Building Links With Content Refresh

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I enjoy footprints, advanced operators, and link building with content.  I like the personalized, conversational nature of the link building I do.  Though not fast, it’s fun and very impactful. It’s like a cannon versus an AK47.

Naturally I was drawn to broken link building.  Garret French’s ridiculously cool Broken Link Building tool is a great resource.  While some are great at this, my success rate is unfortunately low with this tactic.  My assumption is that the resources are usually so old (hence, the link breaks because it’s abandoned) that the webmaster doesn’t even care that it’s broken.  Thus, no response from the webmaster following my inquiries.

But they do seem to respond more often when they have wrong information on their site.

I’ve always been able to use the Broken Link Building tool to get content ideas and find good blogs, but thought, “instead of fixing the link by suggesting my own content, why not produce content that fixes a bloggers on-page content.”

Time Is The Enemy Of Information

time expiredIn time, things become outdated.  Data refreshes.  Ideas expire.  Studies prove other studies wrong.  Trends, interests, and feelings change.  The problem with the web is that you’re hard-pressed to keep your website 100% current.  How often have you searched for the answer to a question to find a 4 year old, out-dated article?  Google does a poor job with QDF, and simply needs help with detecting the latest, most accurate information.

That’s where this tactic kicks in.

Each of my clients (or past employers) is an expert in something.  Once I figure out what these strengths are, and identify who can write the content, I search for sites that have wrong information.

Here’s a couple opportunities I was able to “refresh” with this tactic:

  • 5 great iOS apps that help you manage your time (updated a 4 year old article with something much current.  2 of the apps were not even in the App Store anymore).
  • Fracking does not cause groundwater contamination (one site had this claim, where an article we produced had proof of Marcellus Shale region contamination from fracking results).

Each new article we placed had a link to our site either in the byline or in the body itself. This tactic works great with a content strategy.  Throw the results into Buzzstream and you’re on your way.

Introducing The Outdated Content Finder

I like this idea so much I wanted a tool that could quickly find these opportunities.  I asked Mike Angstadt, a great Philadelphia developer and SEO,  if he thought he could help me build it.  In 24 hours, the Outdated Content Finder was born.  Mike is the man, so hit him up on Twitter.

Give it a spin.  Click the logo below:

It’s still in beta, and will grow to include more features.  I’d love your feedback in the comments below.

Ex-big agency guy, now focused on helping small and medium sized business. I've been practicing SEO since 1998. I started the SEO practice at a major digital agency owned by eBay and helped develop SEO products for one of the largest ecommerce platforms. I'm a proud member of the Philadelphia SEO scene. I'm passionate about search, writing, UX, CRO, and psychology in marketing. Read More

Comments 19

  1. Anthony Pensabene (or Content Muse when dressed in costume)
    • Reply

    this is smart thinking, #Sebald. Also, respect for spreading philly love and looking out for peers.

    i do a lot of writing/research for all differenz thingz. having seen what i’ve seen (takes a crazy pill with water), this is sharp. good luck with it.

  2. Scott Krager
    • Reply

    Interesting little tool! One little critique from a UX point of view, when you focus your cursor on the inputs, you then hide the text that explains what to input there. Might want to try a label. Also, a date picker would really speed up the input process vs. having to manually type in the date. Hope the feedback helps! I always like when people give us feedback, so I hope you feel the same!

  3. James
    • Reply

    This is a good idea with a lot of different ways to make it work. Anyone wanting to jump on this should do it now before webmasters are getting hundreds of corrections daily with a new link source to add to their page. I’ll def give it a try.

  5. Gent Ukehajdaraj
    • Reply

    Great tool, Bill!

    Tried it and I’m already finding quality potential links.

    Looking forward to further additions and updates.

    Cheers!

  6. Linki
    • Reply

    Nice idea, I am looking forward to finish my lunch and check the results in our local CZ market!

  7. Gareth
    • Reply

    Nice tool. Be good if the urls opened in a new tab, also when you go back from a url you have to do the search again.

  8. Kat Drew
    • Reply

    A great little tool. It is amazing how often you get sent to a really old article/post when you do a google search. I guess they still have a lot of cleaning up to do! :)

  10. Jonny
    • Reply

    Great tool Bill.

    Little confused. So do you write a whole new refresher article and submit it to the same place as the outdated one and they just simply say thanks for giving us an updated post, post it and give you a link? Isn’t that the same as hitting up a blog and saying “Hey I have a similar post to ABC on your website, would you be interested in XYZ?”

    • Bill Sebald
      • Reply

      It can be. Or you can do it like the broken link building tactic (perhaps they amend their post and link a “thank you” to you). Or you can use this for relationship building.

      The real bonus for me is that my response rate is sometimes higher when I point out someone’s accidental misinformation on their site vs. just a broken page. I’ve found webmasters are often more apathetic to having (or linking to) 404’s for some reason.

  11. Ryan
    • Reply

    Can’t you just search for outdated content on Google itself by using the “custom range” feature?

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