Link Reclamation: Recover Lost Backlinks + Outreach Templates

You have a link building strategy, but you may lack the “link recovery” initiative. 

And that’s a problem, given that at any time, a portion of the backlinks you’ve built and earned over the years are either broken, redirected incorrectly, or quietly removed. So each one of these links represents an authority your site is no longer receiving, so from outreach or content work you’ve already done. Understanding the full benefits of link building makes clear why recovering them matters.

Link reclamation is the process of identifying and recovering lost, broken, or removed backlinks that are pointing to your site – and it’s one of the highest-ROI link building strategies most SEO teams consistently overlook, similar to other easy backlinks methods that recover or leverage existing authority.

So unlike any traditional link building, you’re not actually starting from zero. In fact, the hardest part of earning the link placement itself already happened. So the reclamation is pretty much about making sure you’re actually getting credit for it.

This guide covers everything you need to run a complete link reclamation workflow: how to find lost links across different tools (not just one), how to decide which ones are truly worth chasing, and I’ll give you our ready-to-send outreach email templates for each scenario.

You’ll also find a section here on how recalculation can fit into a broader link maintenance strategy in 2026 and beyond – given that the way links get earned and lost is shifting – and so most link reclamation guides haven’t caught up.

What Is Link Reclamation?

Link reclamation is the process of finding backlinks that once pointed to your website but are no longer passive link value – and taking action to restore them. 

This is the simplest definition.

And those links that haven’t disappeared – in most cases, the pages linking to your site still exist. What’s really changed is whether that link is functional, properly configured, or still present at all (either of the three). 

So here are three scenarios that will typically trigger a reclamation effort:

• Broken backlinks occur when a page on your site has been deleted, moved, or had its URL changed, and the external link was never updated to match. So the linking page still references you, but anyone (or any crawler) following that link hits a 404 error – here, the link equity is lost.

• Removed backlinks that usually happen when a webmaster actively takes down or edits the content linking to you – replacing your link with a competitor’s page, cutting the section entirely, or restructuring the page. These are difficult to start, in our experience, given that the linking page itself still exists and returns a 200 status. To do this, you need a backlink monitoring tool to catch them.

• Redirected backlinks are links that are pointing to a URL that is now redirecting to another page. So a single clean 301 redirect preserves the most link equity, but chains of these redirects or redirects pointing to irrelevant pages will just bleed value with each hop. In most cases, these are easy to overlook and easy to fix.

You’ll have different approaches to outreach for each of these reasons.

Link Reclamation vs. Unlinked Brand Mentions – What’s the Difference?

These two link building strategies are grouped together as they both involve finding references to your brand across the web and converting them into link opportunities. But fundamentally, they have different workflows, and conflating them can just lead to sloppy prioritization. 

Link reclamation, for instance, deals with links that already existed. So, a website that linked to you at some point, and that link is now broken, missing, or misconfigured. You now have documented proof that the link was there, given that your backlink tool’s historical data (like in Ahrefs) will confirm it. So your outreach is grounded in that history: simply asking a webmaster to restore something that was already in place – not pitching something new. 

Unlinked brand mentions is a different category entirely , someone has referenced your brand, product, or content by name, but has never linked to you. If you want to learn how to leverage these, see our guide on brand mentions for SEO. So there’s no lost backlink to recover – you’re just making a new ask, essentially you’re saying: you mentioned us, it would make sense to link to us. Now, the psychology of that outreach is actually closer to link building than just link reclamation. 

So the distinction of these two matters for three reasons: 

• Conversion rate differs significantly – so link reclamation outreach typically will convert better than unlinked mention outreach, given that you’re just restoring something rather than requesting something new. Webmasters and publishers in general are more receptive to fixing a broken reference than adding a link they’ve never intended to include. 

• Data sources can be quite different, so lost backlinks that come from link building tools (Ahrefs, SEMRush, GSC) while unlinked mentions may come from brand-mention tools like BrandMentions, Ahrefs’ Alerts, and Alert Mouse. When you run both workflows, they will require that you pull from two separate data sets. 

• Priority should reflect effort-to-return ratio – now, high-DR lost links are almost always worth pursuing before any unlinked mentions from the same domain – the case here is much stronger, asking for links is easier, and link equity recovery is much more immediate.

That said, the two workflows will complement each other well. Given that once you’ve exhausted your highest-priority lost links from a domain, you’re just checking whether that same website has unlinked mentions, it is actually a natural next step – so you’re already in their backlink data anyway. 

