If you think your job ends once a link is live, you’re dead wrong. Ask any smart SEO specialist, link builder, or marketer, and they’ll tell you links are not permanent, and you should keep an eye out on your existing links in case anything happens to them.
We’ve compiled a few ways you can end up losing your backlinks, along with easy tips on how you can stay ahead of the curve:
1. You may have changed a page’s URL without redirecting the backlinks to that page. Not only are you losing out on the link juice, but also anyone clicking on that backlink would see a 404 error, causing a poor user experience.
Solution: A simple 301 redirect is sufficient in most cases to pass on the link juice and redirect users automatically to your new destination page.
2. Site owners may remove your link for any reason.
Solution: Reach out to the site owners and see if there’s any way you can regain that link. If that’s not possible, your best bet is to cut your losses and move on to creating new links on other sites.
3. The website where you won a link no longer exists.
Solution: There’s really nothing you can do about it except move on to building new links.
Regularly building organic links is the best insurance in this messy digital world. Not only would you be minimally impacted when a link eventually disappears (which it will), but you’ll also be rewarded by multiple Google algorithms, such as the Freshness algorithm, which places more value on newer links.
