I’ve been advocating broken link building to most of my clients. It’s ironic, then, when I receive a broken link building pitch. I got one the other day and it was such a great pitch that I wanted to share this example with you.
In case you don’t already know, broken link building is a tactic to get people to link to your website. It basically follows this process:
What I like about this most: at the worst, you have a great piece of new content on your site. At the best, you’ll attract all sorts of new and relevant links to your site.
It can be hard to find a resource that’s broken and relevant, to rebuild. That takes time plus a back link tool (I use Majestic) but they’re out-there.
Once you find one, it has to be popular enough (read: have enough back links to justify your efforts. Remember: not all the sites linking to the resource will be alive, and able to change those links. Even if they’re alive, there might not be a way to reach these websites. This means you need to find a resource with hundreds (if not thousands) of unique websites, in order to find a couple that are even possible to reach.
Then comes the hardest part: the pitch. Blogs get pitches like this all the time. Your pitch needs to be unique, personal and stand-out from the cacophony of noise from unsolicited emails.
Here’s a good pitch that got my attention, the other day:
Hi David,
I was looking for an article about tracking offline advertising today and found your post – https://reliableacorn.com/blog/track-offline-marketing-roi-using-google-analytics/
Excellent stuff!
I noticed that your link to Google Analytics URL builder (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867) was outdated since Google migrated the builder to https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/. Just thought Iād give you a heads up so you can replace that link.
Additionally, I wrote this guide on the new Google Campaign URL Builder tool – [URL DELETED HERE]
It might make a nice addition to your page š
Hopefully, this helps since your article helped me.
Best,
SOMEBODY
[Link to his LinkedIn profile]
What I like about this:
Now, I advocate for link building in this way but I don’t accept pitches like this. I own my hypocrisy. Still, I wanted to learn more about this person’s process so I sat on it for a few days. Also, I was busy.
Eventually he sent me a follow-up message:
Hey David,
Just following up to see if you got my last email to change your outdated link on your article (https://reliableacorn.com/blog/track-offline-marketing-roi-using-google-analytics/) to the new Google Analytics URL Builder and if you had any feedback for my guide.
Have an excellent week š
[copied original message into this email]
And then a third follow-up:
Hey David,
I promise this the last email. I think your article could really benefit readers if the link were updated to the new Google Analytics URL builder (see the email below).
What I like about this (which made me want to take an additional effort):
TL;DR: persistence pays off when it comes to link building.
Congratulations, friend, you’ve earned your broken back link. Good work! You have clearly followed the core principles of link building.
I hope this example of a broken link building pitch can help you, too. I will change the way I pitch them, myself.
Reliable Acorn will help you create a custom digital marketing strategy that does just that.
Ready to Talk?