Broken Link Building With Ahrefs: A Practical Walkthrough
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Broken link building — finding dead links on relevant sites and pitching your content as the replacement — is one of the more efficient link building tactics, and Ahrefs' backlink and broken-link tools are commonly used to execute it at scale.
Why broken link building works as a pitch
Unlike a cold pitch asking someone to feature you, this approach offers genuine value to the site owner: fixing something already broken on their own site — a dead link creates a poor user experience for them, so a good replacement suggestion solves their problem, not just yours.
Finding broken link opportunities with a backlink tool
Ahrefs' Site Explorer lets you search a relevant site or resource page and filter for broken outbound links (via its "Best by Links" or dedicated broken-link reports) — surfacing pages that link out to now-dead URLs relevant to your content.
Targeting resource and "best of" pages specifically
Resource pages, curated link lists, and "best of" roundups are especially fruitful targets, since they're specifically built to link out to relevant external content — meaning any broken link on them is both a genuine site problem and a clear content-replacement opportunity.
Evaluating whether your content is a genuine fit
Before pitching, confirm your content actually covers the same ground as the broken resource did — a broken-link pitch for content that's only loosely related is easy for a site owner to spot and decline, undermining the "genuine value" framing that makes this tactic work.
If you don't have matching content yet, consider creating it
Finding a high-value broken link opportunity with no matching content on your site is sometimes worth creating content specifically to fill that gap — particularly when the linking site (or pattern of similar sites) represents a meaningfully valuable prospect.
Structuring the outreach pitch
A strong broken-link pitch identifies the specific broken link and its location, briefly notes it's broken (genuinely helpful information regardless of outcome), and suggests your relevant content as a specific replacement — framed as solving their problem, not just requesting a link.
Prioritizing prospects by realistic value
Not every broken link is worth pursuing — prioritizing by the linking site's relevance and authority, similar to any other link prospecting, focuses effort on opportunities likely to produce genuinely valuable links.
Scaling the process without losing quality
Building a repeatable workflow — a saved search or report for relevant resource pages, a template pitch structure customized per prospect — lets you run broken link building consistently rather than as an occasional one-off exercise.
Tracking response rates and refining your approach
Because broken link building has a genuinely differentiated pitch (fixing something, not just asking for a favor), it often converts at a meaningfully higher rate than cold outreach — tracking this over time helps validate whether it deserves a larger share of your outreach effort.
Related reading:
- Broken Link Building: The Fundamentals (Beyond Any Specific Tool)
- Press Release Templates: 5 Formats That Still Get Picked Up
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Editorial note: This content was researched and generated on 2026-07-17. Facts and pricing are verified at time of writing and subject to change.