PSA: I saw a 40% jump in organic traffic after fixing broken backlinks for a client.

I was working on a site for a small law firm in Austin. Their traffic had been flat for about six months. I ran a full backlink audit with Ahrefs and found over 200 links from decent local news sites and directories that were just dead, 404 errors. Instead of just letting them go, I spent two weeks doing outreach. I emailed the webmasters, offered a fresh, updated link to a relevant page on my client's site. I got about 30 of those links restored. Within the next 60 days, their organic traffic shot up from roughly 2k to 2.8k visitors a month. It wasn't some fancy new tactic, just cleaning up what was already there but broken. The links had authority, and Google seemed to reward fixing them more than I expected. Has anyone else seen a big win just from link repair instead of only chasing new ones?

3 comments

3 Comments

dakota_nelson431mo ago

That's a solid result for a law firm in a competitive local market. Honestly, I had a similar thing happen with a local hardware store's website last year. Found about 50 broken links from old community event pages and fixed maybe 15 of them. Their traffic didn't jump 40%, but it was a steady 15% climb over the next few months that just held. It really does feel like Google gives you credit for the cleanup work.

the_rose27d ago

A bakery finding free money in the couch cushions is exactly the right way to put it... just a shame the couch cushions are full of old crumbs and broken links. At least Google seems to appreciate the effort even if nobody's going to throw a party over a bunch of fixed URLs. Must be nice to be a search engine, getting all the credit just for noticing someone finally swept the floor.

the_ray1mo ago

Yeah, that "credit for the cleanup work" feeling is real. I fixed a bunch of broken links for a bakery's old blog from local food guides. Got maybe 20 live again, and their search visibility for "birthday cakes [town name]" moved up a full page in the results. It's like finding free money in the couch cushions.