Your redesign threw away introductions people are still making

A seven-step play for an SEO or web-development agency. It starts from Ahrefs, stacks Wayback Machine and Firecrawl on top, and ends in a message to the marketing lead that is useful before anyone replies.

Deploy in Glider

Installs this workflow, five project tables and a draft campaign. Source access and any external outputs are checked before research.

Category: Software, web and AI
Sources: 3
Steps: 7

The workflow

TriggerAhrefsExternal links that point at missing pages
Evidence
Wayback MachineWhat each linked page used to say FirecrawlThe current site, to find the right new destination
Artifact
What you hand overA redirect file mapping each broken link to the right destination, plus the pages worth restoring.
Contact
GliderFinds the marketing lead, with a verified work email and a phone
Message
Send itFrom your own mailboxes, evidence attached

Why it earns attention

When a site is redesigned, links other sites made to old pages often break, and the referrals and ranking they carried are lost. A redirect file that fixes it is useful before any pitch.

The play in seven steps

01
Find links that now hit a dead page
Ahrefs
What you pull
Backlinks to the domain whose target URL returns a 404: the linking site, its authority, and the dead URL.
Why it matters
These links are still being clicked and still count, but they lead nowhere. They are value the company already earned.
Example
38 referring domains point at 404 pages · strongest: an industry association's buyer guide
02
See what the old pages said
Wayback Machine
What you pull
Archived copies of each dead URL: title, main topic and the date it last existed.
Why it matters
Knowing what the page was about tells you where the link should go now, or whether the page should come back.
Example
/guides/vendor-comparison · last captured March · a 3,000-word comparison guide
03
Find the right destination
Firecrawl
What you pull
A crawl of the current site: live pages, titles and topics, matched to each dead URL.
Why it matters
Redirecting everything to the homepage wastes the link. Matching by topic keeps it useful.
Example
31 dead URLs have a close match · 7 have no equivalent and are worth restoring
04
Build the redirect file
Your artifact
What you build
A redirect map ready to paste, plus the pages worth restoring, ranked by the links pointing at them.
Why it works
The marketing lead can hand it to a developer the same day. It is the work, done.
Example
31 redirects · 3 pages to restore · ready-to-paste file
05
Check before you send
Check every redirect target loads and actually matches the old topic. Some 404s are deliberate, like discontinued products.
06
Find the marketing lead in Glider
Glider
Search for
Head of marketingSEO managerContent leadWeb manager
Why them
The marketing lead owns traffic. The web manager can apply the file in minutes.
What you get
A work email and a direct phone, with the email verified before it goes into a sequence.
07
Send the evidence, then run the first test
To: the marketing leadEvery line comes from a step above
Several industry sites still link to your old vendor comparison guide, including an association's buyer guide, but those links now hit a missing page.¹ The guide went offline in March.² I matched each dead link to the closest page on your current site.³ Here's the redirect file and the three pages worth restoring.⁴ Want me to send it?
- Facts from the data (the number is the step)
- What you built for them
- One small ask
Why it works
It shows them value they lost without knowing, and the fix is already done. A marketing lead can verify any link in a minute.
First test
Ten sites with a recent redesign.
Success looks like
Five replies out of twenty sites, and two audits sold.