As the name itself suggest, Link Reclamation is the process of reclaiming the links that belong to your website. But what kind of links and from where do we reclaim these links is a matter of consideration because it affects your Search Engine Optimization ranking.
If you run a website, you must have knowledge of what are the broken links and how they come into the existence. Just like everything in life, website and webpage links are not permanent, sooner or later they break and it is the responsibility of the owner to fix it back otherwise the rating of the entire website can go down.
All of us have encountered this problem of finding a useful-looking link but when you click on them, they simply display the message ‘Link Not Found’ or some other kind of error. As frustrating it is for users, it can be devastating for the owners and managers of the website since their rating on the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) depends on your satisfaction.
The reasons for a link to be broken or lost are various. Sometimes it is just a case of redirection (301 Redirect) where the link has been shifted to a new permanent address after major changes took place.
This reason is not as alarming because it was the owners themselves that made the changes and the pages still exist for the users. But the real problem arises when Error 404 is being displayed on the screen.
This means the page no longer exists. In this case, as the developer of the website, it is your job to fix the missing page error by changing the URL and informing all the other websites, where you used it as a backlink, to make changes on their pages too and replace the old URL with the new one. As for the 301 redirects, the redirected pages do not work for long so it is advisable to replace their old URL as well.
Broken links are not the only responsibility of the Link Reclamation method. Websites that have used your content without your permission, including media like pictures and videos, owes you backlinks.
If they do not co-operate on their own, you need to find all your content and contact the website management to provide you with backlinks that in return will help them as well as you in gaining points in SEO. There are many tools in the market that effectively helps you find all the broken and lost links that belong to you.