What Is Link Reclamation?
Link Reclamation means finding and getting back the links to your site that don't work anymore.
Why Does Link Reclamation Matter?
Link Reclamation is important to do because getting more links from other sites to yours can increase the chances for your website to become more visible in searches. This makes it easier for people to find and visit your site.
Here are some reasons why it is important:
Recovering lost link equity:
Links from other websites pass value called "link equity" to your site. This means they help boost your website's authority and importance. If you lose one of these backlinks, you also lose that value it was passing to your site. By recovering these lost backlinks through Link Reclamation, you get back that helpful boost they give your website. This can improve your search engine rankings so more people find your site.
Maintaining domain authority: Getting links from other trusted and popular websites can give your website more "authority" or influence. This authority is called "domain authority" - it's like a measure of how important search engines think your site is. If you lose links from sites that give you domain authority, it can bring down your website's authority. By reclaiming those lost backlinks, you make sure your site doesn't lose the influence and importance it had before. This keeps your domain authority higher.
Improving organic search visibility: When you show up higher in Google and other search results, more people will find and click through to your site. This organic traffic from search engines is good for business because those visitors are usually more interested in what you offer. By recovering lost backlinks and keeping your rankings up, you keep getting this steady stream of potential customers finding you through search.
Strengthening your website's reputation:
Getting links from big, popular websites related to your industry (or niche) helps make your own site seem more credible and trustworthy to visitors. It shows people that influential sites think your content is good enough to link to. When you reclaim backlinks from these authoritative sites, it keeps improving your reputation over time. It reminds search engines and visitors that experts in your field value what you provide.
Cost-effective SEO strategy: Trying to get websites to link back to you can take a lot of effort and money. But with link reclamation, you focus on links you used to have, so you don't have to start from scratch. Since those sites linked to you before, it's often easier to convince them to put that link back up. This makes reclaiming lost links a very effective way to better your website's SEO that doesn't require as much time or money as getting completely new links.
Better user experience: Broken links on your site or on pages linking to you create a bumpy experience for visitors. When people click a link and it doesn't work, it leaves a bad impression. By reclaiming lost backlinks, you fix these broken links directing users to your website. This gives visitors a seamless, frustration-free experience between sites.
Reclaiming Links vs Building New Ones
There are two main ways to get other websites to link to your site. One is trying to recover links you used to have but lost - this is "reclaiming" links. The other is reaching out to new sites to link to you for the first time.
Whether it's better to reclaim old links or build new backlinks depends on the quality of those links.
If the lost links you want back are low-quality or from spammy sites or de-indexed ones, it's not worth the effort. These kinds of poor links can actually hurt your website.
However, if you can recover backlinks you lost from trusted, relevant sites, it's very valuable to get them back. These types of quality links will regain some search engine authority.
Building brand new links allows you to target sites you want links from. But you have to start those relationships from scratch.
In the end, focus your time on recovering or building links that come from websites with a trusted backlink profile and are closely related to what your website is about.
These links are the most beneficial for improving your search rankings and visitor trust. The specific source isn't as important as the overall quality and relevance.
Claiming Unlinked Mentions vs. Link Reclamation
Sometimes websites will mention your business or write about your products but not put a link. These are called "unlinked brand mentions" - talking about you without connecting back to your site.
You can reach out to those sites that mention you and ask them to add links pointing back to your website. Getting sites to add these new links can help you show up better in searches. This is called "claiming unlinked mentions."
"Link reclamation" is different - it means finding any past links to your site that have gotten broken or stopped working for some reason. Then you ask those websites to put the links pointing to your site back up.
So in simpler terms:
Unlinked mentions = sites that talk about your business but with no link. You reach out to get new links added.
Link reclamation = past links to your site that disappeared or broke. You ask to have those old links put back.
Both help search engines see more sites endorsing you with links and can improve your standings.
But here we will only discuss reclaiming the lost or broken external links to your website.
How to Reclaim Lost Links?
Reclaiming is really helpful for making your website show up better in search engines. When you get those old links put back up again, it regains the value and authority those links were originally passing to your site.
Here's a step-by-step guide on how to reclaim lost links:
Identifying lost or broken backlinks
The first thing to do is look for links that used to go to your site but are now broken or not working anymore. You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs that will scan the web and show you links pointing towards your website.
