Broken link building is finding dead links on other websites, then contacting the site owner to suggest replacing them with a working link to your relevant content. It's a white-hat outreach tactic that provides value by fixing their user experience while earning you a backlink. The process works in four steps. First, you identify target sites in your niche—resource pages, industry blogs, or competitor backlink profiles work well. Second, you scan those sites for broken outbound links using tools like Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, or the Check My Links Chrome extension. Third, you create or identify existing content on your site that matches the topic of the dead link. Fourth, you email the webmaster pointing out the broken link and offering your page as a replacement. Success rates vary widely. On resource pages with multiple broken links, you might see 5–15% positive responses if your content genuinely matches the original intent. On competitive sites or where your replacement is a weak fit, expect under 2%. The tactic works because you're solving a real problem—broken links hurt SEO and user experience—so site owners have an incentive to act. At Ottawa SEO, we use broken link building selectively for clients in professional services and B2B niches where resource pages are common. We focus on pages with editorial standards, not scraped link farms, because those links carry actual authority. The key is making the replacement content legitimately better or more current than what was lost, not just pitching any vaguely related page. Watch out for a few pitfalls. Many broken links died for a reason—outdated topics, defunct companies, or content the site owner wanted gone. Pitching a replacement in those cases wastes time. Also, some site owners get dozens of broken link emails and ignore them all, so templated outreach performs poorly. Personalization and demonstrating you actually reviewed their site improves response rates significantly. This tactic requires more research time than other link building methods, but the links you earn tend to be editorially placed and contextually relevant, which makes them durable.