Busted links as reason for link request

[wheel]

Was chatting with Martinibuster today (thanks!) and got re-energized in link building, specifically link begging. I've been having some difficulties getting links these days, so I'm going old school again. Here's what I'm doing over the next month.

1) I'm going looking in the really old 2000 era directories specific to my niche.
2) I'm going to run Xenu link sleuth on the directories to find broken links (again, these will be links to sites in my niche). i.e. I'll build a list of defunct sites in my niche.
3) I'm going to find sites that link TOO those defunct sites, i.e. busted links on other sites.
4) I'm going link begging. Basically saying "hey, you got a busted link. And while you're fixing your web page, howzabout hookin' me up?'.

There's a site I've been wanting a link from for years, found a busted link on it tonite. He's going to get his third link request email from me tomorrow :).

[Hoople]

I've had this work quite well for me. Better than general blind e-mailing by a big margin. Link was up in minutes!

I also found a few comment forms and email links that didn't work. I found alternative ways to report them to the website's owner. Worked for me almost as well.

[Aaron111]

wow - this is new to me - emailing links to get clicks ... go tactics :)

[wheel]

I'm not looking for clicks, looking for links. This is a bit different than what I've done in the past. Previously I've looked at individual sites for broken links. This time I'm finding defunct sites then looking for links to those defunct sites. It's a good way to find larger volumes of sites to approach.

[wheel]

I just checked backlinks on one old, now defunct site. It had 65 backlinks even though the site is long offline. Many were junk backlinks. I sifted through and ignored about 5 'real' backlinks. I then emailed another 20 telling them about the broken link and asking for a link to mine.

We'll see. The emails all went to old huge authority sites, gov't sites, .edu's, international companies. If I get even one link it'll have been worth it. With any luck maybe I'll get two :).

[incrediBILL]

2) I'm going to run Xenu link sleuth on the directories to find broken links (again, these will be links to sites in my niche). i.e. I'll build a list of defunct sites in my niche.

You might want to be careful because a lot of serious directories have protection.

Even if they allow Xenu, a high speed crawl could get your IP blocked.

Use a proxy server if you can to avoid pitfalls.

[henry0]

For Linux and specifically Ubuntu users:
Xenu's developer has no intention to provide any other version than for Windows!
But you can run it on Linux via WINE (Which helps in emulating Wins)
most pre-installed XENU packages are very old so first get rid of the actual package then go to WINE [wiki.winehq.org]
and follow specific instructions, works well just did it.

<edit> Tried to make readable :) </edit>

[henry0]

In regards of Ban risks
SEOMoz, mentions that running it at the lower speed will do no harm;
is it a fair statement?

Further, if for example XENU is crawling from my local machine an URL I am interested in, how can I get banned?
Banning what? my local IP?

Could you please, precise you thoughts about the banning risks.

[wheel]

You might want to be careful because a lot of serious directories have protection.

Not something I'd bother doing on BOTW or something like that. Specifically, it's unlikely I'd do this on a general directory at all. More like old 'resource' pages on .edu's and the like, where they setup up pages of 100's of links in my niche.

[dertyfern]

Tried this on and off in the past, most recently about three months ago, and didn't find much of a response. Got a couple of thank you emails but no links.

Could just be my industry.

I've had good success recently in just asking more trusted websites for links within articles where my sites content can be useful as additional reading.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

It works.

Two years ago I spied a .edu link that lead to one of my recently out of business competitors. I contacted the site author at the university and politely told him the link had gone cold and kindly offered a page on my site as a suitable replacement. He thanked me and I got the link.

If your site is link worthy this is a great method. I don't recommend trying to get webmasters to remove valid links but keep an eye out for sites that have gone offline and see if any freshly broken links would be worth getting.

[julinho]

If the defunct site has enough good backlinks, you could just buy the expired domain and create a few relevant pages.

Buy enough of these domains, interlink them wisely, throw some paid links on them (the old backlinks will help disguise the paid links), and you will have some powerful sites to link to your money sites.

Anything wrong with this method?

