Why Should One Care About Link Reclamation?

What do autos, home appliances, and backlinks have in common?

Unfortunately for us, they will all break with time.

Just like you would upgrade your 1971 Ford Pinto to a more dependable (and less explosive) vehicle, your website must be updated regularly to ensure maximum performance and user experience. 

However, when websites delete pages or change URLs during a redesign, backlinks are broken, and your site’s organic search visibility suffers.

Link reclamation enables you to swiftly repair broken links so your website will continue dominating search engine results pages (SERPs) and drive search traffic to your desired landing pages.

What is Link Reclamation?

Link reclamation is the act of identifying, repairing, or replacing broken links pointing to your website, as well as replacing links that are not delivering value as effectively as they could. They might be internal connections on your website or external links on other people’s websites.

When it comes to SEO, there is a lot of emphasis on creating new links. While adding new connections is crucial, it is also critical to manage your link profile to avoid losing the link juice that your site now has. Link reclamation allows you to detect and mend broken links, preserving the quality and SEO value of your backlinks.

Why should one care about Link Reclamation?

As previously stated, link reclamation ensures that your website does not lose any link juice as a result of broken links, relocated pages, or incorrect URL canonicalization.

Going through the link reclamation process can also help you identify faulty pages, duplicate content concerns, and difficulties with internal linking and site navigation.

Reclaimed links are likewise low-hanging fruit when it comes to link building. Website owners do not want broken links on their site (they are terrible for SEO and usability), therefore updating or replacing them is in their best interest.

Internal connections are the easiest since you or a team member has direct control over them. Fixing your internal linking is critical to ensuring that your heavily linked sites distribute link juice to your other pages.

If you’ve been performing search engine optimization for any length of time, you’ve undoubtedly participated in a link-building effort. To establish a quality backlink profile, many SEOs concentrate nearly entirely on acquiring fresh inbound links.

However, there is an excellent approach to getting rapid results while still increasing that all-important link juice: Link Reclamation.

Link reclamation is an excellent opportunity. Not only can you take full use of links that already exist or are in your control, but it may also assist in relieving the burden of creating new relationships, which can be tough.

How to find broken links and reclaim?

a. Leaky Internal Links

When regaining links, begin with your internal links. You control these links, thus they are the lowest-hanging fruit. Use a web crawler, such as Screaming Frog or DeepCrawl, to find broken or dead internal links. If you’re using the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, filter your crawl results by Client Error to locate pages that return 404 codes. 

• To locate all of your internal links leading to that page, choose URLs and then Inlinks in the bottom pane.
• If you have a huge website with many pages and links, perform a Bulk Export and then sort or filter the Excel file by status code.

• While 301 redirects may be used to remedy broken internal links, they are not always the ideal solution.
• You’re better off correcting the page or link to ensure you’re retaining valuable link juice.

b. Leaky Backlinks

• Broken Links

Finding and restoring faulty backlinks is a little trickier than mending internal ones. The biggest reason is because you don’t have much control over them. You’ll also need to be familiar with some fairly complex Excel functions, depending on how many pages and links you have.

Use a tool like Majestic or Ahrefs to locate websites that link to any pages you’ve moved or removed. Because some SEOs want to use several data sources, you may follow the same steps with Crawl Error data collected from Google Search Console. If you have a large site, this will take a little longer since you will have to deal with a list of all broken URLs, not just those that are linked to.

• Unlinked Mentions

Even after you’ve corrected your broken internal and external links, you still haven’t accounted for all of your missed chances. There’s a strong probability that someone has referenced your website, brand, or company but, for whatever reason, did not provide a link.

This isn’t strictly regaining lost connections because you’re going for links that don’t exist yet, but it’s still a simpler procedure than your typical link-building approach.

• The first step is to monitor your brand using Google Alerts.
• Use your company, product, and/or brand names as keywords in Google Alerts to get notified everytime someone mentions you online.
• Not only will you uncover opportunities when someone hasn’t connected to you, but you’ll also be able to check out fresh links and correct those that utilize broken or out-of-date links. 

You may also monitor mentions of non-branded proprietary components of your firm, such as material you’ve generated, logos, or slogans. Google Alerts can help you locate where your private material is being used in text.

How to monitor for Reclaimed Links?

It is typical for website editors to change a link and not notify you. That’s why you should create a strategy for checking the status of your broken links on your terms.

There are two methods for monitoring reclaimed connections. You may use your SEO tools to monitor new links as they arrive, or you can manually check for fixed connections regularly. While SEO tools (such as Buzzsumo, Ahrefs, and Majestic) are highly important, they might be sluggish in identifying freshly gained backlinks.

That’s why we advocate using a spreadsheet to track all of your broken links and off-page SEO initiatives. This will help you keep organized and allow you to quickly check the status of your links.

Wrapping Up

Link reclamation is one of the most easy link-building tasks available (and typically yields the highest ROI). With the correct tools, you may reclaim important link equity lost due to something as massive as a website relocation revamp, or even modest modifications to your site’s URL structure.

However, it is a process that demands ongoing work and attention. Monitor your backlinks frequently to ensure that your website continues to benefit from all of the connections pointing to it.

Do you need assistance with your link-building campaigns? 

Marketing Lad can help you. Our SEO experts will happily help you retrieve lost backlinks, create high-quality backlinks, and improve your ranking on search engine results pages.

FAQs

a. What is link reclamation and why is it important for SEO?

Link reclamation is the act of locating and repairing broken or lost backlinks that previously referred to your website. It is vital for SEO since it aids in recovering precious link equity, improving search engine rankings, and ensuring that potential traffic from these connections is not lost.

b. How can I identify lost or broken links that need reclamation?

Tools like as Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and Moz can help you locate missing or broken links. These tools allow you to monitor your backlinks and discover those that are no longer active or leading to your website. By frequently checking these tools, you can rapidly identify and resolve any difficulties.

c. What are the best practices for reclaiming lost or broken links?

The best techniques for recovering lost or broken links include contacting the website owners who initially put the links and requesting that they update or repair the connection. Providing the right URL and a reason why they should update the link might boost the chances of success. Additionally, implementing 301 redirects for broken URLs might assist protect link equity.