How would you use this broken link building opportunity?
-
I've found a good opportunity to build some links and I'd love your opinions on my options here.
There's a big event that happens once a year in my city. Let's say the event used to have a website called www.CityEvent.com. The event decided not to use this website anymore, but instead to put all of their event information on their facebook page. It looks like they let their domain name expire and someone else snapped it up. It's now sitting as an empty wordpress blog with one line of text.
This empty website has 1300 links pointing to it.
I can see two opportunities here:
1. Write a very thorough article on my website (that I am trying to build links to) describing the event and giving people all of the information that they need to know about it. (The amount of information on the Facebook page is minimal.)
or
2. Create a new website called www.EventCity.com and put up a static page with all of the information that people need to know. There would be a link on this page pointing to the site that I am trying to rank.
In both cases there would be much more information than is available on the Facebook page including a collection of youtube videos about the event and many helpful links for people who are interested in this type of event.
Then the plan is to contact the sites who are linking to the dead page and invite them to link to my new page (either on my site or the new site that I could create).
I see a few pros and cons to each method.
For option #2 I think people would be more likely to link to a more official looking page rather than an article on a separate website. (My website has information about the city in question but is not closely related to the event at all.) However, I would only be getting one link back to my site. One negative to this is that the actual organizers of the event may not be pleased that someone has created an official looking page. But then again, perhaps they would be happy to have a free website.
For option #1 I would possibly get more links from sites that are authoritative in my city that point directly to the site I am trying to rank. However, people would be less likely to link to us because we are not an official site for the event, but simply a very good article about the event. There are no other good articles for this event that are ranking on Google.
Hopefully that makes sense. What would you do?
EDIT - Just thought of a third option - try to buy the domain.
-
EDIT - Just thought of a third option - try to buy the domain.
lol... that was the first one that I thought of.... I would be on the phone, sending email, driving to their house.
... but after you own it they might realize that the bozo running the site for them allowed it to expire and see that you grabbed it and want it back! They will be cussing about you louder than they will be cussing about Bozo.
But... I would still go after it.
-
Yes. Option #3. If it expired in the last year, it may just be in limbo. I'd find out, but don't sound overly interested. if the call forwards to some "attorney" selling domain names for ridiculous prices, forget it and go with option #1. I think if the content was great your hypotheses that people would be less likely to link may prove untrue. Good luck and I want to know what happens.
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
-
Links Not Detected by MOZ, AHREFS, GSC-ARE THESE QUALITY LINKS?
Our SEO provider has been creating content (6 blog posts per month as well as building page write ups) and has been promoting that content. Several links per month have been created as a result of this effort. Many of the links have been from commercial real estate publications. I am concerned that the quality of these links is not high enough to improve our ranking. Most links do not appear on AHREFS, Google Search Console or MOZ. Is this a red flag that these links are weak? Ranking and traffic on the site have improved considerably since this provider began the project in April of 2019. They have been writing about 30 pages about New York City. commercial buildings each month in addition to 4 short blog posts and 2 extremely well researched and authoritative blog posts. My concern is that the links are not of sufficient quality to result increased ranking. That the improvement in ranking is solely due to the addition of new content rather than the creation of these links. Basically, that I am incurring the cost on an ongoing basis of an link building campaign with little to no benefit. That being the case, I would shift resources to content creation and increase and improve content rather than develop links with little value. A sample of links are below: Would greatly appreciate some feedback as to whether these are in fact helpful to the domain authority, reputation and ranking of our website. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Alan https://patch.com/new-york/bayside/bayside-queens-priciest-area-retail-office-space-study https://qns.com/story/2019/12/04/these-commercial-streets-in-queens-were-among-the-most-expensive-in-2019/ https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/flatbush-ave-priciest-retail-spot-outside-manhattan-study http://thejewishvoice.com/2019/12/07/nycs-most-expensive-commercial-streets-neighborhoods-in-2019-would-surprise-you/ https://atalyst.com/investment-banking-interview-metro-manhattan/0 -
HTTPs to HTTP Links
Hi Mozers, I have a question about the news that Google Chrome will start blocking mixed content starting in December 2019. That starting in December 2019, users that are presented insecure content will be presented a toggle allowing those Chrome users to unblock the insure resources that Chrome is blocking. And in January 2020, Google will remove that toggle option an will just start blocking mixed content or insecure web pages. Not sure what this means. What are the implications of this for a HTTPS page that has an HTTP link? Thanks, Yael
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | yaelslater0 -
How to do Spam Link Analysis before posting a link?
OSE provides Spam analysis for website link profile, Do Moz have a tool to check the link quality before placing a link? How to do Spam Link Analysis before posting a link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bondhoward1 -
Link-building best SEO practice (one-off VS periodic blogging)
Hi all, Generally, what would be best when building a website's ranking through link building? Having the same links from the same bloggers or receiving new links from different bloggers every time? A lot of the SEO services offer 4-8 blog backlinks per month. Would it be best if these links came from different sources every time or most from the same sources each month? I know there's a lot of factors but I hope this question is clear. Happy holidays and thank you for your insightful feedback. Carlos
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 90miLLA0 -
Subdomain Metrics Links??
I have been analysing my companies website against our competitors and we beat them hands down on everything apart from the total links in the subdomain metrics. Our competitor jumped above us a couple of months ago to grab the number one spot for our industries most valuable keyword. They have had a new website designed and after looking at the source code and running it through SEO MOZ in comparison to our site I can't see how they have manged to do it. We beat them hands down on all factors apart from subdomain metrics > Total links where they have twice as many. When it comes to Page Specific Metrics and Root Domain Metrics we easily beat them on all factors. Does anyone have any ideas what I need to do to improve the subdomain metrics? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Detectamet0 -
URL for offline use.
Hi there, We currently have a url www.example.com/health/back-pain/ We are wanting to promote this page on our product packaging however making the URL simpler www.example.com/back-pain/ is it just a case of using a 301? are there any issues here? Thanks for any feedback
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Stellar Content - Calls to Action - Link Building
Hello, How do you place calls to actions, links back to your products/pages, and praise for your products in articles about your main products without looking bad to people who might give you a backlink. We want these things but we want our articles to be perfect for backlinks, natural and through a backlink campaign.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0 -
Canonical links apparently not used by google
hi, I do have an ecommerce website (www.soundcreation.ro) which in the last 3 months had a drop in the SERP. Started to look around in GWT what is happening. Google is reporting a lot of duplicate meta-tags (and meta-titles problem). But 99% of them had already canonical links setted. I tried to optimize my product listings with the new "prev", "next" tags and introduced also the "view-all" canonical link to help Google identify the appropiate product listing pages. SeoMoz is not reporting thos duplicate meta issues. Here is an example of the same page with different links, but with the same common canonical and reported by GWT "duplicate title tag": http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10-pageall/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-chitari-electroacustice-cid10_999/http://www.soundcreation.ro/chitare-electro-acustice-cid10_1510/What could be the issue?- only that gwt is not refreshing as should be, keeping old errors?- if so, then there is an other serious issue because of why our PR is dropping on several pages?- do we have other problem with the site, which ends up with google penalizing us? Thank you for your ideas!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjutas0