Finding broken links / resources by topic
-
Hi fellow mozzers!
In an effort to ensure we're exploring every avenue when launching our new website, I was hoping to find some useful broken links / resources that we could incorporate into our link building.
We have used the standard tools for this (W3C, Xenu etc), but they all seem to have the same issue in that they reveal all the missing links on a site (although some don't actually tell you the page they are on), but you still have to sort them to see if the links/ resource is related to your theme.
When you're on a niche site, this obviously isn't an issue, but on a site like Mashable (to use the example given in a recent SEOmoz blog) it could result in wading through hundreds of links to find one relevant one right at the end.
Is there a tool that allows you to specify what theme links you are looking for from a site, or better yet one that allows you to check multiple sites for multiple missing themed links in one go?
Or is the best way to export the list and just search the document for certain keywords?
-
What about searching for articles about care homes on BBC then seeing if any of those have missing links on an article-by-article basis? If you're lucky, they may also have a tag or a section that fits closely enough with your topic that you can find a listing of all of the articles that are withing that tag/category and just review those.
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your response. I have used both Xenu and Screaming Frog before, and they are great for searching a whole site within your niche where every broken link / missing resource is an opportunity. This is probably an easier thing to explain using an example:
We do work for a chain of care homes. If I go to, say www.carehomes.co.uk and check for missing links, I know that all the results will be an opportunity to make contact and build a relationship with a webmaster in the care home niche. So there's no need to filter these, but rather just to work my way through the list trying to build as many valuable new contacts as possible.
But if I run a missing links search on the BBC, it may bring back hundreds or thousands of results, but only one or two will be related to the care homes industry and therefore present an opportunity to reach out. So that's the aspect I'm enquiring about - going to a site that covers a range of topics and quickly finding opportunities within that relate to my niche.
-
I recommend that Chrome is part of your link building tool kit and get a broken link checker, you'll also find that visiting web pages with images off in Chrome will speed up your prospecting efforts. I can see you want to search a whole website for a broken link then try a tool like Screaming Frog or Xenu.
-
Hi Jon,
Thanks for getting involved - having read your great blog, it's cool to get your take. Love the idea about then building relationships with all the others who link to that missing URL.
But my question remains the same - while I understand that there's more to it than the initial link, and there are greater opportunities when it comes to relationship building as well as link building, I am keen to get a handle on the best way to find missing resources, broken links etc within a certain niche; so I know how to use search modifiers to look up various sites, resources etc within our niche, I'm less clear on how to go to larger sites (BBC, wikis, Mashable etc) that cover many topics and find out whether opportunities are available within my niche.
Also, is there a Firefox friendly tool that's similar to DHP?
Thanks for any extra help you can give!
-
+1 for Chris!
Sorry I just got to this question, but Nick, as Chris said, there's much more value than the initial link you get. Granted that some opportunities are really only worthwhile for that specific link, most opportunities for broken links should be turned into something far greater - a relationship.
Also, when you find URLs of broken resources, go to Open Site Explorer and plug those URLs in. Find other people linking to that same broken resource, and reach out to them as well. Ideally you should start an excel spreadsheet of different pages linking to broken resources, so as you come across more broken links, you can add even more prospects. In the end, you should never run out of sites to do some BLB on.
Hope this helps Nick!
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your reply. I had stumbled across that site earlier and found it to be very useful. And yes, I agree that the tactic is a great way to outreach and relationship build as well as a simple like for like - although the issue of quickly finding such sites within a certain niche still applies.
It seems that Domain Hunter Plus gets some of the way there, but I'm running Firefox rather than Chrome, so any alternatives would be cool.
-
Hi Nick,
Broken Link building isn't just about getting a broken link replaced with your link. It's also a tactic to build a relationship with a blogger/webmaster to later pitch them a proposal for a link.
