Backlinks are vital for boosting search rankings and building domain authority, but they’re not always permanent. Over time, links can become broken, removed, or ineffective, impacting your site’s SEO performance.
Losing backlinks can hurt your SEO efforts, diminishing your site’s authority and traffic. Link reclamation is a proactive strategy to recover these lost assets and maximize their impact. Whether links are broken, removed, or outdated, reclaiming them helps restore your site’s credibility and search performance.
In this guide, we’ll share proven techniques to identify and reclaim links, ensuring your SEO efforts remain strong and effective.
What is Link Reclamation?
The link reclamation process involves identifying and recovering lost backlinks to restore a website’s authority and SEO value. Backlinks may be lost for several reasons, such as page deletions, URL changes, or the removal of links by site owners.
Don’t worry because you can reclaim previously existing links to regain the referral traffic and SEO benefits associated with them. It’s a cost-effective way to optimize existing link equity without constantly building links.
For businesses seeking expert assistance, GrowthOG offers tailored link reclamation strategies to recover lost links efficiently, ensuring your site regains its authority and SEO impact.
The Impact of Lost or Broken Links
Here’s how lost or broken links can negatively impact your website’s performance and overall search engine optimization efforts:
- Damaged website credibility: A lost or broken link creates a poor user experience, reducing trust in your website and brand.
- Lowered search engine rankings: Broken external links signal poor site maintenance to search engines, negatively affecting your site’s rankings.
- Missed referral traffic: Broken links cut off potential visitors who could have discovered your site through valuable external sources.
- Lost link equity: It means a broken external link that fails to pass valuable link equity, which weakens your domain authority and SEO strength.
- Decreased conversion opportunities: Missing referral traffic can result in fewer leads, sales, or conversions on which your website relies.
- Increased bounce rates: Broken internal or external links can frustrate visitors, causing them to leave your site and negatively impacting engagement metrics.
- Wasted content investment: High-quality content linked to your site becomes less impactful when a link pointing to it needs to be fixed or recovered.
- Difficulty outranking competitors: Losing relevant backlinks puts you at a disadvantage in competitive industries where link-building is key to visibility.
- Potential for Google penalties: Many broken links signal low-quality site management, which could affect your reputation with search algorithms.
- Diminished brand reputation: Broken links can reflect poorly on your professionalism, making it harder to establish authority in your industry.
To mitigate these negative impacts and safeguard your site’s SEO performance, it’s crucial to implement an effective link reclamation strategy.
Finding and Fixing Broken Internal Links
To find lost links, you need some tools that can help you review and audit your website. Here’s how you can tackle it effectively:
Use SEO tools
Tools like a free backlink checker, Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider, Google Analytics, and Ahrefs Site Explorer are powerful for finding lost links. These tools crawl your website and flag any internal links leading to 404 errors or other client-side issues.
Filter for 4xx errors
When running a crawl with Screaming Frog SEO Spider or similar tools, filter the results to show 4xx errors, which indicate broken links. These errors suggest that the destination page needs to be found and addressed.
Review the affected pages
Once you’ve identified the broken links, go through the pages where the issues are located. Check if the target page has been moved, deleted, or renamed. If the linking page has moved, you can update the internal link with the new URL, or reclaiming links can solve the problem.
Fix or redirect
If a page has been permanently removed or is no longer relevant, consider setting up a 301 redirect to another relevant page. If the link was supposed to lead to a page that still exists, make sure the URL is correct and update the link accordingly.
Regular audits
Broken internal links can appear over time as the web redesigns, evolves, and adds or removes pages. Regular audits using the tools mentioned can help keep your website in good shape.
Identifying Lost External Backlinks
Identifying lost external backlinks is crucial to reclaim lost links, as these lost links can impact your site’s domain authority and search engine rankings.
Here’s how you can effectively find and track lost backlinks:
- Use Ahrefs: Ahrefs is one of the most powerful tools for identifying links pointing to your site. By using Ahrefs’ site explorer, you can see all the external backlinks to your domain. This tool allows you to filter out broken or lost backlinks and helps you track which ones are no longer active.
