You have probably earned more link equity than your rankings reflect. Pages you deleted and never redirected. Brand mentions that never became links. External sites linking to your old URLs before a migration. Link reclamation is the process of recovering link equity that is already yours by right — without having to earn any new links through outreach.

Quick Answer: Link reclamation recovers lost link equity from three sources: broken backlinks (external sites linking to your deleted or moved pages), unlinked brand mentions (sites that mention your brand without a hyperlink), and redirect chain backlinks (links pointing to intermediate URLs in a redirect chain rather than your current canonical URLs). Reclaiming these is often faster and more reliable than building new links because the relationship and goodwill already exists.

What are broken backlinks and how do you find them?

Broken backlinks are external links pointing to URLs on your site that now return 404 or 410 errors. These links exist, they were earned, but they are currently delivering no equity because they point to nowhere.

To find them:

  1. Export your backlink profile from Ahrefs Webmaster Tools or Google Search Console Links report
  2. Run our broken link checker on your domain to identify all 404-returning URLs
  3. Cross-reference: any URL in your backlink list that also appears in your 404 list is a broken backlink worth reclaiming

To reclaim: set up a 301 redirect from the broken URL to the most relevant live page. The external link immediately starts passing equity to your live content. No outreach required — you fix your end and the equity flows automatically.

What are unlinked brand mentions and how do you convert them to links?

An unlinked brand mention is when another website references your brand, product, or service by name without including a hyperlink. The mention demonstrates awareness and goodwill — it just is not currently passing any SEO equity.

To find unlinked mentions:

  • Search Google for your brand name in quotes: "YourBrandName" -site:yourdomain.com
  • Set up Google Alerts for your brand name to receive notifications of new mentions
  • Use Ahrefs' Content Explorer or Semrush's Brand Monitoring tool for comprehensive monitoring

To convert them: contact the author or webmaster, thank them for the mention, and ask if they would be willing to add a link to your site. Because they already know your brand favourably (they mentioned it), conversion rates for these requests run 15–25% — significantly higher than cold link outreach.

Is link reclamation better than building new links?

For many sites, yes — at least initially. Link reclamation has a higher success rate because the foundation of goodwill already exists. Fixing broken backlinks requires no outreach at all. Unlinked mention outreach has consistently higher conversion rates than cold prospecting. Reclamation is generally lower effort per equity unit recovered than new link building.

What are redirect chain backlinks and how do you fix them?

When external sites link to an old URL that now redirects through a chain to your current URL — old domain → intermediate domain → current URL — the equity is diluted at each hop. Links pointing to the start of a chain rather than directly to your canonical URL are leaking value.

To fix redirect chain backlinks: contact the webmaster of any high-value linking site and ask them to update their link to point directly to your current canonical URL. This converts a chain-diluted link into a full-equity direct link without having to earn a new link at all.

How do you prioritise link reclamation efforts?

Use our anchor text analyser to identify which linking domains have the highest authority. Prioritise reclamation (especially for unlinked mention outreach and redirect chain fixes) from the highest-authority linking domains first — the equity recovery per hour of effort is highest there.

Summary

  • Link reclamation recovers equity you have already earned: broken backlinks, unlinked mentions, and redirect chain links
  • Fix broken backlinks by 301 redirecting deleted URLs to relevant live pages — no outreach needed
  • Convert unlinked mentions by contacting the author — 15–25% conversion rate due to existing brand awareness
  • Fix redirect chain backlinks by requesting linking sites update to your current canonical URL
  • Prioritise by linking domain authority using our anchor analyser — highest authority domains first

Continue reading: What is digital PR and how does it earn backlinks at scale?