What Is Link Reclamation?

Link reclamation is basically a process for identifying and restoring broken or lost links on your website. This practice is crucial for optimizing your website's SEO.

Compared to building new links, reclamation for link techniques is faster and more effective. If you create new links, you’ll be required to contact third parties for negotiation, content creation, and even payment.

Meanwhile, reclamation links can be done by simply finding the links that have been lost and then reaching out to the relevant parties to get them back.

Causes of Broken or Lost Links

Now that you have an understanding of what is link reclamation, let's explore the causes of broken and lost links on your website.

Broken links can occur due to several reasons, such as:

• Page updates: Updates often lead to changes in URL structure and permalinks.
• Page deletion: Deleting a page without setting up a redirect will result in a dead link.
• Technical errors: Common errors include incorrect URL entries or issues with plugins.

Meanwhile, lost links can happen for several reasons, such as:

• Link removal: Backlinks may be accidentally removed if the source of the backlink makes updates or there any issues with the page containing the link are encountered.
• Technical errors: This can occur if the other website updates its site or moves the URL.
• Noindex tag on the linked page: If the source page of the backlink includes a noindex tag, search engines may consider the link not valuable.

Why Is Link Reclamation Matters?

Link reclamation is a crucial technique to learn because it helps you to recover broken or lost links.

Leaving these links broken and difficult to navigate could negatively impact your site's SEO performance. By reclaiming your link, you can keep your site active and well-maintained.

Here are the reasons why the reclamation link is important:

• User Experience: If the target audience clicks on a link that doesn’t lead to the expected destination, they might leave your site. Link reclamation can help you with this condition and minimize bounce rates.
• SEO and Page Ranking: External links are a key factor for determining your website's ranking on search engines. Therefore, it's important to keep them active and run properly.
• Web Traffic: External links drive traffic from other sites to your site. This means that well-maintained backlinks can help optimize your web traffic.
• Credibility: Good linking practices will increase the credibility of your website for the search engines.

4 Strategies to Do Link Reclamation

Having broken links on a website can have a detrimental impact on its functionality and search engine ranking. However, you don’t need to worry as reclamation links can be the solution to this problem.

Here are the steps on how to claim link reclamation for both internal links and backlinks:

1. Identify Broken Internal Links 

The first step in reclamation links is identifying broken internal links. Having broken links can disrupt the user experience and harm your site's SEO performance.

To find them, you can use paid SEO tools or free tools like Google Analytics. These SEO tools can help you crawl your site and identify links that lead to 404 error pages so you can fix them promptly.

2. Fix Broken Internal Links 

Once the broken links are identified, you can fix them by updating the correct URL or redirecting them to a relevant page.

Here are some methods you can use:

• Update with the correct URL.
• Redirect to a relevant and available page.
• Use plugins or management tools like CMS.
• Link to new content to add more value.

3. Identify Lost Backlinks 

Finding lost backlinks is an essential step in reclamation links to ensure that links pointing to your site remain active and effective.

You can use SEO tools to report and detect lost or broken links. Additionally, Google Search Console can also be useful for monitoring external links pointing to your site.

4. Reclaim Lost Backlinks 

Finally, after identifying lost backlinks, you can contact the site owners to request link recovery or explore alternatives to obtain new links, ensuring your SEO strategy and website traffic remain intact.