How to pitch a replacement link without sounding like spam<\/h2>\n

The email that gets replies is short, specific and genuinely useful on its own, even if the site owner never links to you. Name the exact page the broken link sits on, name the exact link that is dead, and only then mention your own page as an option, not a demand. Site owners who maintain resource pages and Wikipedia editors both see dozens of low-effort link requests a week. The ones that stand out are the ones that read like a favour, not a pitch, because that is exactly what they are.<\/p>\n

A useful structure is three short sentences: what you noticed, why it matters to their visitors, and what you are offering as a fix. Something like: “I noticed the link to [dead resource] on your [page name] page returns a 404. I imagine that’s not great for visitors landing there from search. If it’s useful, [your page] covers the same topic and is current as of 2026.” No preamble about who you are, no attached media kit, no follow-up sequence of four emails. One honest email, sent to the right person, outperforms a templated sequence sent to a generic contact form every time.<\/p>\n

What this costs, how long it takes, and what goes wrong<\/h2>\n

Broken link building is labour, not media spend, so the cost is almost entirely the time spent finding genuine opportunities and writing outreach that does not read like a template. Expect a realistic campaign to land a handful of quality links per month rather than dozens, since only a fraction of broken links you find will belong to sites worth pursuing, and only a fraction of those outreach emails will get a reply. Most agencies fold it into a broader monthly link building retainer rather than pricing it as a standalone service, since the research skills overlap heavily with other white-hat outreach work.<\/p>\n

The tooling matters less than the judgement applied to it. A backlink checker will surface thousands of candidate broken links in minutes, but most of them sit on low-authority or abandoned sites not worth an email. The time that actually earns links goes into manually shortlisting the handful of genuinely relevant, genuinely active sites from that list, and writing each outreach email as though only one person will ever read it, because only one person will.<\/p>\n

What goes wrong most often is treating volume as the goal. Sending fifty generic “your link is broken” emails a week, with no real replacement content behind them, damages your sender reputation and gets your domain quietly ignored by webmasters who talk to each other more than you would expect. The second common mistake is pitching a replacement page that does not actually cover the same ground as the dead link. If the original page was a detailed guide and your replacement is a thin product page, the site owner will notice, and you will not get a second chance with that contact.<\/p>\n

See how broken link building fits into a wider strategy on our services page<\/a>, and check our results page<\/a> for real numbers from Melbourne link building campaigns. For more on the topic, our FAQ<\/a> covers common link building questions, and you can browse further reading on the SEO blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bottom line<\/h2>\n

Broken link building is one of the few SEO tactics that gets easier every year the internet exists, simply because more pages die every year than get carefully redirected. Most Melbourne businesses skip it because it takes patience rather than budget, which is exactly why the opportunity is still there for the ones who do it properly, one honest email at a time.<\/p>\n

Book your free consultation. No lock-in contracts, reply within 24 hours, Melbourne-based team. Get started<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Broken link building still works in 2026. Here’s how it works, why most Melbourne businesses skip it, and how to do it without wasting outreach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technical-seo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49,"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/49"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dooda.com.au\/bestseoagencymelbourne-com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}