Resource pages and curated lists

Across the web, people maintain pages whose whole job is pointing readers at the best resources on a topic: a university's page of grants for small businesses, an association's list of training tools, a blogger's “everything you need to start X” roundup. Those pages exist to link out. If your asset genuinely belongs on one, you are not interrupting the owner — you are helping them do the page's job.

Find them by hand. Search for your topic plus the phrases these pages use — “resources,” “helpful links,” “recommended tools,” “further reading” — and work through the results like a researcher, not a scraper. For each candidate, qualify it before you write a word: is the page maintained (updated within living memory)? Is it relevant to your exact audience? Does it link to things like yours, or only to institutions? Ten qualified pages beat a hundred scraped ones, and the qualification read takes two minutes each.

Then make the ask easy to say yes to. Name the page and the section your resource fits. Say in one line what your page does for their readers that the current list lacks — a gap you genuinely fill, not flattery. Give them the exact URL and a suggested one-line description they can paste. Every second of work you remove from their side raises your odds more than any subject line.

Expect a quiet, respectable hit rate and links that last for years, because maintained resource pages rarely remove good entries. Track who you asked and when, in the same spreadsheet as your media list. And when a page says no or never answers, that is a complete sentence — Module 4 covers the single polite follow-up, and after that, silence is the professional move.

Broken-link building, step by step

Broken-link building is the most honest trade in this field: a page links to something that no longer exists, its readers hit a dead end, and you offer a working replacement. Everyone wins in the open. Here is the full sequence, by hand.

Step 1 — find candidate pages. Start from the resource pages you qualified in the last lesson, plus the pages that link to your competitors (Search Console will not show you those, but a backlink checker's free report will show a sample). Step 2 — find the dead links. Open the page and check links that look old, or run the page through a free broken-link checker. Note the exact dead URL and the words it was linked with — the anchor tells you what the slot was for. Step 3 — check what died. Paste the dead URL into the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) and read the archived page. You need to know what the link promised so your replacement honestly matches it.

Step 4 — qualify your replacement. You need a live page of yours that serves the same reader need at least as well. If you do not have one, this is Module 1 knocking: build it, if the topic matters — several sites have earned their best links from a guide written to fill one important dead slot. Do not offer a near-enough page; editors check, and a mismatch ends the conversation. Step 5 — write the email. Subject: the page, not you. Body: “I was using your resources page for X, noticed the link to Y is dead — it went to a guide about Z. We published one covering the same ground here, in case it is useful as a swap.” Helpful first, offer second, no pressure anywhere.

The reason this play converts: you led with a genuine favor (nobody else told them the link died), and your ask costs them one edit they already needed to make. Keep a log of who you notified, including pages where you had nothing to offer — telling a site owner about a dead link with no ask attached is a relationship deposit that Module 4 will show you how to use.

Unlinked mentions: the warmest outreach there is

Somewhere on the web, a review, a roundup, a forum answer, or a local news story mentions your business by name — and does not link. Each one is a link that half-exists: the writer already chose you, already wrote the sentence; only the underline is missing. Converting mentions is the highest-converting outreach in this course, because you are not persuading a stranger. You are finishing a decision someone already made.

Find them on a rhythm. Set a Google Alert for your business name and your founders' names — it is free and it emails you new mentions as they appear. Once a month, search your name in quotes, minus your own site, and skim the results for mentions on pages that link to other businesses but not you. Do the same for your best asset's title and your founder's name — a study cited by name without a link is the same opportunity wearing a lab coat.

Not every mention deserves the ask. A directory listing that never links out, a social post, a page that names twenty businesses in a table — leave those. The ask works where the page links out editorially and you were simply overlooked: articles, roundups, resource pages, interviews. Judge by one question: if the writer had remembered, would the link obviously be there? If yes, write.

The email is the shortest in this course, and Module 4 will show you why short wins: thank them for the mention — genuinely, you are glad it exists — and ask, in one line, whether they would mind linking your name to your site so readers can find you. Offer the exact URL. That is all. Most writers fix it the same day, because it takes twenty seconds and improves their page. A mention converted is also a relationship opened; note the writer in your list for the next story you pitch.

Partnerships, directories, and community links

The most durable links in most small-business profiles were never “built” at all — they are the exhaust of real relationships. Your suppliers list their stockists. Your customers write case studies. Your chamber of commerce, trade association, and local business alliance all maintain member pages. Events you sponsor or speak at publish your bio. Software you use publishes testimonials and partner directories. Each is a link that passes the Module 0 test effortlessly, because it would exist in a world without search engines.

Work this pile systematically once a quarter. List every organization you belong to, every supplier and platform you pay, every event on your calendar, every customer with a website — then check, by hand, which ones have a page you belong on and are missing from. The gap is usually embarrassingly large: memberships never claimed, a testimonial never offered, a speaker bio with no link. An afternoon of claiming what you have already earned outperforms a month of cold outreach.

Directories need a colder eye. The ones that matter are the ones your customers actually use or your industry actually respects — the association directory, the local chamber, the platform's official partner list. The ones that do not matter announce themselves: free-listing farms with names like a keyword salad, directories that email you offering placement, anything that exists in forty identical copies by city. Claim the real ones with consistent name, address, and phone details; skip the farms entirely, however free they are.

Testimonials deserve a special note, because they trade value honestly. Write a genuine, specific testimonial for a tool or supplier you truly use — what it does for your business, with your name and role — and offer it for their customers page. Most will publish it with a link to your site as attribution. Never fake one, never write one for a product you have not used, and never accept one in return as a swap arrangement. Real praise, freely given, is the entire mechanism.

• List every membership, association, and chamber you belong to — claim your profile and link on each
• List suppliers and platforms you pay — check their stockist, partner, or customer pages for your missing listing
• Write one genuine testimonial for a tool you truly use and offer it to their team
• Check every event you spoke at or sponsored — is your bio published, and does it link?
• Skip any directory your customers have never heard of, however free the listing