Digital PR and Link Building
Mention and link reclamation
Recover the links you have already earned but never received. Scoped as its own piece because that is how it is usually bought.
What is meant by mention and link reclamation?
Recover the links you have already earned but never received. In practice that means monitoring for brand, product and spokesperson mentions without links, and then the harder half: finding broken inbound links pointing at pages that moved or went.
Why this work exists
Teams tend to buy the visible part of this discipline and skip this, then wonder why the visible part underperforms.
Within Digital PR and Link Building this is the item with the clearest cause and effect, which is why it is scoped on its own.
The nearest piece of work to it is earning the sector-specific standing that buyers check. Where that is already handled, this moves faster than the estimate; where it is not, the two get done together or neither of them holds.
What good looks like
The working version gets updated by whoever notices, not by whoever owns it.
The gap between that and where most accounts start is why this is scoped as mention and link reclamation rather than as a line inside something larger. Targeting the trade sources that matter rather than general publications is the usual second step once it is in place.
When this is the right work
Three observations mean this work is due:
- The brand is mentioned frequently and linked rarely
- Inbound links point at URLs that fail after a migration
- Your research is cited in text with no link
If none of those is true, something else is probably the constraint, and the Digital PR and Link Building overview maps the alternatives. The usual neighbours are classifying competitor links by whether they can be replicated and keeping the research asset current enough to stay citable.
What the work covers
What gets done:
- Monitoring for brand, product and spokesperson mentions without links. This is where the theory meets the account and usually loses.
- Finding broken inbound links pointing at pages that moved or went, handled before the parts that depend on it rather than alongside them.
- Identifying image and data use without attribution, which is where most of the time goes and almost none of the budget.
- A polite, specific request process that works more often than it fails. This is the piece a client can verify themselves, which matters more than it sounds.
How it runs
Three passes, each ending in something the client can check.
Where the judgement goes
What is left needs a decision rather than a fix. These get taken with whoever owns the consequence, not resolved quietly in a ticket.
Checking it held
Changes get re-checked after a fortnight, because a surprising number of them do not survive the next deployment or the next platform update.
Handing it over
Whatever is left running ends up with a named owner and a schedule, or it stops happening within two months.
What each part runs into
The four parts do not fail in the same way:
- Monitoring for brand, product and spokesperson mentions without links – in Delhi NCR, complicated by the fact that an enquiry path that runs through a messaging app rather than a form
- Finding broken inbound links pointing at pages that moved or went, which in Bengaluru runs into a catchment smaller than the ambition on the website
- Identifying image and data use without attribution: the Surat version of this has to deal with an incumbent whose position comes from presence rather than effort
- A polite, specific request process that works more often than it fails, where a Sharjah engagement contends with a buying pattern that resolves faster than the reporting cycle
The failure mode
Sending a templated demand. A specific, polite note to the right person about the particular page works; a bulk request does not and sometimes removes the mention.
Naming it upfront is the difference between a result and a report about effort.
How it is measured
Links recovered per month, and the share of mentions that carry a link. That is what gets reported, and it is deliberately narrow enough to move within the engagement.
Measured the same way before and after, even where a better method became available halfway through.
What you end up with
What arrives at the end of it: a reclamation process running continuously, with the backlog cleared and new mentions caught quickly.
Written to be read by somebody who was not in the meetings.
How it differs by sector
Three cases, each pulling the work a different way:
- For Education and training, admission cycles, a parent paying for a student’s decision, and course-level demand. and that shapes how far this can go.
- Nonprofit and NGO brings its own limit: two audiences with nothing in common: donors and the people served.
- Healthcare and clinics, constrained by the fact that content that affects health decisions is held to a higher standard, and advertising is restricted.
The industry pages carry the rest of that detail. Education and training and Nonprofit and NGO are the two where this piece of work most often decides the outcome.
Common questions
Is link reclamation worth the effort?
It is usually the highest-return link work available, because the relationship and the editorial decision already happened. All that is missing is the link, and the request is reasonable rather than promotional. The backlog on an established brand is often substantial.
How do you find broken inbound links?
From the backlink data for your domain, filtered to target URLs that return anything other than a success status, which surfaces links pointing at pages lost in migrations or deletions. Redirecting those URLs to the right current page recovers the value without contacting anyone. The adjacent reading is Retainer or Project, and SEO or PPC for the version of this question that comes up later.
What is a realistic timeline?
Two to three weeks to establish what is true, then a phase sized to the finding. Quoting the whole thing before the diagnosis would be guessing, and the guess is usually wrong in the expensive direction. Read What should we fix first on a new site? for the standard approach and Why did our organic traffic drop? for when the standard approach does not fit.
What do you need from us?
Access to the measurement and to whoever knows the history. Most of the delay on work like this comes from waiting for access rather than from the work itself. Next: Offline conversion import. After that, Orphan page, which is where the trade-offs live.
Is the output a report or a change?
Both, in that order. A reclamation process running continuously, with the backlog cleared and new mentions caught quickly. The report exists so the change is accountable, not instead of it. Pair this with Conversion Rate Optimization for Ecommerce and retail, and with Digital PR and Link Building for Ecommerce and retail if the market is competitive.
Ask about mention and link reclamation
A line about the situation is enough. The first reply will say what we would check rather than what we sell.
Work out what to fix before what to add
Send what you have. We read it before the call, so the call is about decisions rather than discovery.