Link Reclamation: How To Find & Reclaim Lost Backlinks (2025)

Link Reclamation: How To Find & Reclaim Lost Backlinks (1)

Raghav Tayal

Head Of Operations - Digital Web Solutions

July 31, 2024

Have you ever wondered why your website’s search engine rankings aren’t improving despite your best efforts? It could be due to lost or broken backlinks. These backlinks, which are links from other websites pointing to yours, play a major role in SEO.

Over time, they can break or disappear because of changes in website structures, deleted pages, or incorrect URLs. Link reclamation is essential for finding and fixing these issues. Let’s see in detail what the process entails.

What is Link Reclamation?

Link reclamation involves locating and recovering lost or broken backlinks to your website. Backlinks are links from various other websites to your website, which are essential for search engine rankings. As time passes, these links could break or disappear because of website structure modifications, omitted pages, and incorrect or broken URLs.

Reclaiming these lost links maintains and enhances your SEO performance by ensuring that link equity remains flowing to your website. This helps keep your link profile healthy and improves the visibility of your website’s search engine results.

Why is Link Reclamation Important?

The link reclamation process is important for many reasons, as listed below.

Restoring Lost Link Equity

Link reclamation helps restore lost link equity, which is the value passed from one site to another through backlinks. This link equity, also known as link juice, significantly influences your search engine rankings.

When you reclaim lost links, you regain this lost value, boosting your site’s visibility in search engine results. More authoritative websites with quality backlinks generally rank higher in search engines.

Maintaining a Healthy Link Profile

Maintaining a healthy link profile is essential for robust SEO. A link profile is the collection of all inbound links pointing to your site. When links break or are lost, it can negatively impact your link profile and, consequently, your search engine rankings.

A weak link profile suggests to search engines that your site may not be reliable or authoritative. Reclaiming links keeps your link profile healthy and fresh so search engines see your website positively.

Cost-Effective Link-Building Strategy

Link reclamation is a cost-effective link-building strategy. Acquiring new links can be time-consuming and expensive. However, reclaiming previously existing links that already hold value is a more efficient way to enhance your link profile.

Concentrating on link reclamation can produce sizable SEO gains with reasonably little work and expense and is a great approach for any site seeking to enhance its search engine efficiency.

Recovering Traffic & Leads

Lost links could mean lost traffic and potential leads that were directed to your website. Reclaiming these links can recover this traffic for more engagement and conversions. Ensuring people can locate your content through these reclaimed links can enhance the performance of your website.

Protecting Your Brand Reputation

Broken or lost links may cause a terrible user experience and harm your brand image. Individuals who see dead links might think your website is outdated or inadequately maintained. Reclaiming lost links ensures users have a smooth experience, which maintains and enhances your brand’s reputation.

Increasing Content Discoverability

Regaining lost links helps search engines and users locate your content. When broken links are fixed, pathways to your content are restored. This will provide your content with greater recognition and opportunities to be shared and linked by others.

Boosting Domain Authority

Reclaiming lost links increases your domain authority, a significant SEO factor. Domain authority demonstrates how relevant and trustworthy your website is. Reclaiming good-quality backlinks improves domain authority and helps your website rank well in online search engine rankings.

Preventing Competitors from Gaining Advantage

If your links are lost or broken, competitors might take the opportunity to fill the void. Reclaiming your links prevents competitors from obtaining an advantage via lost traffic and link equity. This strategy keeps you competitive in your industry.

Claiming Unlinked Mentions vs. Link Reclamation

Claiming Unlinked Mentions

Claiming unlinked mentions involves finding instances where your brand, product, or content is mentioned on another website without a backlink. This process involves turning those mentions into actual links. You can generate new links by reaching out to the site owners and requesting that they add a link to your site.

This increases your website’s visibility, authority, and SEO performance. Tools like Google Alerts or Mention can help track these unlinked mentions and also spot new backlink opportunities.

Link Reclamation

On the other hand, link reclamation focuses on recovering lost or broken links that previously existed. These could be links that have broken due to website redesigns, deleted pages, or incorrect URLs.

The goal here is to restore these links and regain the lost link equity they provided. Tools like Ahrefs Site Explorer or Google Search Console can help you identify lost or broken backlinks. Once identified, you can reach out to the site owners to update the links, ensuring that the valuable link juice continues to flow to your site.

Different but Complementary Strategies

Both claiming unlinked mentions and link reclamation are essential for building a strong link profile, but they serve different purposes within your overall link-building strategy. Claiming unlinked mentions helps generate new links, thereby expanding your backlink portfolio.

Link reclamation, on the other hand, is about maintaining and restoring the value of your existing backlinks. Together, these strategies help you obtain new backlinks and keep the value of those you already have for a good SEO strategy.

Finding and Fixing Broken Internal Links

Broken internal links are links within your website that lead to non-existent or incorrect pages. These broken links can negatively affect user experience and SEO. Not only does this increase your bounce rate, but search engines like Google might also penalize your website if it contains a lot of broken links.

Tools like Google Search Console report on almost all broken internal links on your website.