[graeme_p]

@henry0, there are Linux apps that do this such as Klinkstatus, linklint, linkcheker, webcheck etc.

[wheel]

If the defunct site has enough good backlinks, you could just buy the expired domain and create a few relevant pages.

Buy enough of these domains, interlink them wisely, throw some paid links on them (the old backlinks will help disguise the paid links), and you will have some powerful sites to link to your money sites.

Anything wrong with this method?

Nope, nothing wrong with it. I don't know if the sites will rank or not, but the idea is good. YOu may find it difficult to find decent sites that haven't been snapped up though.

It does happen though. I picked up a drop last year, I still can't believe I own it. It's one of those domains you don't get because they were all registered back in 98 - and somebody let it drop.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Wheel, thanks for picking that up for me, I'd like it back :-)

[henry0]

@ graeme_p, thanks will check it out

[wheel]

Wheel, thanks for picking that up for me, I'd like it back :-)

P(getting the domain back)<=0

[FranticFish]

I've tried this so far with one site for a household name in the industry and I had no better response from my 'while you're fixing these how about adding mine?' emails than I did to my 'gimme a link because its X's site' emails. I will do it again but the vast majority of emails weren't acknowledged even. I'd definitely do it again though, and I'd bet the success rate is higher if you have a page that is offering the missing information being linked to rather than just a site in the same niche.

[Dave_Hybrid]

A twist on this would be finding a dead domain with a load of links you want, then contacting the link owners as before but saying the site has moved, from x domain to y domain, please update you links.

[wheel]

I've tried this so far with one site for a household name in the industry and I had no better response from my 'while you're fixing these how about adding mine?' emails than I did to my 'gimme a link because its X's site' emails. I will do it again but the vast majority of emails weren't acknowledged even.

I've had people ask me how I managed to get 3 .edu backlinks. Answer? I emailed 60 people and got 3 people to say yes.

You need to look at the success numbers, not the failure rate. Link requests are always a funnel, where you ask a large volume of people and get a dribble of positive responses out the bottom end. I perceive this as simply a matter of hard work, I keep putting large numbers in the top end and letting the numbers dribble out the bottom. People get discouraged when they look at the top of the funnel and see large numbers of not responding, and think that means it's a failure. It's not - it's they way it works. The way to large numbers of quality backlinks is one at a time.

I've had two responses so far. One was a thank you, he removed the broken link and didn't give me a link, and the second was bizarre - a response from what I thought was a large international company that responded saying they'd add my link to what looks like a low end spammy blog. But I'm getting some stuff shaking, I keep at it and maybe I get 2 or 3 more top quality links on really old sites. Then people say, wheel, how did you get all those nice links? :)

[Makaveli2007]

Is there any risk involved in this mass approach to link building, btw? thats a question i asked on another forum, but didnt really get a straight to the point reply..

its always about ROI vs. risk, obviously - what about the risk of e-mailing hundreds (thousands if you do this approach over time) of sites with link requests?

the other day I got a somewhat pissed "NO, I will NOT add a link to your site, because (blablabla)". other sites gave us links, but that particular one was simply pissed.

Im a bit worried that if I take a mass approach to this, that I will run across more pissed people.

Is there anything they could do about this to label you a spammer or something and get your site into trouble? (admittedly, my technical understanding of the internet+www isnt good enough to tell)

[wheel]

Mass approach? I don't send out thousands. I do them all by hand. I've never had anyone angry at me. All my emails are from me and are written individually.

Hi Makeveli,

I found a broken link on your site. On this page: {link to page} the link to the site #*$!.com is broken. I think that site's completely offline.

If you're interested in a replacement site, you may find my site www.other site.com interesting. I've got (stuff) that your visitors will find interesting/useful/cool.

Thanks!

Regards,
wheel


What's to get angry over that?

[potentialgeek]

I once used a similar idea for my own site. I looked up all the pages I'd deleted that had links from other sites. Then I added "new" pages and got the links back. Didn't have to send anybody an email. :)

Archive.org is your friend.

[Future]

Hi wheel,
Can you please explain above 4 points in little easier words ?

Thank You.

[wheel]

Sure.

