What should I do if a high-value backlink is lost?

Modified on: Fri, 31 Jul, 2026 at 4:54 PM

Summary

If a high-value backlink is lost, first determine whether the source page, backlink, and destination page still exist. Depending on what you find, you may need to restore content relevance, create a 301 redirect, update the target page, or contact the referring site's owner to recover the backlink.

Symptoms

You have identified that a high-value backlink is no longer pointing to your website through Siteimprove SEO Advanced.

It's important to have backlinks from high-trust pages to improve your overall SEO ranking. High-value backlinks can be lost for one reason or another. Siteimprove identify lost high-value backlinks in our SEO Advanced module.

Prerequisites

Before troubleshooting a lost backlink:

Access to Siteimprove SEO Advanced.
The URL of the lost backlink source page.
The target URL receiving the backlink.
Access to review your website content and redirects.
Ability to contact the referring website owner if necessary.

Possible Causes

A high-value backlink may be reported as lost because:

The source page was removed.
The backlink was removed from the source page.
The target page is no longer available.
The target content is no longer relevant.
The backlink destination has changed without a redirect being implemented.

Resolution

We recommend you do the following if a high-value backlink is lost:

Does the link still exist?

Check if the source website is active, the page is still available and/or the backlink is present on the page.

Examine your target URL

Check that your target URL is still available. Is it accessible to robots? Is it still relevant for the backlink?

Consider a redirect

If the target page is not there anymore then is there another page that we can send this backlink to? If yes, then set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to a new one.

Is the content still relevant?

If the page still exists, but the content is no longer relevant, rewrite the content or find a more appropriate page to send the backlink to. Reach out to the owner of the backlink with a new URL.

Examine your source

If the source page is still there, analyze the content. Is the link still there? Was the source page removed? Was it just your link or the whole section of the page?

Reach out to the owner

If it was just your link, try contacting the owner of the page to find out why it was removed. Ask if you can do anything to get it back.

Additional Resources

Learn more on backlinks

Expected Result

After completing the troubleshooting steps, you should have identified why the backlink was lost and determined the appropriate corrective action, such as restoring the link, implementing a redirect, updating content, or contacting the referring website owner.

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