How to Find Lost and Broken Backlinks

The link building tool you use matters less than what you’re pulling and what you can actually do with it. So the goal of this step is the same regardless of the platform: identify external links that once pointed to your site but are no longer passing link value, and export them into a working list you can triage.

So, here’s how to run that process across the three most common setups. 

Using Ahrefs

Ahrefs is the most straightforward tool for this workflow, given that it can help track backlink history by default. 

Go to Site Explorer → your domain → Backlinks → Lost. Then set the date filter to your preferred lookback window – like 3 to 6 months is a practical starting point for most websites. Now you’ll see every backlink Ahrefs that’s detected as lost within that period, along with the referring domain’s DR, URL of the linking page, and anchor text being used.

From there, you can filter by DR to surface the highest-authority links first. Export the full list as a CSV. Now, you’ll use this as your link reclamation working file. For a deeper walkthrough, see our guide on how to regain lost backlinks in Ahrefs.

For broken backlinks specifically – links that are pointing to dead pages on your site – you can go to Site Explorer → Best by Links → Filter by 404. This will show your pages returning 404 errors that are ranked by the number of referring domains pointing to them. So any linking page with meaningful DR-weighted links that are pointing to a 404 is indeed a link reclamation (or redirect) opportunity. 

This matters more than most teams realize,we’ve covered exactly what happens when your Ahrefs DR dropped due to losing one link and why high-DR lost links should be your first priority.

Using Semrush

In SEMRush, the primary entry point really is the Backlink Audit tool. So you run an audit on your domain and navigate to the Lost & Found tab. This will surface backlinks SEMRush has flagged as lost within the audit window – now being categorized by reason where it is detectable. 

For any broken link identification, you can use SEMRush’s Site Audit in parallel. So you run a crawl and filter for pages that are returning 4xx errors – you can cross-reference these against your backlink data to help identify which broken pages will have external links that are pointing to them. 

SEMRush will also surface lost backlinks inside Backlink Analytics → Backlinks, where you can simply toggle between active and lost links. Export both, then reconcile them in a spreadsheet to avoid duplicates. 

Using Free Tools

If you’re working without a paid backlink tool, you can still build a workable lost link list – it will just be less complete.

Google Search Console is your first stop. Go to Search Results → Links → External links → Top linked pages. This will show which of your pages are most linked to externally. So you can cross-reference this against a manual crawl of those pages to really check whether any have been moved or deleted without a redirect in place. Now, a GSC won’t show you lost links directly, but it will give you a baseline of where your link equity is actually concentrated.

Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) can help crawl your website and flag these 404 or 5xx pages. Then, export that list and manually check whether those pages had backlinks by searching for their exact URLs in Google or using a free Ahrefs backlink checker lookup. 

What to Track

Now, regardless of any tool, your expert should truly capture the following fields or inputs before you move to prioritization:

• Linking page URL
• Referring domain
• Ahrefs’ Domain Rating (DR) or Authority Score of the referring domain
• Estimated traffic of the linking page (if available)
• Anchor text
• Your target URL (the page the link pointed to)
• Current status of your target URL (live, 404, redirected)
• Date the link was lost (if available)

Build all this info into a single spreadsheet. Now the next step is deciding which rows are actually worth your time. 

How to Prioritize Which Links Are Worth Reclaiming

Not every lost backlink deserves an outreach – some will just come from domains with negligible authority; others will be from pages that no longer exist, so webmasters who are unresponsive by nature or backlinks that were just removed deliberately – it’s a sign that the relationship has soured. So chasing all of them will indiscriminately waste your time that could go towards higher-return SEO work.

So here’s a simple scoring framework applied to your export list that will solve this. Rate each lost backlink across four factors, assign a priority tier, and work down the list in order. 

Four Scoring Factors

1. Domain Rating (DR) of the Referring Domain

This is essential and the most straightforward signal of how much link equity recovery is at stake – but it’s really a proxy for link popularity, which reflects your overall standing in your niche.

• DR 70+ → 3 points
• DR 40–69 → 2 points
• DR 10–39 → 1 point
• DR under 10 → 0 points (consider skipping entirely)

2. Estimated Traffic of the Linking Page

There are high-DR domains that don’t really guarantee specific linking pages; either they’re just active or visited. So a page with real traffic is more likely to have an engaged webmaster and more likely to send referral visits once links are restored.

