Fix Those Broken Links with Creative Tips

Jon Cooper of SEO Book has some creative tips for how you can use blogrolls to fix broken links.

We are all aware of those pesky 404 error messages, but often we are not sure of an easy, global way to fix the problem.  For very large websites, moving through each page searching for broken links is not a palatable option.  Instead, try Jon’s tips for removing 404s from your website and find out how easy it can be to clean up your pages.

Orange County SEO has dozens of ways that you can perk up your web presence through the creative use of online marketing for small business strategies.  Talk to us about website design and development and all your other marketing needs.

Removing 404s From Your Website

1.  Find a few blogs.  Find a few related blogs that contain blogrolls.  This will seed your list and get you started. You can try SoloSEO link tool for blog lists based on keyword input.
2. Multiply your list.  Take the URLs you find and put them in Buzzstream’s blogroll list builder.  You may not be able to do this in Chrome, but your blogroll list will populate well in other browsers.
3. Repeat the process.  Download your results as a CSV file.  Open it in Excel then copy and paste your blogroll URLs into the list builder tool.  Continue until you have a sizeable list.
4. Check the status of your URLs.  Put your URL list into Citation Lab’s URL Status Checker tool.  This will check for 404 errors on any of the URLs.
5. Choose the way you want to treat broken links.  You have several options:
6. Blogroll links.  Plug your broken links into Open Site Explorer, Ahrefs.Com, or MajesticSEO. Scan links for any that are coming from a homepage.  Go to these homepages and use Check My Links chrome extension to check for other broken links.  Reach out to these bloggers and let them know about the problem.  Often they will replace them and your problem is solved.
7. Dead content links.  Check the top pages of your link homepages.  If the page is dead, use Archive.org to check on the former content and see if you can rewrite it to make it relevant to your site.  Reach out to webmasters of broken links and tell them that you have recreated that page, then offer a link to your page.
8. Use other options.  You may want to see if the domains of dead links are available for sale or registration.  You can take your “new” website, upload content, and use it to link to your original site.  You can also use your now-improved blogroll list to make contacts with other bloggers to establish new relationships.

Orange County SEO can help you with link building services and a host of other integrated and strategic marketing tools that will make your web presence better than ever and give you much great ROI for your advertising budget than you have ever experienced.