Building backlinks can feel like playing a game of chess with a pigeon.
It poops on the board, knocks over your queen, and walks away like it won. But when I discovered the outdated resources method, the backlink game changed for me.
No shady hacks, no money spent, and no unnecessary groveling. Just a clever strategy that helped me land 536+ solid backlinks, and today, I’m walking you through the whole thing.
What Exactly Are Outdated Resources?
Outdated resources are essentially digital ghosts for pages, tools, or companies that have shut down, moved, rebranded, or simply stopped being relevant to the current one.
The kicker?
Thousands of sites across the web are still linking to them.
Like leaving your ex’s name in your bio.
When a link on someone’s site points to an outdated or broken page, you can swoop in with a friendly email, suggest your better, updated alternative, and boom, you’ve got yourself a backlink.
Step 1: Find the Outdated Stuff
Your first mission is to uncover these digital fossils.
Find websites in your industry that have:
- Changed names
- Moved to a new URL
- Stopped offering a service
- Stopped updating a resource
- Shut down
As an example,
SEOMoz changed its name to Moz and moved from SEOMoz to Moz.
It is a perfect opportunity to reach out to the hundreds of people still linking to the outdated SEOMoz URLs. Even if you can acquire those links, your authority will increase to a great extent.
Step 2: Uncover the Linkers
Now it’s time to play digital detective.
You have found a site that has changed or disappeared.
Now find the poor souls still linking to it.
You can use SEMrush to search for backlinks pointing to outdated URLs.
Boom, there’s your hit list.
It is like finding treasure chests, but instead of gold.
It is sweet, sweet link juice.
Step 3: The Art of the Outreach Email
Outreach is where a lot of people mess up.
Don’t be robotic, and for the love of all things SEO, don’t make it all about you. Your email should be short, friendly, and focused on helping the site owner keep their content fresh and accurate.
Here’s the email template you can use:
Subject: Quick heads up about a broken link on your site.
Hey [First Name],
I was reading your post on [Page Topic] - really helpful stuff.
Just a quick heads-up: One of the links you included (the one pointing to [Old Resource Name]) seems to be outdated or no longer active.
If you’re looking for a replacement, I recently published a guide on [Your Topic] here: [Your Link]
Might be a good fit for your readers.
Either way, just thought I’d flag it for you.
Cheers,
[Your Name]
This isn’t a pitch, it is a public service.
You’re basically saying, hey, I noticed this link isn’t working anymore. I have got something that might be useful for your readers instead.
That’s it. No hard sell. No drama.
Step 4: Use iGrowthful Strategies Bundle
Let me let you in on something, I didn’t stop at outdated resources.
I even used the iGrowthful Strategies database for this website, which has 250+ SEO and various marketing tricks that have helped me get more traffic and generate awesome revenue.
Some gems inside:
- Wikipedia Link Hijacking
- PDF Magnet for Authority Backlinks
- Reddit SEO Tunneling
So, I recommend it for your website too.
Final Thoughts
The best part about this strategy?
It’s completely free. You don’t need fancy link-building agencies, paid backlinks, or sketchy Fiverr gigs. All you need is some curiosity, a few SEO tools, and a little outreach charm.
Backlinks don’t have to be boring. When you hunt down outdated resources, you are not just building links, you’re cleaning up the internet, one broken link at a time.
So go ahead. Be helpful. Be clever.
And start turning digital cobwebs into backlinks that actually matter.
More Strategies:
- Existing Content Optimization Is Giving 40,000+/M Visitors
- 14,000+ Traffic Using Resource Page Link Building Trick
- 1,500+ Backlinks Using The Broken Link Building Strategy