Link reclamation is the process of restoring value to broken links.
It can be used to treat both internal links on your website, and any inbound links you have from other sites. Broken links can occur at any time, if content on your website is deleted or moved, or if the content linking to your site is deleted or contains an error.
Why Link Reclamation is Important
Link building is one of the most common SEO practices around, and most links are gained by building quality content. Inbound ‘follow’ links can count towards page ranking and proof of ‘trustworthiness’, which is something that Google places a great deal of importance on.
Of course, as with any SEO practice, there are darker aspects to link building – such as paid links, link farming and spamming. Google’s Penguin update has been specifically designed to tackle these bad practices, and has, as a result, made link building a much more time-consuming process for webmasters previously using poor SEO practices. This is why it’s important to make the most of every link you have, by fixing bad links and restoring their value with a good link reclamation strategy.
How to Reclaim Your Links
Link reclamation can be performed by finding your broken links and setting up 301 redirects, but it can be difficult to know where all the broken links are. For this, webmasters should use a mixture of tools to gather as much backlink data as possible. Webmasters should also regularly perform a comprehensive reclamation which leaves no stone unturned and no link un-redirected.
Depending on the size of your site, and how many links you have, your link reclamation process could either be very easy or quite difficult. If in any doubt, it’s always best to get the advice of professional SEO experts.
As well as link reclamation, link repossession is important too. Every link helps and if a site has not attributed your images or a mention about your brand, it is worth asking for a link back to your site.