How would you use this broken link building opportunity?
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I've found a good opportunity to build some links and I'd love your opinions on my options here.
There's a big event that happens once a year in my city. Let's say the event used to have a website called www.CityEvent.com. The event decided not to use this website anymore, but instead to put all of their event information on their facebook page. It looks like they let their domain name expire and someone else snapped it up. It's now sitting as an empty wordpress blog with one line of text.
This empty website has 1300 links pointing to it.
I can see two opportunities here:
1. Write a very thorough article on my website (that I am trying to build links to) describing the event and giving people all of the information that they need to know about it. (The amount of information on the Facebook page is minimal.)
or
2. Create a new website called www.EventCity.com and put up a static page with all of the information that people need to know. There would be a link on this page pointing to the site that I am trying to rank.
In both cases there would be much more information than is available on the Facebook page including a collection of youtube videos about the event and many helpful links for people who are interested in this type of event.
Then the plan is to contact the sites who are linking to the dead page and invite them to link to my new page (either on my site or the new site that I could create).
I see a few pros and cons to each method.
For option #2 I think people would be more likely to link to a more official looking page rather than an article on a separate website. (My website has information about the city in question but is not closely related to the event at all.) However, I would only be getting one link back to my site. One negative to this is that the actual organizers of the event may not be pleased that someone has created an official looking page. But then again, perhaps they would be happy to have a free website.
For option #1 I would possibly get more links from sites that are authoritative in my city that point directly to the site I am trying to rank. However, people would be less likely to link to us because we are not an official site for the event, but simply a very good article about the event. There are no other good articles for this event that are ranking on Google.
Hopefully that makes sense. What would you do?
EDIT - Just thought of a third option - try to buy the domain.
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EDIT - Just thought of a third option - try to buy the domain.
lol... that was the first one that I thought of.... I would be on the phone, sending email, driving to their house.
... but after you own it they might realize that the bozo running the site for them allowed it to expire and see that you grabbed it and want it back! They will be cussing about you louder than they will be cussing about Bozo.
But... I would still go after it.
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Yes. Option #3. If it expired in the last year, it may just be in limbo. I'd find out, but don't sound overly interested. if the call forwards to some "attorney" selling domain names for ridiculous prices, forget it and go with option #1. I think if the content was great your hypotheses that people would be less likely to link may prove untrue. Good luck and I want to know what happens.
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