1) I googled things like "my niche directory" and went searching for really old directories. You can generally tell by looking at them if they're from the 2000 era.

2) I ran xenu link sleuth on the directory(s). This gave me a list of websites that were around back in 2000 or so but are now offline. So I find oldsite1 and oldsite2 that were in my niche but are now offline.

3) I check backlinks for oldsite1 and oldsite2 and find they still has 20 backlinks each. I check each of those 40 sites and fire off an email where I point out the page that has the broken link and ask for a link to my site while they're fixing it.

4) I also check the whois on the two sites. Many are offline but still registered. Some of them are no longer registered. I check the site in archive.org and consider registering it. It has 20 old school links already, I just don't know yet if those links will ever come back. I don't mind registering the domain, throwing up some content and letting it sit for a couple of years either to see if it comes back.

I haven't had a lot of success with this yet but did see some actions, so it can be done - I'm going to continue this week as time permits.

[Future]

Hello,
Thank You for clarifying.
I assume you are referring to registering expired domain names (niche-specific which were found via old directories and has backlinks).
I do beleive, this should have some potential (but not really great as the domains went offline with no content)
Register this domains, build some content and leave it.. we can use them to link to our active sites.

Though I am still confused here:

3) I check backlinks for oldsite1 and oldsite2 and find they still has 20 backlinks each. I check each of those 40 sites and fire off an email where I point out the page that has the broken link and ask for a link to my site while they're fixing it.

[Jay7]

Some good advice here. I tried it as well, found 5 old sites with broken links, notified the owners and offered links to my site in exchange. One hasn't come back to me, the other 4 emails bounced back. I suppose the owners of those sites lost interest in them, don't keep them up-to-date and haven't updated their contact details either. Email addresses I got from whois records were incorrect as well. I'm out of ideas of how to reach the owners of those sites.

[wheel]

3) I check backlinks for oldsite1 and oldsite2 and find they still has 20 backlinks each. I check each of those 40 sites and fire off an email where I point out the page that has the broken link and ask for a link to my site while they're fixing it.

Searching the directory to find oldsite1 and oldsite2 was to find sites that have gone offline. Ignore the fact that you could contact the directory owner about their broken links, I just use the directory as a seed.

Then I check who links to oldsite1. Even though it's offline, you can still see who links to it using pretty much any backlink checker. Now you have a much larger list of sites that you *know* have broken links, and a full list of the exact pages that have the broken link. Maybe you've now got 20 websites to contact instead of just one.

Is that clearer?

Jay7, I personally wouldn't push it past there, I'd go looking for current, active sites with broken links. But you can also do a whois and see who runs the nameservers and hosting, sometimes there's clues there. And you can do a search in bing on the IP address like this: IP:#*$!.#*$!.#*$!.#*$! (where #*$! is the IP of the site). that'll show sites that are on the same IP and also sometimes yeilds clues. For the hard to find, sometimes I'll go up and down an IP address as well :).

[Makaveli2007]

@wheel: I agree with you, personally there's no way I would get angry about that. However I have had it happen to me - human behaviour is rather irrational at times, I guess :-). "NO. I will NOT add a link, because you're in (other state than her), and I saw on your webpage that you quit doing xyz (both those things she complained about I mentioned in the link request e-mail).

I replied to her saying I feel sorry if she misunderstood that or feels tricked or whatever (because I quit doing xyz - cant go into detail sorry), but that I actually mentioned that in the e-mail I had sent to her (which I did..).

she was just pissed to the sake of being pissed, I guess :-).

I see absolutely nothing wrong or "unethical" or whatever with the approach youre taking..Im just wondering if there's a certain risk associated with that because i have come at least one such pissed person already...and because some other webmasters going by the (imho, very extreme) definition of any e-mail they didn't ask for being "spam"...

[Planet13]

Is there anything they could do about this to label you a spammer or something and get your site into trouble?

I think that enough people are using a web mail service like yahoo or gmail or hotmail, and they mark the EMAIL you send them as spam, then yahoo / gmail / hotmail MIGHT start filtering all your email as spam.