Broken link building in 2026: the old tactic that still earns links

Last Updated on October 19, 2026 by Becky Halls

Last week I found 14 dead pages on one competitor’s old blog, and every single one still had links pointing at it. The whole job took about 20 minutes. People keep writing broken link building off as a tactic from 2015. I keep using it because it keeps bringing in links, and the sites that link are the kind you actually want!

So let me walk through how I do it, what broken link building in 2026 actually means now, and why this old method sits in a safer lane than almost anything else you could be doing right now!

Why there are so many dead links to chase

The tactic rests on one dull fact about the web: links rot. Pages get deleted. Sites migrate and forget half their redirects. Companies fold and their domains lapse. It happens constantly, to everyone.

Linkody tracked more than 865,000 backlinks through 2026 and found only about 56% were still live and pointing where they were meant to, with roughly 63% surviving a year after they first went up (Linkody, 2026). Read that the other way round. A large slice of the links out there already point at nothing.

That’s your raw material. Every dead page that still has links is a little list of editors who once looked at a resource and decided it was worth a mention. The resource is gone. The willingness to link is still sitting there on the page.

And if you think links have stopped counting, look at what Google did this month. On 15 October, Google’s VP of product Hema Budaraju said the company is “launching updates to show inline links higher up in responses more frequently”, and that use of its Preferred Sources feature has grown more than 7x since the start of the year (PPC Land, 15 Oct 2026). Google’s giving links more prominence in AI answers this month. Whoever owns the link to the live, correct page wins that spot.

How to find broken links worth your time

Here’s where it usually goes wrong. People find a dead link, get excited, and fire off a pitch for something with two referring domains from blogs nobody’s touched since 2021. That’s a waste of a morning.

Be picky. You want dead pages with lots of live, relevant links.

Mine your competitors’ dead pages

Open Semrush, drop in a competitor’s domain, go to the Backlinks report and then Indexed Pages. Filter for broken pages. Sort by the number of referring domains. Now you can see which of their dead URLs editors loved most. Export the list of sites linking to each one. Those are your targets.

Hit resource pages and listicles

Resource pages are built out of links, so they break often. Find them with search operators like keyword inurl:resources or keyword intitle:links. Then run a free checker like the Check My Links extension, which paints dead links red right there on the page. When you spot a cluster of broken ones, run that page’s backlink profile too.

The honest limit here comes from Respona, who put it plainly: “Broken link building still works, but it’s not the most scalable link building strategy” (Respona). They’re right. This is a scalpel. You won’t land 200 links a month with it. You’ll land a handful of good ones from sites that actually cover your topic, and in 2026 that’s the trade I’ll take every time.

Your replacement page has to earn the link

You can’t offer a swap that’s worse than the thing that died. Nobody’s going to take a thin 400-word post in place of a beloved guide that got deleted.

This matters more than it used to. Google’s September 2026 spam update finished rolling out on 8 October after nearly 14 days (Search Engine Land). Barry Schwartz reported Google describing it as “normal spam”, nothing dramatic. But the direction of travel is clear enough: relevance-matched, earned links are the safe lane, and bulk bought links keep getting riskier. Broken link building sits right inside that safe lane, because you’re matching a real page to a real gap on someone’s site.

So before you pitch, make sure your replacement actually covers the dead page’s topic, properly, and ideally better than the original did. If you don’t have anything suitable, write it first. Or move on to a different dead link. Don’t bend a mismatched page into the pitch and hope.

Writing outreach that actually gets a reply

Lead with their problem, not yours

The site owner has a broken link on their page. That’s a small bug on their site, and you found it for them. Open with that. You’re doing them a favour before you ask for anything.

Keep it short and specific

One email. Name the exact page, name the exact dead link, offer one replacement. Done. The longer and more flattering the email, the more it reads like a template, and everyone can smell a template now.

It helps that you’re giving first. Editorial.link’s 2026 survey of 518 professionals found 48.6% rated digital PR the most effective link tactic of all (via Linkody), and broken link building is its scrappy little cousin: you lead with something useful, then make the ask.

“The pitches that work for us barely look like outreach. We tell someone a link on their page is broken, point at the exact spot, and offer one page that fits. We skip the flattery and the paragraph about how much we love their blog. Make it a two-minute fix for them and you’ll get a yes more often than you’d think.” David Hall, CEO at AppBuild.diy by AppInstitute

A 30-minute broken link building sprint

Short on time? Run this.

1. Pick one competitor who ranks for your topic. (5 min)
2. Pull their broken indexed pages in Semrush, sort by referring domains. (5 min)
3. Grab the top 3 dead pages and export who links to them. (5 min)
4. Check you have a solid page to offer as a replacement for each. (5 min)
5. Send 10 short, specific emails. One dead link, one fix, each. (10 min)

Do that once a week and you’ve got a steady, low-risk trickle of relevant links, built on pages that other people already decided were link-worthy.

Broken link building in 2026 – FAQ

Is broken link building in 2026 still worth it?
Yes, for quality over volume. You won’t scale it, but the links come from topically relevant sites and they’re earned, which is exactly the kind Google’s been rewarding since the autumn spam updates.

How many links can I realistically expect?
It depends on your niche and how picky you are. A tight, relevant campaign might convert somewhere in the 5 to 10% range of good pitches. Ten strong emails a week is a sensible rhythm, and it beats a hundred sloppy ones.

What tools do I need?
A backlink tool (Semrush, Ahrefs or similar) to find dead pages and their links, and a free broken-link checker like Check My Links for scanning resource pages. That’s really it.

Do I have to create new content for every dead link?
No. Often you’ve already got a page that fits. When you don’t, decide whether the opportunity is big enough to justify writing one. Usually it isn’t, so move on.

Isn’t this basically begging for links?
No, because you’re fixing something that’s broken on their site first. You flag a real problem and hand over the solution. The link is the thank-you for sorting it.

How is this different from guest posting?
Guest posting means producing a whole article to earn one link. Broken link building reuses pages you’ve already got and slots them into gaps that already exist. Far less work per link, when the opportunity’s there.

Ian Naylor is the founder of 3way.social, where the team matches sites with relevant link partners using AI. He’s been building links and businesses in SEO for over a decade.