Finding high-quality backlinks using broken link building with Ahrefs

Executive overview

Most link-building outreach is cold and generic. Broken link building flips the dynamic: you find pages that have already earned links, then offer a replacement when those pages go dead.

The process starts in Google, moves into Ahrefs Site Explorer, and ends with targeted outreach to sites already linking to broken content.

One broken link can unlock dozens of high-authority link opportunities from sites already primed to replace it.

Finding broken outbound links

• Search Google for relevant resource lists (e.g. "best healthy eating blogs")
• Pick a high-authority target site and open it in Ahrefs Site Explorer
• Navigate to Outgoing Links > Broken Links
• Filter by link type: DoFollow to surface editorial, in-content links
• NoFollow results (often comment links) are still useful — revisit them separately

Scaling from one broken link to hundreds of prospects

• Hover over any broken link to see its referring domain stats
• Click through to see all sites linking to that broken URL
• Sites linking to the broken page are warm prospects — they already linked once
• If you recreate equivalent content, outreach has a clear, credible hook
• Export results to a spreadsheet; repeat across all broken links on the site

Using comment links and expired domains

• NoFollow broken links often point to fully expired domains, not just 404s
• Check the domain (e.g. wildtime.com) — if it's gone, all its inbound links are in play
• Click backlinks to see what content the domain hosted and who linked to it
• Older last-seen dates increase confidence the domain is permanently gone
• Expired domains pointing to malware are a strong outreach angle — warn the linking site

Workflow tips

• One site can yield hundreds of prospects before you need to move on
• Exhaust one site fully, then repeat on the next result from your Google search
• Full outreach email templates are available on the Ahrefs blog: ahrefs.com/blog/broken-link-building