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by jedberg 1720 days ago
Today I learned about the broken link building technique. Wow that is gross. At least the way that site says to do it is by straight up lying to people about how the link moved to a new site.

It wouldn't be so bad if they would at least say, "I made a page with similar information", but suggesting that people straight up lie about it tells me everything I need to know about the ethics of the site that is making that suggestion.

1 comments

I didn't take it that way, though I could be wrong.

> I got an error message when I tried to click on this site: http://DeadURL.org/index.jsp

> It looks like they made a change to their home page but didn't update it... anyhow, the correct link is here: http://www.FixedURL.org/

I think both of those URLs are third parties and supposed to be the content that the site used to link to. Then the email template goes on with:

> And while you're updating your page, I wondered if you'd be open to including some further resources that could help people struggling with similar issues.

> Compelling Content Title

> http://www.clientsite.org/compellingcontent

> Compelling Content Title 2

> http://www.clientsothersite.com/compellingcontent

Which would be the URLs that you're trying to obtain links towards.

From the linked guide at [0], I understand rather that you find the broken link on a website with relevant keywords for your niche, determine what the website behind the broken link said (e.g. through the use of the web archive) and then create new content saying essentially the same. Then, you would inform the webmaster that he could link to you instead.

[0] https://moz.com/blog/the-broken-link-building-bible

Ah I see, you're supposed to actually find the fixed link and then send it along with your own links. I guess that's slightly better.
Even more so, the guide says you can make the content yourself to replace the “lost” content. You’re being encouraged to clean up the web, it’s actually pretty wholesome.
0% of these SEO dweebs do it this way.