Since 90.63% of online content gets no traffic from Google, it’s critical that you do the necessary work to rank towards the top of results pages. This means creating an awesome SEO strategy, but it also means checking and maintaining all aspects of your website.
Some of the most important things to monitor are your links so that you can undergo link reclamation. But what exactly does this mean? Read on to learn the ins and outs of reclaiming broken links.
What Is Link Reclamation?
In the most basic terms, link reclamation is the act of finding online content that contains improper backlinks and fixing the links.
These broken links were once high-quality backlinks, but they are now broken and do not redirect to the link on the anchor text. These broken or “dead” links emerge when the website being linked to removes pages or alters URLs during redesign efforts.
Because quality backlinks improve SEO in a myriad of ways, broken, nonfunctional backlinks can badly ruin SEO efforts.
Reclaiming these links doesn’t just build your link profile effectively. It also helps you regain link value by connecting you with the relevant and reputable pages that Google crawlers want to see you linking to. You also build value for visiting clients who don’t need to be frustrated by broken outbound links.
Ultimately, link reclamation lets you improve your site’s overall authority. Your SEO efforts will be more successful when you make sure that all of your backlinks are up to date.
Claiming Unlinked Mentions vs. Link Reclamation
Link reclamation works to remedy broken links. Claiming unlinked mentions is a different action where you generate new backlinks to incorporate into your content. These new backlinks include online mentions and references to your brand that you haven’t linked to yet.
They are an opportunity to make use of new links that may not have existed when you initially build the page. The backlink was never previously used on your page; it is completely new and directly relevant to your company.
How to Find and Reclaim Lost Links
Clearly, link reclamation is important for SEO, but how does the process of reclaiming links work?
First, you’ll want to look for broken internal links on your website. One way to do this is to tediously make your way through the site and click every link to find broken ones. However, this is inefficient and leaves a lot of room for error.
Instead, log in to Google Analytics and click on the tab marked “behavior.” Click “site content” and then select “all pages.” Enter the time period that you want to evaluate your site for. This should be the entire timeframe since you last reclaimed lost links.
You will be given a list of all broken links on the page you evaluated so that you can find and alter them more easily. You can use the same method to look for broken backlinks. Google Analytics will showcase lost outbound links in addition to internal linking issues.
Once you’ve found all the broken links on your website (both inbound and outbound), you can remove the broken links and replace them with functional internal links and high-quality backlinks. This prevents redirect errors and ensures that visitors have a great experience on your page.
All of these actions may sound like a lot of challenging work. Luckily, working with a top SEO provider ensures that you won’t miss any broken links. This ensures that your SEO strategy is as effective and comprehensive as possible.
Reclaim Lost Links (& Claim Unlinked Mentions) with a Reverse Image Search
Images are one of the most common sources of backlinks on most websites. People click an image and are redirected to another page. This also means that images cause a lot of broken backlinks to emerge on the site.
Because they are not connected to an anchor text in a blog post, you will need to use other methods to identify which links are broken so that you can reclaim them. The best tools for this are TinEye and Google Images.
Simply go to one of these platforms and upload the images from your website that have attached links. A list of images that match yours will appear from sites that it’s used on all over the net. You can then make sure that your site appears in the results.
If it’s on the list, you’re good to go! If not, then you will need to either remove the image from your website or contact the owner of the broken site. If you choose the latter, which is generally the right choice, send a link to the site owner that they can attach to your image.
Tools for Link Reclamation
Earlier, we talked how about Google Analytics is a good tool to identify broken backlinks and reclaim them. The Google Search Console is a natural extension of this free too. You can generate reports that help you measure traffic and performance, get alerted when Google identifies an issue with your site such as a broken link, and learn more about how Google sees your page.
The URL inspection tool is awesome because it provides a lot of detailed data about what your crawl and indexing look like. Since these come directly from the Google index, they’re an awesome choice.
You also can use paid tools like Ahrefs and LinkTRAX® to identify and troubleshoot link-building issues. Both of these tools identify which links aren’t working and how they are hurting your rankings. These custom-made platforms monitor, analyze, and track activity while alerting you of any issues.
How Link Reclamation Is the Best Way to Save SEO Rankings
So, why is link reclamation one of the most important ways to save your SERP rankings? There are several reasons for this:
- You improve your site authority with both Google crawlers and human visitors
- You regain lost link value and subsequently increase rankings
- This leads to a better link profile, which is appealing to indexing bots
- You will have a cleaner website
- Link reclamation is a simple and cost-effective way to build value
- Ultimately, there are tons of reasons why you need to get back lost links. Make sure that you do it right!
Boost Your SEO Game Today
While link reclamation is a challenging task, it’s critical if you want to keep your high rankings on search engine results pages. Make sure to gather the appropriate tools for identifying and reclaiming broken links.
Better yet, you can work with an experienced SEO professional who has the knowledge and skills needed to perform link reclamation quickly and efficiently. Contact us with any remaining questions that you have and to further discuss how we can help save your SEO rankings.
