This link-building technique is nothing new, but I can say it’s still effective today, in 2026, because it involves helping other websites out. That’s the key here.
This is part 3 of the Craft CMS SEO series, link building.
You are not begging for links; you are helping other sites and webmasters out.
Unfortunately, you need to use a paid tool for this method. You probably can get away with using free tools, but you are going to take a lot lot longer to get the same links as with a paid tool.
Step 1a: Finding broken links from good sites.
Find out what the popular sites are in your niche and run that site through a tool such as AHrefs or SemRush, where you are looking for broken backlinks on those sites.
Step 1b: Search your niche for resource pages
Find more broken links in your niche by using your favourite search engine and searching for “[niche] resources” or “[niche] popular pages”
You will be returned lists of pages in your niche that list many other pages. The task here is to find the broken links on these pages.
Step 2: Find other links linking to these dead links
This is where you supercharge your efforts. Once you have found these dead links, you then want to find more pages that are linking to these dead links. Put the links you have found in steps 1a and 1b into your tool of choice, such as Hrefs or SemRush. Now you should have a mass of pages that are linking to these dead links.
Step 3: Create content
For your site of sites linking to these broken sites, do a rough analysis and see what opportunities are there, mainly volume. What pages were there that are now not there and have a plethora of dead links?
Here comes the time-consuming part - you need to create high-quality content, replacing those pages that were linked too heavily.
Creating good content is way beyond the means of this post, but make unique and helpful and best-in-class content on that topic.
Consider video / audio and social content.
Step 4: Outreach
You then want to contact the sites that are linking to those dead pages you found in step 2 and email them.
Something below - you will need to modify this to your own needs:
Hi there X, [personal stuff here Use LinkedIn / personal site to get personal interests here. Academic achievements, common interests, etc.]
I noticed on your site that you are linking to a page that no longer exists, I actually have written about this here [insert link to content created in step 3], and it should help your viewers.
Hope that helps, and thanks for your great resource.
Step 5: Be warned
This technique has been done over and over in some niches, but it still works. You just need to 1. target the sites well, 2. produce great content, and 3. write short, personalised outreach emails, and you will see success.
Put in the graft and remember if it was easy, then everyone would have their sites at the top of Google.
Written by John Macpherson