Once you’ve identified the broken links, the next step is fixing internal links. A few methods used for this are updating or removing the broken links, inserting a 301 redirect, or inserting a 302 redirect. Using these tools, you can find ways to fix broken links and regain their value. Finding and fixing broken links is of utmost importance for a website that wants to rank high on search engines.

Let’s explore in detail how to fix broken internal links using these methods.

How to fix Broken Internal Links

When users encounter broken links, they may become frustrated and leave your site, increasing your bounce rate. These are some effective methods to fix broken internal links:

Update or Remove the Broken Links

The first step in fixing broken internal links is to update or remove them. Start by using tools like Google Search Console or other SEO tools to find broken backlinks on your site. Once identified, check if the target page still exists but has a different URL. If so, update the link to point to the correct URL. This ensures that users and search engines are directed to the right page, maintaining the user experience and passing the link equity.

If the page no longer exists, consider removing the link entirely or replacing it with a link to a relevant, existing page. For example, if a product page has been deleted, you might replace the link with one that leads to a similar product or a category page. Removing or replacing broken links helps keep your site clean, which is essential for both SEO as well as user experience.

Regularly checking and updating your internal links is a good practice to ensure that your site remains functional and easy to navigate.

Insert a 301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. If a page has moved permanently, set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL. This ensures that users and search engines are directed to the correct page, preserving the link equity of the original link.

For example, if you’ve restructured your site and changed the URL of a popular blog post, a 301 redirect will easily guide visitors and search engines to the new location. Implementing 301 redirects helps maintain the value of your backlinks and ensures that your site’s SEO remains intact.

Insert a 302 Redirect

A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect from one URL to another. Use a 302 redirect if the page is temporarily unavailable but will return in the future. This tells search engines that the redirect is temporary and that the original URL should still be indexed.

For instance, if you’re updating a page with new content or making temporary changes, a 302 redirect will inform search engines that the original page will be back soon. This type of redirect is useful for short-term changes and helps manage traffic without losing SEO value.

Finding Lost External Backlinks

Lost external backlinks are links from other websites that point to your site but are no longer active. These lost links can occur due to site changes, content deletion, or incorrect linking. Such links are essential because they contribute to your site’s authority and search engine rankings. When these links break or disappear, it can negatively impact your SEO performance.

To find lost external links, you can use tools like Ahrefs Site Explorer or Google Search Console. These tools provide reports on backlinks that are no longer active. Once you have identified the lost backlinks, prioritize reclaiming those from high-authority sites, as they hold significant value. Regaining these lost backlinks keeps valuable link equity, contributing to your website and enhancing your SEO performance.

How to Reclaim Lost Links

Prioritize the Links

Not all lost links are equal in terms of value. Some links hold more value than others. Use tools like Ahrefs Site Explorer to generate a report on lost links. This report will show you which links to your site have been lost.

Once you have this information, prioritize reclaiming links from high-authority sites and pages with significant traffic, as these links will have the most impact on your SEO. High-authority sites are those that are well-respected in your industry and have numerous high-quality backlinks themselves. Reclaiming these links first will help you regain lost link value and boost your site’s overall SEO performance more effectively.

Reach Out to Website Owners

Once you have prioritized the lost links, the next step is to contact the website owners. Start by finding the contact information for the relevant site owner or webmaster. Then, send a polite and concise email informing them about the broken link.

Clearly specify the location of the broken link on their site and provide the correct URL. Be courteous and professional in your communication, as a positive approach increases the likelihood of a favorable response. Most site owners will appreciate the heads-up and update the link accordingly.

Follow Up

Sometimes, website owners may not respond to your initial request. In such cases, it becomes important to follow up with them. Send a gentle reminder a week or two after your initial contact. Reiterate your previous message, ensuring you remain polite and professional. Persistence can pay off, and many site owners will eventually update the link.

If necessary, follow up again after another week or two. Be sure not to appear pushy but rather consistently courteous. Following up shows that you value the correction of the broken link and appreciate their cooperation. This approach often results in successful link reclamation, which restores link equity to your site. It is of utmost importance to keep a cool head.

Conclusion

Link reclamation is an essential procedure for your website’s SEO. Reclaiming lost links and fixing broken internal links keep link equity flowing to your website and boosting your online search engine rankings and visibility.

Remember to concentrate on high-value links, email website owners politely, and follow up if necessary. With consistent link reclamation efforts, you can keep a healthy link profile that supports your SEO efforts.

Link Reclamation: How To Find & Reclaim Lost Backlinks (2025)

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Kelle Weber

Last Updated:

Views: 6331

Rating: 4.2 / 5 (73 voted)

Reviews: 88% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Kelle Weber

Birthday: 2000-08-05

Address: 6796 Juan Square, Markfort, MN 58988

Phone: +8215934114615

Job: Hospitality Director

Hobby: tabletop games, Foreign language learning, Leather crafting, Horseback riding, Swimming, Knapping, Handball

Introduction: My name is Kelle Weber, I am a magnificent, enchanting, fair, joyous, light, determined, joyous person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.