Broken links are bad news for any website. Search engine web crawlers trawl the net looking out for broken links and marking down sites accordingly, which affects their rankings. But did you know that you can reap the benefits by engaging in some broken link building?
What is broken link building?
A broken link leads visitors to a page that simply isn’t there. This leads to the “404 – Page not found” error that search engines abhor. There are all sorts of reasons why a link may be broken. One of the most common is when a site is renamed or moved, but deleted content and third party pages moving their content are also common errors that result in a broken link.
It isn’t just the search engines that dislike broken links. Visitors who follow a broken link may decide that the website is less credible for containing them, so it pays every website owner to keep on top of the problem.
How you can benefit from broken links
More and more website owners are spending time looking for sites in their niche market and seeking out broken links. They then contact the webmaster of the site in question and offer to replace the content which has gone missing, in return for a link to their own site. This is a win-win situation for both parties. The site with the broken link regains its content, while the new site benefits from the new link.
Of course, looking for broken links takes time, which some business owners simply do not have. If this is the case, you could benefit from a switched-on web design team that specialises in SEO techniques. Whether you are looking for SEO in Dublin or Dubai, a reputable company such as http://www.rycomarketing.ie/search-engine-optimisation-seo.html, will do the hard work for you, ensuring that your SEO puts your site at the top of search engine results pages.
According to Search Engine Land, web crawlers used to count the number of links to a site regardless of quality, but they now evaluate the quality of those links.
So if you do decide to go on the hunt for broken links make sure that your content is of a good enough quality to satisfy the search engine’s strict criteria, with no spam or keyword stuffing.