Your Links Are Disappearing
Every month, you lose backlinks. Pages get updated. Sites get redesigned. Content gets deleted.
And those lost links? They were helping your rankings. Now they're gone.
Link reclamation is the process of finding and recovering those lost links.
How to Find Lost Links
Ahrefs: Go to your Backlink Profile > Lost backlinks. Filter by "link removed" and "page not found." Their backlink checker makes this straightforward.
Google Search Console: Check for referring domains that have dropped off.
Monthly monitoring: Set up a regular check. Even losing 5-10 quality links per month adds up fast over a year.
Common Reasons Links Disappear
How to Reclaim Them
For removed links: Reach out and politely ask why. Sometimes it's accidental. "Hey, noticed the link to our [resource] was removed from your [page]. Was that intentional? The resource is still live and being updated."
For 404 pages: Check if the content moved to a new URL. If so, ask them to update the link.
For redesigns: The content may still exist at a new URL. Help them find it and add the link back. Understanding Core Web Vitals and technical SEO helps you spot migration issues that cause link loss.
Prevention
Set up 301 redirects when you move or delete pages. This preserves link equity even when URLs change. Make sure you're not making robots.txt mistakes that could block pages receiving links too.
Track link health at SEO Checkup. 113 tasks. Free. No credit card.
Don't just build new links. Protect the ones you have.