What value do external broken links give to a domain?

[xposurecreative]

I ask, as I've just used opensite explorer to look at external links a competitor has, and I've found the high value ones at the top of the list go to a page that no longer exists on their site. Are these stiill of value in the SERP's, or have they messed up by not putting a 301 redirect on them?

[AdamThompson]

If they haven't 301'd the link, they are missing out on the link juice.

You could always try to convince the websites to replace the broken link with a link to a similar page on your site.

[anthonytjm]

Excellent answer Adam. Very well done.

[xposurecreative]

Thanks Adam,

Great idea with replacing the link as well, if only I know what the missing page was about!

[AdamThompson]

There are a couple tactics you could try:

1. See if http://archive.org/web/web.php has a cache of the page.

2. Use OSE, Majestic, etc to find backlinks to the page. Maybe one of the backlinks will include a description of what was on the page.