Link reclamation is an essential search engine optimization (SEO) technique that should form an integral part of any content and link building strategy. It is the practice of hunting down and removing broken, outdated, or incorrect URLs from a website and replacing them with current, authoritative links to relevant and useful content.
At its simplest level, link reclamation refers to the process of locating a link on a website, then bringing it up-to-date. This is usually done by deleting old and out-dated links that have gone stale and replacing them with new and relevant links. Doing this can help increase website visibility, traffic, and page rankings, as search engines like Google will understand the links as being relevant and up-to-date.
Link reclamation can also be applied to any number of other websites across the internet, offering multiple opportunities to improve SEO performance. When broken links are replaced, it makes content more effective and relevant for users, as URLs that no longer exist and can’t be used, contribute to a poor user experience.
The general guidelines for link reclamation are relatively straightforward:
1. Clearly Identify Broken Links – It is important to identify which links are broken and need to be updated. This can be done manually by going through each page on a website and looking for stray links or URLs, or by using specialized tools or crawlers to find broken links quickly and easily.
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2. Research Relevant Content – Once the links have been identified, it is important to find relevant content to replace the links with. Link reclamation is not just about updating links, it is also about improving the quality of the content, making it more relevant and interesting to the user.
3. Replace the Links – Once the content has been identified, the next step is to replace the broken links with the relevant ones. Depending on the type of website, adding links and content can be relatively straightforward.
4. Monitor and Update – It is important to continuously monitor and update the website links to ensure they remain relevant and up-to-date. As new links and content become available, it is important to review them for accuracy and relevancy, then add them to the website.
Link reclamation is an important part of any content and link building strategy. It helps to keep website links up-to-date, as well as improve website visibility, traffic, and page rankings. It is important to regularly monitor links and update them with new and relevant content, in order to gain the most benefit from link reclamation.