Broken link building has the best conversion rate of any cold outreach tactic and the smallest addressable universe. Both facts come from the same place: you are reporting a genuine problem on someone's page before you ask for anything, and genuine problems are rare.
Most guides skip the second half of that sentence, which is why people run the tactic for a fortnight, find eleven dead links, and give up.
How it works, honestly
You find a page that links to a resource that no longer exists. You tell the owner. You mention that you have something covering the same ground. They fix the link, sometimes with yours.
The reason it converts is that the first two steps have value even if the third never happens. A dead link is a small embarrassment and a real usability problem, and pointing one out is a favour. That framing is the entire tactic and it collapses the moment the email reads as a link request with a dead link attached as pretext.
Finding dead links worth chasing
Three sources, in order of yield.
Resource pages in your topic. Curated link lists rot faster than anything else on the web because they contain dozens of outbound links and nobody re-checks them. Find resource pages on your subject and crawl them.
Dead competitors and abandoned tools. When a site in your niche shuts down, every link pointing at it becomes an opportunity at once. Pull the backlink profile of the dead domain and you have a prospect list where every single entry is qualified.
Pages linking to outdated versions. Not strictly broken, but the same pitch works — a link to a discontinued tool or a 2019 statistics page is a link the author would want to update.
The second source is by far the most efficient and the one most people never use.
Qualify before you pitch
| Check | Chase it | Skip it |
|---|---|---|
| Is the page maintained? | Updated in the last two years | Untouched since 2016 |
| Does your page match? | Covers the same ground | "Related" but different |
| How many dead links? | One or two | Twenty — the site is abandoned |
| Is there an author? | Named person, contactable | Contact form only |
| Does the site link out? | Cites external sources | Only internal links |
The "does your page match" row is where campaigns quietly fail. If the dead link was a detailed technical spec and your replacement is a general blog post, the author knows it is not a replacement and the email becomes an ordinary link request — with the worst possible framing, because you led with their mistake.
The pitch
Lead with the broken link and where it sits. Name your replacement in one line. Then explicitly say they should use something else if yours is not right.
That last line is not modesty; it measurably raises reply rates because it removes the sense of being sold to and makes the email feel like what it claims to be. The full structure is in the outreach templates guide.
Keep it under 120 words. There is nothing to explain — the value is self-evident once they check the link.
Expected results, so you can judge it fairly
Reply rates on well-qualified broken link outreach run well above ordinary link requests, because the email is useful. Placement rates are lower than reply rates suggest, because plenty of authors fix the link by removing it or by finding their own replacement. That is a fair outcome and not a sign the pitch failed.
What determines whether the tactic is worth your quarter is volume of qualified prospects, not conversion. If your topic yields forty qualified dead links, it is a good month's work. If it yields six, run it alongside something else rather than as the campaign.
Where it fits
Broken link building is a supporting tactic for pages that are genuine references — guides, data, tools. It does not work for commercial pages, because nothing was ever linking to a competitor's pricing page in a way you can replace. For choosing which pages deserve which tactic, see the strategy guide, and the overview of link building methods for how it compares on effort. Our link prospecting tool handles the crawling and contact-finding.
Frequently asked questions
Does broken link building still work?
Yes, and it converts better than most cold outreach because the first thing you do is report a real problem on the recipient's page. What limits it is supply rather than effectiveness: in most niches there are only so many maintained pages with relevant dead links, so it works best as one tactic in a mix rather than the whole programme.
How do I find broken links on other websites?
Crawl resource pages and link roundups in your topic with any site crawler or a link checker extension, and separately pull the backlink profile of any site in your niche that has shut down — every link pointing to a dead domain is a qualified prospect. The second method produces far more opportunities per hour than manual crawling.
What should I say in a broken link email?
Name the broken link and where it appears, in the first sentence. Mention your replacement in one line. Then say plainly that they should use something else if yours is not the right fit. Under 120 words, no attachments. The value is obvious as soon as they check, so explaining it at length only makes the email look like a pitch.
How long does broken link building take?
Finding and qualifying prospects is most of the work — expect several hours to assemble a list of thirty to fifty genuine opportunities. The outreach itself is fast because the emails are short. Replies typically arrive within a week, and placements land within two to four weeks of the first email.