• 1,000+ monthly visits → 3 points
• 200 – 999 monthly visits → 2 points
• Under 200 monthly visits → 1 point
• No detectable traffic → 0 points

3. Relevance of the Linking Page to Your Content

Topical relevance affects both the SEO value of the recovered link and the success rate of your outreach. Recovering niche relevant backlinks consistently outperforms chasing high-DR links with no topical connection.

So, a contextually relevant link is easier to justify restoring, as the webmaster can immediately see why it actually belongs there. 

• Highly relevant (same topic, clear contextual fit) → 3 points
• Somewhat relevant (adjacent topic or industry) → 2 points
• Low relevance (tangential or unclear connection) → 1 point
• No relevance → 0 points

4. Reclamation Likelihood

This is one factor that accounts for practical recovery probability, which simply means whether the link can realistically be restored given what you already know about the situation. 

Ask these questions:

• Is the linking page still live and indexed?
• Is there a contact method available for the webmaster or site owner?
• Does the loss look accidental (site migration, CMS update) rather than deliberate?
• Has this domain been linked to you multiple times, suggesting an existing relationship?

Score accordingly:

• Strong likelihood (page live, contact available, accidental loss, existing relationship) → 3 points
• Moderate likelihood (page live, contact available, reason unclear) → 2 points
• Low likelihood (page live but no contact, or loss appears deliberate) → 1 point
• No realistic path to recovery (page gone, domain defunct) → 0 points

Priority Tiers

Add up the four scores for each link (maximum 12 points) and assign a specific tier:

Score	Priority Tier	Action
9–12	High	Outreach within the week
5–8	Medium	Batch and outreach monthly
2–4	Low	Outreach only if bandwidth allows
0–1	Skip	Remove from list

From this list, you can work your high-tier first, in descending score order. Don’t move to the Medium tier until the High tier is exhausted – as you want the return differential between tiers to be significant enough that sequence really matters. 

Links to Skip Entirely

This is important: some links aren’t worth your outreach investment, regardless of the DR. So you remove all these from your list before you do the actual scoring: 

• Links from domains that have since been deindexed or penalized
• Links from pages returning 404 or 410 on the referring side (the linking page itself is gone)
• Links you suspect were removed after a negative interaction (content dispute, editorial disagreement)
• Links from obvious link farms or low-quality directories that were doing little for you to begin with
• Duplicate links from the same domain where at least one active link remains

What’s left really after this filter is your actual working list – so a prioritized, realistic set of link reclamation opportunities that are worth pursuing. 

How to Reach Out (With Copy-Paste Email Templates)

Link reclamation outreach has a structural advantage over cold outreach, given that you’re not making any speculative pitch. So you’re likely to have a higher conversion rate in this link building campaign. 

And these principles below will apply across all four templates:

• Be specific from the first line and outreach email. Name the exact page, exact link, and what happened to it. Vague outreach is read as automated and usually gets ignored. So the webmaster should really understand the entire situation within the first two sentences without having to click anything. 
• Make the fix easy. You need to include broken or outdated URL, correct destination URL, and, where it is relevant, the anchor text being used. So less work will be required on their end, and that’s more likely to get them to act on it.
• Keep it short. So three to four sentences is just enough for most scenarios. You don’t actually need to explain what link equity is or why backlinks really matter. So you’re talking to someone who either manages the website or works in the content team – assuming your competence and you’re respecting their time.
• Don’t over-apologize and over-explain (remember this!) – so statements like “I hope this isn’t too much trouble” or “I completely understand if you’re too busy” will just undercut the ask. So, in any situation, make the request, and just close cleanly.
• One follow-up, then move on. So if you don’t hear back within 7 to 10 days, you send one follow-up email that will restate the fix in a single sentence. And if there’s still no response, deprioritize and move on. Just chasing them beyond two touches will rarely convert.

Final Thoughts

Remember this: link reclamation won’t replace any proactive link building strategies, but it’s one of the fastest ways to truly recover authority you’ve already earned without actually starting from scratch. So run the process once, then set up ongoing monitoring, and it will become one of the lowest-effort, highest-return items in your existing SEO workflow.

If you’re building out your broader strategy alongside reclamation, explore the best link building services to fill gaps where recovery alone won’t be enough. You can book a free strategy call with our link building experts – we’ll take a look at what you’re working with and map out the highest-priority link opportunities.