Have you witnessed your potential backlinks disappearing like smoke amid your link building session? It indeed feels like there’s no hope ahead. Search Engine Optimization takes a lot of time & effort of your internet marketing team to establish your web pages on top SERPs. But when you suddenly come to know that your top backlinks vanish out of your best-referring domains for no apparent reason, your confidence may decline to zero right away.
Backlinks have different sources of emergence and therefore it can be hard to keep an eye on them frequently. This results in unawareness & consequent loss of your best website backlinks. To reclaim your lost backlinks you must acknowledge the same ahead of time. Through reclaiming lost backlinks you can save a lot of time & effort searching for new ones.
In this blog, you’ll come to learn how you can figure out if your website backlinks are gone, and how to effectively bring them back. For better understanding, we’ve distributed the post into the following segments:
- What are Lost Backlinks?
- Why Do Backlinks Disappear?
- How can you find your lost backlinks?
- How to Conduct Link Reclamation from Different Sources?
- Conclusion of the Study
Fading website backlink network is a curse to your search ranking target. Hence, we suggest you must get expert assistance regarding Off-Page SEO & Online Marketing services for your website growth. In case having trouble, you can reach out to eGoodMedia, our award-winning search marketing & social media monitoring company operating in Vancouver & Seattle. Let’s proceed with the topic!!
What are Lost Backlinks?
Lost Backlinks are the links to your website from another website that are no longer live for some specific reasons. As such they require a link reclamation campaign from your side. Sometimes, lost backlinks can be pre-planned or organized as certain webmasters provide for a specific time period. They allow live links for a particular time period and you can’t force them to continue further. On the other hand, there are permanent backlinks too. That’s where you cannot spare what’s going in the wrong direction. These types of lost backlinks are very harmful to your website building plan.
You may also find a problem to differentiate between Link Reclamation & Unlinked Brand Mentions in the beginning. Link Reclamation is related to a link that was live earlier & is no longer in use for the existing time period. Where claiming Unlinked Brand Mention is something fresh to conduct. If you find a keyword or phrase on someone’s web page that clearly mentions your website products, services & brand, you can claim a backlink to your website!
Why Do Backlinks Disappear?
Before heading to Link Reclamation you can analyze the primary reason behind your backlink disappearance. Following this, you can stay conscious of future concerns regarding the same. Moreover, you can ask for an accurate solution to your backlink loss if you know what made them disappear. As such, here’s a list of the main reasons behind your lost backlinks:
1. UX & UI Modification
One of the most fundamental reasons behind your missing link can be the web page alteration on the referral website. The webmaster could do this without sharing information with you following an emergency situation. After all, he also has to look for his or her website maintenance from time to time. Website designing is an ongoing process & could dodge your link building chance even after you’ve got live on someone’s shining web page.
2. Broken Links
Broken links are somehow related to your website circumstances. Maybe the problem resides in your domain address. Some of your website pages could disappear leaving a 404-page error after a specified period of time. Moreover, there could be a possibility that you removed that website page following some technical or designing issues without reviewing its backlink status. As such you can create a tide of problems for yourself. There could be more than one backlink associated with that website page.
Likewise, there can be other internal challenges you’re yet to overcome in your website growth. Don’t ignore them as they are the deciding factors carrying your On-Page Optimization targets. For dedicated support regarding your Website SEO & Digital Marketing requisite, you can consult eGoodMedia anytime & intensify your online presence right away!
3. Content Structure
Your referral websites are your finest companion throughout your link building journey. However, they could also undergo severe changes to stay conscious of the search engine norms & market conditions. This way a whole blogging segment could be modified. Not only you but other webmasters associated with such a website through backlinks will be affected. Although it may impact the outbound link building strategy of your referral website, it will hit you harder!
4. Content Integration
The webmaster of your referring domain could also accumulate various content pages to form one. The main reason behind such actions can be less website traffic drawn by their website pages. As a result, your backlink gets removed from the integrated web page of your referral website. However, it is not a permanent case. Your website backlink can switch positions on your referral website and then you don’t have to face such problems. Regarding content integration, you can talk to your corresponding referral domain owner if there could be a new place for your backlink.
