Found a dirty trick to get old .edu links resurrected

I had a bunch of broken backlinks from expired .edu pages sitting in my ahrefs report for months. Emailed the old webmasters asking if they'd update the links to similar live pages and three of them actually did it. Have any of you tried digging through old site archives to find link opportunities that others might have missed?

2 comments

2 Comments

jesser7911d ago

Three out of ten emails got me fresh links from old .edu pages that were still kicking around in archive.org. I pulled the Wayback Machine for a university site that had a broken resource page from 2018, found the original live link to my client's guide, and sent the current librarian a short note with the archive link and a path to the updated version. She swapped it in two days. The trick is finding pages where the content still makes sense but the webmaster just never maintained it. Most people don't bother checking old site maps or even archived PDFs, so those links are sitting there waiting for someone to ask nicely.

mark_thomas11d ago

Had pretty much the same luck with a state library site. Found an archived PDF of their resources page from 2016 that still linked out to my client's old domain. Emailed the head of digital collections and they updated it within a week. @jesser79 nailed it about those old site maps being goldmines, most people just overlook them.