Finding Lost/Broken Backlinks using ahrefs
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool that helps you monitor your website's backlinks, among other things.
To check for broken backlinks to your website using Ahrefs, follow these steps:
Sign in to your Ahrefs account.
Add your website to your Ahrefs account by clicking the "Add new project" button and following the prompts to enter your website's URL.
Once your website is added, click on "Site Explorer" in the top menu bar.
In the Site Explorer search bar, type in your website's URL and click the search icon or hit Enter.
After your website's data is loaded, click on the "Backlinks" tab on the left-hand side of the screen.
To see the broken backlinks, click on the "Link Type" dropdown menu and select "Broken." This will show you a list of broken backlinks pointing to your website.
Analyze the lost links
Ahrefs will give you lots of details about those broken backlinks that used to go to your website. Some key things to look at:
The quality rating of the sites that are linked to you - how authoritative are they in general?
Relevance - is the content on those pages closely related to your website's focus?
Anchor text - what keywords or phrases were the old, now-broken links using?
Any other stats about the sites and links
Checking out all these details on your lost backlinks helps you figure out which ones are the highest quality and most worth trying to recover.
It also shows you why those links might have gotten removed or broken so you can address any issues.
Prioritize reclamation efforts
Now make a priority list of the lost backlinks that seem the most valuable to try to reclaim, based on what you learned analyzing them.
For example, focus first on:
Links that came from sites considered high-quality and authoritative
Links where the content surrounding them was closely aligned with your website topic
Links with good anchor text using relevant keywords
Prepare your outreach
Write a nice, professional email to use when contacting website owners.
Customize the email for each person. Include the exact details about their broken link and the right web address to put instead.
Contact website owners
Contact the people who run the websites that used to have links pointing to your site.
Ask them nicely if they can update those links with the right web address that goes to your website.
Be friendly and give them the working web address link and any other info that would make it easy for them to put the correct link back on their website linking to your site.
Follow-up
If the website owners don't reply to your email within 1 or 2 weeks, send them another email reminding them about your request.
Be patient and polite - they are probably busy and get a lot of emails.
Keep a list of who you contacted, if they wrote back, and if they fixed the broken links.
Update your files so you know what got fixed. Use this information next time you need to ask owners to update their links.
Broken internal links and link reclamation
When you ask other sites to fix broken links that point to your site, it's important to fix broken links on your own website too.
You should regularly check your site for internal links between your own pages that are broken. Then you can quickly fix them.
That way, if another website links to one of your pages, it will take visitors to the right page instead of an error page.
Screaming Frog is a good free tool to find broken links on your site. The free version works for small sites up to 500 pages. If your site is bigger, you can pay for the full version.
Screaming Frog for broken internal links
Here's a step-by-step guide to help you identify broken internal links using Screaming Frog:
Open the Screaming Frog SEO Spider tool on your computer.
In the top bar of the tool, enter your website's URL and press the 'Start' button.
The tool will begin crawling your website, analyzing all the pages and links. This process may take some time, depending on the size of your website.
Once the crawl is complete, click on the 'Response Codes' tab. From the filter dropdown, select 'Client Error (4xx)' to display a list of broken internal links with 4xx HTTP status codes.
Examine the list of broken internal links, paying attention to the 'Status Code' column. Common status codes include 404 (Not Found) and 410 (Gone), indicating broken links.
To save the list of broken links, click on 'Export' in the top-right corner of the tool. Choose the desired file format (e.g., CSV, Excel) and save it to your computer.
Use the exported list to identify and update the broken internal links on your website. Replace them with working links or redirect them if they are no longer relevant.
By following these steps, you can use Screaming Frog to effectively identify and fix broken internal links on your website, improve the overall user experience, and maintain the integrity of your backlinks.
Takeaway
Link reclamation means finding and fixing any links from other websites that used to point to your site but are now broken.
Doing this can help improve your website's reputation, authority, and placement in search engines. It has positive effects on your website's SEO and how easy it is for people to find you online.
Some reasons link reclamation matters are that it gets back lost linking power, keeps up your site's authority, boosts search engine rankings, and gives visitors a better experience on your site.