So we have spoken of and highlighted plenty of times just how important are backlinks. Which is why it is essential you understand how broken backlinks can affect your pages.
And also see what you can do about it to gain your competitor’s traffic when you are making use of their backlinks for your own interest.
Because let’s face it.
You must be super tired just how your competitors keep on outranking you.
Sure you have been spending plenty of time optimizing your site.
Yet doing so is not garnering the kind of rating and interest you should be getting.
Why?
The answer is simple.
You need to work on your backlinks.
And that means you need to be generating major backlinks.
The tricky part here is that you cannot simply just purchase them or even borrow them.
Nope.
You have to earn them.
In this article we will be learning all the ways in which broken links can happen. And how you can attain success from taking those from your competitor.
So let’s start:
What Are Broken Backlinks?
First things first. We need to look at what are basically broken internal links.
This basically means when there is an external link which is pointing towards a page which is non-existent.
This means that the URL of that page has been probably changed.
Or the linking site is actually adding on an incorrect URL.
All of these things may cause concerns which you need to look into and understand.
In simple words you can say that is the backlink between two websites and it is not working anymore.
Main reason could be that the landing page is moved or it has been removed from the site completely.
I want to now share that the major way in which broken link building is done is through two major steps.
You will first have to look in your own niche for the links which are broken.
Then it comes down to actually reaching out to that particular website and tell them the link is actually broken.
And that they should be replacing it with something which is on your site.
Hence you are making the connection so that they can earn your trust. Look at what you can offer and create great connections in this way.
Now let’s look at the major kind of competitors with whom you need to actually compete when it comes to attain traffic from broken backlinks.
Domain-Level Competitors
So this is basically relating to those sites which you are competing against SERPS.
It works on a whole level.
By that it means you are not just competing on 1-2 search terms.
However you will be taking the whole page into account.
What you do is you go to the site explorer. Then you will be entering the domain name.
After which you make an analysis on the list of the competing domains.
And these will be getting sorted on the basis of common keywords that you will make use of.
Next comes what we call as page-level competitors.
These are actually the major sites. They are not working as competitors as whole.
You will be looking at ways in which it becomes far more specific on keywords and topics too.
For you to get an idea on the page-level competitors, you will look into and pick a page or a website which has a primary keyword that you are trying to rank for.
And then you place that into the keywords explorer.
That is when you will be scrolling down into the SERP overview.
This gives major results that you can attain good analysis from. It all comes down to making that kind of association.
Knowing so allows you to handle it with great finesse and ensure that the results are long-lasting.
Replicating Content
So when we talk of stealing competitor’s broken backlinks, this is not really an illegal activity.
It basically just points towards how we can make up or seize an opportunity.
This really works when you see that in your niche there are broken pages which consist of your competitor’s having dead links pointing to their site.
You will have to look through that content and make the effort of actually taking it up.
That means you will be creating similar content, if you don’t have it already.
Then you will reach out to the site owner to let them know they have a broken link and point towards your sire.
This means you are now making use of broken links successfully by creating strong connections.
Such kinds of tactics work really well and allow you to create a good base of backlinks which are long-lasting and will be yielding good responses.
Outsmarting Page-Level Competitors
This basically relates to and is specific to page-level competitors.
You will see that there are skyscraper techniques which are such that they will be easy to taken care of.
It is actually pretty easy to make use of.
You will first find the competitor’s biggest and most popular linked content
Then you will be creating something far better than that.
In case you already have relating content to the same, what you can do is create something better and far more interesting.
Your content really matters as to how you will be representing it.
Lastly you will be then stealing the links.
And this works when you reach out to the sites which are linking to the competitor’s content.
You will be explaining as to why your content is better and why it deserves more for it to be linked up to their site.
Remember-the key to persuade is really important here.
It makes the difference as to how you will be linking up to your competitor by offering such kinds of links.
The Use of Guest Posts
It is important that we understand how guest blogging works.
This basically relates to getting really good and high quality backlinks through guest blogging.
You simply have to look at the guests posts your competitors are writing and for what sites.
Reaching out to the same sites allows you to also have a good handle on making a difference.
You just have to make sure you are creating really good content.
The kind which is going to yield results and feedback.
So how to find competitor’s guest posts?
You will make use of Google search. It is the best place to start.
Using Ahrefs Content Explorer goes a long way and it will allow you to see the kind of advanced search operators and how they will be yielding complete results.
Conclusion
It is important to know and realize ways in which broken backlinks work. Knowing so will allow you to make a difference.
There are so many ways in which you can generate a good traffic-when you know where to look.
I have shown here the ‘legal’ way in which you can actually make use of broken backlinks as an opportunity.
You can have to see the level of competition you are competing at and create backlinks that ensure major feedback.
There are so many ways that this can actually work.
Analyzing the state will make it better for you to create winning tactics.