- Track Lost Backlinks in a Spreadsheet: Once you identify lost links using Ahrefs or similar tools, it’s important to document them in a spreadsheet. This will allow you to track which backlinks have been lost, the pages they were linked to, and the URLs of the linking websites. Having a clear list helps in planning targeted outreach strategies to reclaim lost backlinks.
- Reverse Image Search: If you’ve lost backlinks pointing to images or other media, reverse image search tools can help. These tools show you where your photos have been used across the web.
By regularly finding lost external backlinks, you can initiate link reclamation campaigns to recover valuable backlinks, thus helping to restore your SEO authority.
Common Types of Broken Links
To effectively fix lost links, it’s essential to understand the common causes behind them, as each can have a unique impact on both your SEO and user experience.
Deleted pages
One of the most common causes of broken links is the site owner deleted a page or a link. If there are external sites linking to a page that no longer exists, it results in a broken link.
This can be particularly challenging to remedy, as it requires contacting external sites or redirecting users to a new, relevant page.
URL changes
URL changes can also cause broken backlinks. If you modify the structure of your website or move pages to new URLs without implementing proper redirects, the links from the old URLs will no longer function. This situation leads to a loss of link equity and potential ranking issues.
For this reason, set up 301 redirects from the old URL to the new one to avoid this problem.
Broken internal links
Similar to external links, internal links within your own site can also become broken. This can happen when you delete or move pages or if there’s a change in URL structure without updating all internal references.
Broken internal links can also disrupt site navigation and negatively affect SEO and the user experience.
Reclaiming Lost Links
Link reclamation is crucial to any SEO strategy, helping you restore link juice and improve search engine ranking.
Here’s how to go about it.
Firstly, reach out to website owners. When you discover a site has been linked to a broken or outdated page from your site, the first step is to reach out to the website owner. Inform them of the issue and provide the correct, updated URL.
Many website owners will happily update the link, which benefits your site and theirs.
If contacting the site owner isn’t an option, you can set up 301 redirects from the old, broken URL to a relevant, live page on your site. This ensures any incoming traffic and link equity from the broken link are preserved, preventing any loss in SEO value.
For businesses looking to recover lost backlinks without the headache of managing outreach and technical fixes, GrowthOG offers successful link reclamation services.
Our team of experts can handle the entire process, from identifying lost links to contacting website owners and implementing redirects, ensuring your site benefits from high-quality backlinks while saving you time and effort.
Link Reclamation Tools and Techniques
To effectively reclaim lost or broken backlinks, you should leverage the right tools and strategies. Here’s a breakdown of the most powerful techniques to help you recover valuable links and maintain your website’s SEO performance.
Use Ahrefs site explorer to identify broken internal links
Source: Ahrefs
Ahrefs Site Explorer is a comprehensive tool that allows you to analyze your website’s backlink profile. By running a site audit, you can quickly identify broken internal links and the pages the link is pointing to.
Source: WPHacked
This tool allows you to filter out “4xx” errors, which are client-side issues like missing pages. Once identified, you can fix the internal link or update it to ensure it points to your site’s relevant, active page.
Use Google Search Console to find lost or broken links
Google Search Console is another useful tool to find broken internal links. It offers insights into the crawl errors your website may be experiencing, including damaged or lost internal links.
Source: Searchviu
The “Coverage” report within Google Search Console will show pages that Google could not crawl, along with details about the errors. By regularly monitoring this, you can address broken links promptly and maintain a healthy site.
Use reverse image search to find where your images are being used
Another effective broken link-building strategy involves the use of reverse image search tools like TinEye or Google Images. By uploading an image or pasting its URL into these tools, you can find instances where your image has been used across the web.
If a website uses your image without attribution or a link back to your site, you can reach out to the site owner and request a proper backlink. It will help you claim unlinked mentions.
Competitor analysis to identify lost backlink opportunities
Looking at your competitors’ link building strategies can reveal opportunities for link reclamation. Using tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush, you can locate backlinks pointing to competitor pages that are now broken or redirected.
