By Scott Davis / Last Updated: July 2, 2026
You spent months earning backlinks. Then, quietly, some of them vanished.
A site redesigned. An editor deleted an old post. A page you were mentioned on got moved and the link broke. Nobody told you, and your rankings slipped a little.
Link reclamation is how you get those links back. Of all the link building tactics you could spend an hour on, it is the cheapest, fastest win in SEO, because the hard part, earning the link, is already done. You are just repairing what you already had.
This guide shows you what link reclamation is, how to find the lost backlinks worth chasing, and how to actually reclaim them. And if you would rather skip the manual grind, our monthly link building services cover this and net-new links alike.
What’s inside
📝 What is link reclamation?
Link reclamation is the process of finding backlinks you used to have, or should have, and getting them restored.
Most of the time that means a link that once pointed to your site and now does not. The page it lived on was deleted, redesigned, or edited, and your link disappeared with it. Sometimes it means a link that points to a broken URL on your own site, so the authority leaks into a 404 instead of a live page.
Either way, the authority already exists. Someone already decided you were worth linking to. Reclaiming that link is a five-minute email, not a month of outreach, which is why it belongs in every SEO routine.
The common types you will see
Not every lost link died the same way, and the reason it broke tells you how easy it is to reclaim.
🧭 Reclamation vs claiming unlinked mentions
People lump these two together, but they are different jobs.
Reclaiming a link is about a link that existed and broke. Claiming an unlinked mention is about a brand mention that was never linked: someone named you, but did not make it a hyperlink. Both are outreach. Only one is repairing something you already had.
This guide is about winning back real links. We cover chasing unlinked brand mentions on their own page, because the outreach angle is different enough to deserve one.
📈 Does link reclamation still work?
Yes, and the link rot number at the top is exactly why.
Links break constantly. Sites get rebuilt, posts get pruned, URLs get restructured. If two-thirds of the web’s links are already dead, a slice of your own hard-won backlinks is sitting in that pile right now, passing no authority to Google at all.
Winning them back is pure upside. You are not begging a stranger to link to you cold. You are reminding someone who already did that a link on their page is now broken, which is genuinely useful to them too. That is why it converts far better than cold link building, and why the SEO return per hour is so high.
Running an agency? This is one of the easiest wins to package for clients. Our managed white label link building program lets you deliver it under your own brand without adding headcount.
🔎 How to find your lost links
You cannot reclaim what you cannot see, so this starts in a backlink tool like Ahrefs.
Semrush or Majestic work the same way, but Ahrefs is the standard. Drop your domain into Site Explorer, open the Backlinks report, and switch it to the Lost filter. Now you can see every link that used to point to you and does not anymore. Even a healthy site will have a long list here.
In Ahrefs, open Site Explorer, enter your domain, go to Backlinks, and set the filter to Lost with a date range of the last 90 days. Turn on “best links only” so you start with the pages that actually carried authority.
That last part matters. A big site can lose hundreds of links a month, and most of them are junk. Filtering to the strong ones means you spend your time on the ones worth chasing, not scraping the bottom.
📌 Which ones are worth chasing
Here is where most people waste hours: they try to reclaim every broken link they can find.
Don’t. A lost link is only worth an email if the site behind it is worth having a link from. Before you write to anyone, run the host site through the same checklist my team uses to vet any backlink prospect.
- Domain Rating of 30 or higher. Below that, the link you reclaim barely moves anything.
- At least 1,000 organic visits a month. Real traffic proves Google still trusts the site.
- Most traffic from countries you care about. A page that ranks only in unrelated regions rarely helps you.
- A history longer than six months. A brand-new domain is a gamble even if it once linked to you.
- No sudden 70% traffic drop. A cliff in the graph usually means a penalty you don’t want to sit next to.
- It still ranks for real keywords. Authority with no rankings is a red flag.
- No unnatural Domain Rating spikes. A DR that jumped overnight was probably bought.
- Clean outbound links. If the page links out to casinos or pharma, walk away.
- It does not openly sell links. A public “buy a link” page is a footprint, reclaimed or not.
- It is topically relevant. Relevance beats raw authority almost every time.
Take your Lost report and check the top five criteria on each host page before you draft a single email. Two minutes of vetting in a tool like Ahrefs saves you from chasing links that were never worth the effort.
The reason a link dropped also tells you how to prioritize. Some are quick wins, some are dead ends.
| Why the link was lost | Worth reclaiming? |
|---|---|
| Link removed from a live page | Yes, just ask for it back |
| Points to a 404 on your site | Yes, fix it with a redirect |
| Host page deleted entirely | Sometimes, pitch a fresh mention |
| Page now noindexed or redirected | Rarely, the value is mostly gone |
| Dropped from the crawl database | No, nothing to reclaim |
⚙️ Reverse-engineer a competitor’s broken links
Your own lost links are not the only opportunity. Your competitors are losing links too, and some of those pages are the perfect place for you to earn one.
The logic is simple. If a site once linked to a competitor and that link broke, the editor clearly covers your topic and is open to linking out. Reaching them with a helpful heads-up, plus your own relevant resource, is warm outreach dressed up as a favor. It is one of the highest-converting SEO moves you can run.
↓ keep DR 30+, traffic 1,000+, topically relevant
↓ keep the ones you can genuinely replace
Drop a competitor’s domain into Site Explorer, open Backlinks, and set the filter to Lost. Filter to Domain Rating above 30 and traffic above 1,000, then find the ones where you have a page that fits. Now you have a reason to reach out.
