The “Out-of-Stock” Strategy: Replacing Broken Product Links
Client: An e-commerce store selling “vintage electronics” and parts.
Challenges We Faced
The client operated in a niche where products constantly went out of stock or companies went bust, creating “link rot”:
“Link Rot” in Niche
Many enthusiast blogs and forums were linking to product pages on competitor sites that were now 404 (out of stock/deleted).
Lost Sales
Users were clicking these links, hitting a 404, and leaving the niche entirely.
No Referral Traffic
The client was missing out on this high-intent traffic from hobbyist sites.
Niche-Specific Broken Link Hunting
They didn’t have the tools to find these specific broken product links.
No Outreach Plan
They had no clear process to contact site owners and replace broken product links with their own pages.
Turn 404s Into Sales
“Are dead links costing your industry sales? Our Niche-Specific Broken Link Hunting finds 404s and points them to your products.”
Our Approach – How We Solved These Challenges
Niche-Specific Broken Link Hunting
We crawled 50 top “vintage tech” blogs and forums using Screaming Frog to find outbound links to 404 product pages.
Competitor Link Research
We analyzed the backlink profiles of 3 major competitors who had recently discontinued specific product lines.
Manual Webmaster Outreach
We reached out to the blog owners: “I see you’re linking to [Product X] on [Competitor Site], but it’s a dead link. We have [Product X] in stock right here…”
Link Placement & Monitoring
We secured links directly to our client’s product pages (a rare feat in link building).
Results
| Metric | Before | After | Growth |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct Product Page Links | 5 | 65 | +1,200% |
| Organic Revenue (from referral traffic) | $500/mo | $12,000/mo | +2,300% |
| Conversion Rate (Referral Traffic) | 1.5% | 4.8% | +220% |
Free “Link Rot” Analysis
“Not sure where the broken links are? Request a Free Industry Link Audit from our broken backlink building company!”
Advice for Marketers & Brand Owners
- Broken product links are money on the table. If a blog links to a dead product page, they want to fix it. Offer your in-stock product as the solution.
- Target “hobbyist” blogs and forums. They often have many broken links but highly engaged audiences.
- This is a direct-revenue strategy. Unlike linking to a blog post, these links send buyers directly to your checkout.
Extra Factors That Made It Work
- The high intent of the audience (looking for a specific vintage part) meant the conversion rate on these links was incredibly high.
- The outreach was seen as “helpful” rather than “salesy” because we were fixing a bad user experience on their blog.
- We successfully built links to “money” pages, which is the hardest type of link building to do