Jon Cooper (@pointblankseo) loves this technique so be sure to hop over to his blog
http://pointblankseo.com/creative-broken-link-building
He also recommends a few broken link tools too
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Internal nofollow links
Hello, We have a blog and at the end each blog post (and from the sidebar) we link to one main product page (tagged with a particular query string). Now Google will see from every blog post all of these internal links pointing back to this page. Do you think this would cause a problem and that these links should be nofollowed? I think Google will kind of detect that these is kind of a "navigation" as the code will be the same across all webpages. Most of all, doing them nofollow I think it is worse because it may trigger some sort of pagerank sculpting algo filter, if it still exists. Thanks, Conrad
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | conalt0 -
Links: Links come from bizzare pages
Hi all, My question is related to links that I saw in Google Search Console. While looking at who is linking to my site, I saw that GSC has some links that are coming from third party websites but these third party webpages are not indexed and not even put up by their owners. It looks like the owner never created these pages, these pages are not indexed (when you do a site: search in Google) but the URL of these pages loads content in the browser. Example - www.samplesite1.com/fakefolder/fakeurl what exactly is this thing? To mention more details, the third party website in question is a Wordpress website and I guess is probably hijacked. But how does one even get these types pages/URLs up and running on someone else's website and then link out to other websites. I am concerned as the content that I am getting link from is adult content and I will have to do some link cleansing soon.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
How to solve outbound broken links? Those don't exist now?
There are many, many broken links on the website. What normal strategy to use for that? http://www.txacspecialist.com/air-conditioning-equipment-service-austin/american-standard/ It's an AC site, so all the links to AC vendors who have changed their product pages, all of those links are broken So for instance, the carrier 20xl doesn't exist anymore. Now they sell the carrier 45abp. We link carrier 20xl and now the page and AC model is not exist. So what I can do to solve the broken link issue?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward0 -
Does Disavowing Links Negate Anchor Text, or Just Negates Link Juice
I'm not so sure that disavowing links also discounts the anchor texts from those links. Because nofollow links absolutely still pass anchor text values. And disavowing links is supposed to be akin to nofollowing the links. I wonder because there's a potential client I'm working on an RFP for and they have tons of spammy directory links all using keyword rich anchor texts and they lost 98% of their traffic in Pengiun 1.0 and haven't recovered. I want to know what I'm getting into. And if I just disavow those links, I'm thinking that it won't help the anchor text ratio issues. Can anyone confirm?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido0 -
What To Do With Too Many Links?
We have four pages that have over 100 links (danger, danger from what I gather), but they're not spammy footer links. They are FAQ videos for our four main areas of practice. Does that make a difference? If not, should I just take half the questions on each page and make four additional pages? That strikes me as a worse UX, but I don't want to get penalized either. Thanks, Ruben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Links from music/celebrity based fansites - sitewide images with no alt text
We're currently in the middle of a link audit on our website OneDirection.net and a large part of our incoming links come from fansites such as the following: ladygaganow.net nickjonline.com justinbieberhood.com joejonashq.com harrystylesfan.org brunodaily.org onedirectiondaily.com onedirectionfans.net Now, our previous way of thinking was that these are very relevant websites in the same niche as us, and therefore should be passing some value? However all of the links on these sites come from sitewide images with no alt-text. Some of the sites are passing 1000+ links to us. We've been wary to disavow or request removal of these links as we've usually gone with the thinking that Google applies "common-sense" based logic in its algorithms, and therefore these backlinks should be ok - in our opinion. However we think we are suffering from some kind of algorithmic penalty with our current rankings, and are now thinking these could be the cause. What are people's opinions on these links? Should we stay clear of sitewide links altogether? Should we contact the site owners and try to get them to mix up the alt-text? Or should we get rid of them altogether? Thanks, Chris.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PixelKicks0 -
14,000 links from affiliate
I have an active affiliate program and notice that webmaster tools is showing a huge number of links from one particular affiliate. The affiliate is called productwiki.co.uk and they are showing 14,413 links all pointing to my homepage in WMT. They don't seem to be no follow. What should I do about this? Is this a problem? I have had major issues with my organic traffic dropping right off. I appreciate any feedback
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Aikijeff0 -
Link Acquisition - link building
When using Site Explorer to find out my competiters links so I can do some link aquisition SEO do I look for the "inbound" links or or "linking domains"? Also, what filters should I choose? I want to make a spreadsheet as Rand suggested in his video and start to prioritize my link building.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | musicforkids0