🌱 Where reclaimable links tend to hide
When you go hunting for lost and broken links, a few source types come up again and again. Knowing where they cluster makes the search faster.
If the outreach grind is the part you dread, our blogger outreach process can handle the prospecting, pitching, and follow-ups for you.
Most reclaimable links trace back to a handful of source types.
| Where the link lived | Why it broke, and how to reclaim it |
|---|---|
| Resource pages | Curators prune dead links often. Send a replacement URL and they usually swap it, and knowing how to find resource pages surfaces even more of them. |
| Research citations | Someone cited your data, then the URL moved. This is the highest-value link to reclaim. |
| Guest posts you wrote | An edit stripped your byline link. A quick note to the editor often restores it. |
| Redesigned partner sites | A rebuild dropped your link. Point them at the new page and ask for it back. |
🛠️ How to reclaim the link
You have a vetted list of broken links worth chasing. Now you turn them back into live links.
Fix the ones on your side first
Some lost links need no email at all.
If a backlink points to a URL on your site that now 404s, you do not need permission from anyone. Just add a 301 redirect from the old URL to the right live page, and the link’s authority flows again once Google recrawls it. Do a crawl of your own broken inbound links first, because these are the fastest wins on the whole list.
Find the right person and ask
For links on someone else’s site, you need a contact and a short message.
Use a tool like Hunter.io, or just check the site’s about and contact pages, to find the editor or author. Then keep the email brief and helpful. Point out the broken or missing link, explain what it should point to, and make it a two-second fix for them.
Write one clean template you can personalize: name the exact page, quote the broken link, give the correct URL, and thank them. Lead with the fact that you are saving them from a dead link on their page, not with what you want.
Follow up once, then move on
Most reclaimed links come from a single, polite follow-up.
Wait about five business days, then send a short nudge. If they still go quiet, drop it and move to the next link on your list. This is a numbers game with a great hit rate, so your time is better spent on the next opportunity than on a fourth email to one editor.
Prefer earning fresh press mentions instead of chasing old ones down? our HARO link building team answers journalist requests on your behalf, so you get new editorial links without writing a single pitch.
🚫 Tactics to skip
Winning links back is low-risk by nature, but a few habits still waste your time or invite trouble.
⚠ Don’t force these
Chasing links from dropped or crawl-error pages with nothing left to restore, mass-emailing every lost link without vetting the site, and treating reclamation as a reason to build spammy new links. Reclaim what was real and relevant, and skip the rest.
It is also worth being honest about a related tactic. If you have wondered what is broken link building, it is where you hunt for other people’s dead links and pitch your page as the replacement. It can work, but the reply rates are low and it takes serious volume. Reclaiming links that were genuinely yours is almost always the better use of the same hour.
📊 How to track what you reclaim
If you cannot measure it, you cannot prove it worked. This tactic is easy to track because you know exactly which links you were chasing.
| Metric | What it tells you | Where to check |
|---|---|---|
| Links restored | How many of your outreach targets actually went live again | Ahrefs, Search Console |
| Referring domains | Whether your total profile recovered | Ahrefs |
| Keyword movement | Whether the pages that dropped climbed back in Google | Any rank tracker |
| Crawled 404s | Whether your own broken URLs were found and fixed | Screaming Frog |
Run the Lost filter on a schedule, monthly for most sites, and treat this as maintenance rather than a one-off project. Links will keep breaking, so the sites that stay ahead simply keep at it.
🤝 Let our team win back your links
Link reclamation works, but it is repetitive. Pulling the lost-link report, vetting each host, finding contacts, and chasing follow-ups every month adds up fast.
That is the kind of work our team does on autopilot. We find the lost and broken backlinks worth chasing, run the outreach, and fold it into a wider program of guest posts and white-hat guest posting placements so your link profile grows instead of just holding steady. If you want the results without the grind, our link building services are the fastest way there.
❓ Reclaiming backlinks FAQ
What does link reclamation mean in SEO?
Link reclamation is the process of finding backlinks you have lost, or broken links pointing at your site, and getting them restored. Because the link was already earned once, it is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to strengthen your backlink profile.
How do you reclaim lost backlinks?
Find your lost links in a tool like Ahrefs using the Backlinks report’s Lost filter, vet the host sites so you only chase strong ones, fix any that point to 404s on your own site with a redirect, then email the site owner about the rest and ask for the link back.
Is link reclamation the same as claiming unlinked mentions?
No. Reclamation restores a link that existed and broke. Claiming unlinked mentions turns a brand mention that was never a link into one. Both use outreach, but only reclamation is repairing a link you already had.
How often should I run link reclamation?
Monthly is a good cadence for most sites. Links break constantly as pages get deleted and sites get rebuilt, so a regular pass through your Lost links report catches new losses while the outreach is still easy.
Does reclaiming a link actually help rankings?
Yes, when the link comes from a relevant, trusted site. A reclaimed editorial link passes the same authority it did before it broke, and fixing a broken inbound link stops that authority from leaking into a dead page.
🎯 The bottom line
Link reclamation is the rare SEO tactic with almost no downside.
The links were already yours. Someone already decided you were worth citing. All you are doing is repairing the pipes so the authority flows again, and doing it before your competitors think to.
Find the lost links, vet them, fix your side, and ask for the rest. And if you would rather a team do it for you, we are ready when you are.
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