5. No-Follow Links
No-follow links can bring you ample website traffic but are not a reliable source of link building. Human visitors are able to access such links but search engine crawlers are not. Where search engine crawlers can decide whether to put you on the leading SERPs or not. This way, No-Follow Links become your top rival even when the anchor text & link is still embedded on the referral website you’re associated with. Before deciding on a link-building strategy make sure that the webmaster is offering you a proper do-follow backlink for whatever terms included.
Furthermore, you can find other reasons responsible for your backlink disappearance like- No Google Indexing of the corresponding Web Page, Author doesn’t want to link back to you, the link page gets 301-Redirected, etc. The solution initiates through finding the missing links. At eGoodMedia we work deliberately to outshine such issues of yours & make your way to the top SERPs. You can reach our ground-breaking Social Media Monitoring & Digital Marketing team if experiencing a severe loss of your website backlinks!!
How to Find Lost Backlinks?
How about approaching a backlink tracking tool? It is a reliable, time-saving & revolutionary technique through which you can also get notified whenever you lose a potential backlink out there. Ahrefs Site Explorer is the best option we’d recommend in this context. The tool comes with a free as well as premium version as per your convenience. It is a reliable website analysis tool that helps you not only track your backlink status but also other SEO parameters. To find missing links through Ahrefs Site Explorer follow these steps:
- Visit the Ahrefs Site Explorer
- Login to your account or create one if you don’t have
- Link the same to your domain address
- After that, go to your “Admin Dashboard”
- Now click on “Referring Domains” associated with your website
- You’ll be able to review all referral websites linking back to you
- After clicking you’ll be redirected to a list of “Referring Domains”
- Now review your “Left Side Menu” & reach the submenu indicating “Referring Domains”
- You’ll drop down with 2 options- “New” & “Lost”
- Click on “Lost” and you’ll be redirected to a page showing a domain’s list not linking to your website anymore. You can customize your results regarding the number of days of inactivity. Moreover, you’ll be able to examine the date since you’ve lost your backlink.
This way you can easily inspect the essential backlinks that you’ve lost without prior discussion & knowledge. You’ll be able to list down the prospective referral domains & webmasters whom you can reach out to & request your link reclamation. The procedure could be quite long, however, you’ll get to learn a modern aspect of your website maintenance.
Alternatively, you can reach eGoodMedia, your best Website Development & Marketing partner from Vancouver, BC. Here we solve your complex website promotion issues & lead you to the peak search results!
How to Conduct Your Link Reclamation Process?
Now is the time for some real action. If you want to reclaim your lost links you have to reach out to the prospective website owners. Before that, you must make sure of your website’s content structure as well. Remember that your link loss could also entail your irresponsibility & web maintenance failure. You can’t blame your referral website owner anyhow as there’s always an unintentional reason behind a missing link. Additionally, as discussed earlier, you can’t force the webmaster to link back to your website page beyond a predetermined time period.
Here’s a systematic guide to help you with your Link Reclamation plan. Let’s get started!
1. Find Your Broken Internal Links
The reason why you have to initially see your website’s own internal linking network is simple, to analyze your own drawbacks. If you have a broken website URL that you need to target through a backlink from the referral domain, what do you expect from the backlink? Where would your website users & search engine bots be heading? The problem can ruin your SEO reputation right away and make you looser before your referring webmasters & website visitors overnight. Hence, you must find all your internal broken links & repair them in advance.
You can make use of any website SEO analysis tool available online. Ahrefs Site Explorer is a trusted & reliable website analysis tool that comes with premium plans as per your custom research prerequisite. However, you can make use of some free dedicated link finder tools like Google Analytics & Screaming Frog, etc that purely focus on your internal & external linking status. For detailed illustration, let us take the example of Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider.