Reach out to those site owners with the correct link to your content, capitalizing on the already established trust of that site.
Setting up 301 redirects for lost backlinks
Setting up 301 redirects is critical when you’ve lost backlinks due to URL changes or deleted pages. A 301 redirect will send traffic and SEO value from the broken link to a relevant page on your website. This method ensures you don’t lose link equity, and it improves user experience by directing visitors to live pages, even if the original page no longer exists.
Track backlink health with tools like screaming frog
Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider Tool is a powerful solution to find broken backlinks on your site. It allows you to crawl your site and identify all 4xx errors (client error), including internal and external broken links.
With this data, you can quickly reach out to website owners to have links updated or redirect the broken links to relevant content. Screaming Frog provides a detailed report, helping you systematically address each issue and find lost external backlinks.
Use email outreach tools for effective link reclamation
Effective email outreach is a core component of link reclamation. Tools like Hunter.io, BuzzStream, and Mailshake can help streamline your outreach efforts. These tools assist in finding contact information for website owners and tracking outreach progress.
To replace broken links pointing to your website, find these links and send personalized emails requesting the update of those links with the correct URL. This automation can save time and increase the efficiency of your reclamation efforts.
By leveraging these tools and techniques, you can recover lost backlinks and maintain your site’s credibility and rankings. If you’re looking for expert help, GrowthOG specializes in link reclamation strategies that can save you time and ensure comprehensive results.
Measuring the Success of Your Link Reclamation Campaigns
Measuring the success of your link reclamation campaigns is crucial to understanding their effectiveness and impact on your SEO performance. Here are some critical steps to help you track and evaluate your progress:
- Use tools like Ahrefs to measure the success of your link reclamation efforts by tracking the number of recovered backlinks and monitoring any changes in your backlink profile. You can also consider SEO review tools because some tools offer free backlink checkers to see broken links.
- Assess the broader impact on your website’s SEO performance, including improvements in domain authority, keyword rankings, and organic traffic.
- Prioritize high-value backlinks during the link reclamation process, as neglecting important links can lead to missed opportunities and a negative impact on your results.
With GrowthOG’s comprehensive reporting and analytics services, you can ensure that your link reclamation efforts are on track. Their expert team provides detailed insights and performance tracking, helping you evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies and ensuring measurable, positive results for your SEO growth.
Integrating Link Reclamation into Your SEO Strategy
Integrating link reclamation into your SEO strategy is a powerful way to strengthen your website’s backlink profile and overall search performance. Here’s how to do it effectively:
- Incorporate link reclamation into your broader SEO plan: Reclaiming lost backlinks should be seen as an ongoing effort that works with other SEO activities, like content marketing and link building. This holistic approach ensures that your site benefits from a diverse range of high-quality backlinks.
- Set a timeline for link reclamation efforts: Organize link reclamation projects within your SEO roadmap. This helps you manage the workload efficiently and ensures you’re consistently recovering valuable links that can have a lasting impact.
- Complement link reclamation with other SEO tactics: While link reclamation is crucial, it should not be the only strategy in your SEO toolbox. Combining it with regular content creation, technical SEO improvements, and proactive link building will provide a well-rounded, effective SEO strategy.
By working with a team like GrowthOG, you can seamlessly integrate link reclamation into your SEO strategy, leveraging their expertise to reclaim valuable backlinks and boost your site’s authority.
Over to You
Link reclamation is not just a fix-it task for broken links; it’s a strategic move that can significantly boost your site’s traffic and elevate your SEO rankings. By proactively identifying and recovering lost backlinks, you ensure your website’s authority remains strong, and your SEO efforts continue to thrive.
With the right tools and techniques in place, you can guarantee the success of your link reclamation efforts and give your website the boost it deserves. Ready to take your SEO to the next level?
Reach out to GrowthOG today to reclaim vital link juice and harness the full potential of your website’s SEO performance. Let our team of experts guide you through the process and help you see measurable results.
