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
-
Links
Hi 64% of our links come from a .com website and only 30% from .co.uk. We only do business in the UK should I continue with the .com links as they are easier to source. Does this hurt my SEO efforts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
How would you build links to this page?
Hi i have ecommerce store and currently we are looking to build links to category pages like: http://www.theiconic.com.au/womens-clothing-dresses-party-dresses/ What are some natural ways to build links to a page like this? Our SEO agency has done guest posting and forums but these are not natural link building methods and against Google policy. Any suggestions on how to build natural links to these pages? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak651 -
Google WMT/search console: Thousands of "Links to your site" even only one back-link from a website.
Hi, I can see in my search console that a website giving thousands of links to my site where hardly only one back-link from one of their page to our page. Why this is happening? Here is screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/VleUf
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Disavowing Affiliate Links - Domain or Actual Affiliate Link?
Hi everyone, Hope you're all having a great day, I have a question in regards to a site which I am about to disavow. Over the past 2 months a certain page of ours has dropped from the 2nd page, all the way to the 7th. I haven't been able to diagnose why, however, yesterday I discovered that a site has been using an Lafitte link on his sidebar, the link is a do-follow. Webmaster tools indicates that this site has linked to us over 24,000 times. I understand that this link could potentially ruin our rankings - however, in terms of disavowing, what is the best approach here? Do I disavow their domain, or do I disavow the actual affiliate link also? The link is placed within an image, once the image is clicked it redirects you to another link for a second then redirects to our money site. We have got in touch with our affiliate program and they have made the link a no-follow, however, we are pretty certain this site is causing issues for us and we want to go ahead and disavow. Thanks, Brett
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Is this link being indexed?
link text Deadline: Monday, Sep 30, 2013 link text I appreciate the help guys!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jameswalkerson0 -
Large scale change of incoming anchor text/alt tag image links
I provide SEO services in-house and for clients for a ecommerce and web design company. For every client site we create or host we provide a image link on the bottom linking back to our company website. I started researching competitors that offer same services for our industry that have top Google rankings for all the terms we are targeting and i just realized they rank that well because their image/anchor text link they place on client sites is alt tagged for that specific keyword. We have not been optimizing or utilizing this easy keyword backlink method. I am now wanting to go to all of our clients sites and change our backlinks to target the keyword we are optimizing for but my concern is will that number of incoming anchor text/image alt tag links cause us to get penalized from google for either over optimization or them seeing 100's of backlinks keyword specific just change overnight. What is the best way to go about this change in a safe way to avoid or risk penalty from Google? 99% of all of our client backlinks are in the footer so they show up on every single page and they are all images. Would it have a different affect if i add a alt tag to those images so that we get the oncoming link juice of that specific keyword? One of my concerns is over optimization, since some of our clients have 1000's of pages on their website. so that is 1000's of incoming exact match keyword links. I feel like the danger is low for being penalized but i would rather be safe then sorry and get additional feedback. Thanks, Stephen
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VITALBGS0 -
Links on My website
I am looking to create some more trust on my website by subscribing to BBB. I have heard that my site is penalized and loses "link juice" if I place the BBB logo link in my page footer on every page of my website. Does anyone know how much I am penalized? Should I only put it on my conversion pages and maybe my main 10 sub pages? My main goal is to assist in getting conversions but I don't want to do it at the expense of getting a penalty. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, Boo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Reciprocal link finder tool - not looking to do reciprocal links.
The company I work for had an old SEO company that did a lot of reciprocal links with websites that are not what we want to be associated with. Does anyone know of a tool that might be able to tell us if there are still reciprical links to our site? I want to try and find them, but the old pages we had with links going out have been deleted.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | b2bcfo0