The tool allows you to scrutinize around 500 URLs at a time. Thereafter, you can try the premium plans associated with the tool. Let’s have a detailed overview of how you can figure out your website’s shortcoming through this tool:
- Open Screaming Frog’s SEO Spider
- Visit the top menu by clicking on the “Responsive Codes Tab”
- After that, you can run a filter denoting “Client Error”
- Reach the “Status Code Column” & sort the same in descending order
- Moving ahead you have to click to highlight your website URL along with a 4xx code
- After that go to the “Inlinks Tab” downstairs
- You’ll get to see the Internal Links associated with your website URLs
- You can also export the report to CSV format for further review
Now you’re good to go with your repairing approach for the same. Make sure to fix your internal broken links thereafter, or else, it would just be a waste of time & effort finding such links.
2. Fix Your Internal Website Links
The approaching step is quite easy however a bit time-consuming too. You’ve got the list of all broken URLs on your website. Now you have to make use of that list to fix your website. Follow the enlisted steps:
- Visit your CSV list of broken internal links
- Reach every page that’s defected one by one
- Update the URLs if possible along with a fresh content layout
- You can also replace the existing URLs with other improved URLs
- In case you find an old & outdated URL that’s unable to alter you can remove it permanently
- Do the same with URLs that have been forgotten amid a past website redesigning
This way you can find & fix your website’s broken links to allow your external backlinks to reach you without any technical hassles. But the problem isn’t resolved entirely yet. You’ve got a pool of external challenges to overcome in the approaching section.
3. Find Disappeared Backlinks
We have already discussed how you can successfully find your missing backlinks using the Ahrefs Site Explorer. Here we’ll discuss some other important points you can consider while finding your disappeared backlinks on the referral websites. Here’s a guide you need to follow:
- Prepare for the challenges outside as it’s not about your website but your website’s promotion
- Get your list of lost backlinks ready to reach the right website owners
- If you’re not satisfied with the result of a single tool you can conduct research on multiple website analytics tools like SEMrush, Crazy Egg, Google Analytics, Matomo, etc
- You can create your own Link Building project list on Google Sheets or Microsoft Office where you & your marketing team can create weekly or monthly reports of active & inactive links. This way you can easily find out whether the situation is under control or not.
- Remember that you don’t have any control over your website’s backlinks so you can’t behave improperly to your referral website owner or else you’ll lose your ultimate chance as well.
- Plan in segments, don’t approach the webmasters for each URL in the list in a single attempt. First, try to reclaim for a specified group of URLs & then proceed to the rest
As such, you can make the best out of your missing backlinks findings. Always maintain patience as a lost backlink isn’t the end of the world & you’ve got other online marketing challenges to overcome in the future. There’s no harm in getting expert advice!
4. Reclaim Missing Backlinks
The final phase deals with the conversation between you & your referral website owner. Talking to the webmaster is always a fun yet challenging experience. Let’s assume it positively. You get a chance to intensify your relationship with the webmaster and build a strong future relationship to crack a deal. Therefore, we suggest you must share your concern in a calm & honorable manner. Even if you want to continue your link building contract with the webmaster, you can find such behavioral traits quite fruitful. Follow the enlisted techniques to reclaim effectively:
- First, find out a reliable & convenient outreaching tool for what you need to convey
- Create the list of webmasters you want to reach out
- While creating a list of webmasters you must trigger their most functional emails
- Make use of the best email finding alternatives like- Clearbit, Uplead, AeroLeads, Snov.io, Email Hunter, etc
- Prepare for your first outreach campaign
- If you’ve already got into a link building outreach campaign you don’t have to organize from the beginning
- While creating a campaign pay adequate attention to the outreach capacity of the tool
- Think twice before creating the subject line of the message
- Don’t go for a comprehensive message body, stick to the objective & clarify your intent
- Plan a decent & compact follow up
- Don’t stick to a single webmaster’s response, go ahead with the ones who reply
- Build relationships for future
We assure you you’ll get dedicated support if the webmaster realizes your concern duly!
Conclusion of the Study
We hope this article gave you a detailed insight into how you can find & reclaim your missing backlinks. The website SEO goals you’re trying to reach are quite challenging yet filled with fun & excitement. You never stop learning here. At eGoodMedia we’re also concerned about your website growth & online presence. Visit our globally renowned search marketing & website optimization services today & strengthen your future business approach!!
