Free template
Lost Backlink Recovery Email Template
A polite, low pressure email for asking an editor to restore a backlink that came out of their article. Designed to make saying yes almost free for a busy person who probably did not remove it on purpose.
Below the template: why each line is written the way it is, the follow up version, and the cases where you should not send anything at all.
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Definition
What link recovery outreach is
Link recovery outreach is contacting a publisher to ask that a backlink which was removed, broken, or dropped during an edit be restored. It is distinct from new link building in one important way: the endorsement already happened. Someone decided your page was worth linking to, and the link's absence is usually a side effect of a redesign, a content consolidation, or an editor tidying an old post rather than a reversal of that decision. That makes recovery the highest yield outreach available to most teams, and it is also the most time sensitive.
01
Why it converts better
You are asking someone to reinstate a decision they already made, not to make a new one about a stranger.
02
The controlling variable
Time since removal. Detection speed matters more than the wording of your email, which is an uncomfortable thing for a template page to admit.
03
The failure mode
Sounding entitled. The link was a favor, and an email that reads like a collections notice ends the relationship.
04
When not to send
Sitewide nofollow policy changes, genuinely retired content, and any case where you would rather not be associated with the site anyway.
The template
The first email
Subject: Quick note about a link on {{source-page-title}}
Hi {{editor-first-name}},
Long-time reader of {{source-domain}}. Your piece on {{topic}} is still one of the best resources I send people to.
I noticed the recent update to {{source-page-title}} removed the link to our {{target-page-topic}} guide ({{target-url}}). Totally understand if that was an intentional editorial call.
If it was not, I would love to ask you to re-add it. We have updated the guide significantly in the last quarter and it is now {{specific-improvement}}. Happy to send a one-line summary you can drop in, or a new section if that is more useful.
Either way, thanks for the original mention.
Best,
{{your-name}}Line by line
Why the template is written this way
Every line in that email is doing a job. If you rewrite it, and you should adapt it, these are the jobs to preserve.
The subject line is deliberately dull. Quick note about a link on their page title reads like internal correspondence rather than outreach, and it names their content rather than your ask. Anything with the word backlink in the subject gets filed as SEO spam by editors who receive a dozen of those a week, which is most of the editors worth contacting.
Totally understand if that was intentional looks like giving away your position. It is the line that makes a yes cheap.
The opening line establishes that you are a real reader of a real publication, with a specific reference. This is the only part of the email that cannot be faked or merged, and it is the part that decides whether the rest gets read. If you cannot write a true version of this sentence about the site in question, that is a signal worth listening to about whether the placement was a good fit at all.
The second paragraph states the situation as an observation, not an accusation. Noticed the recent update removed the link is neutral phrasing. Compare it with you removed our link, which puts the editor on the defensive about a decision they may not have made consciously, and which they can resolve most easily by ignoring you.
Totally understand if that was intentional is the most important clause in the email. It sounds like you are giving away your position, and it does the opposite. Editors get defensive when they feel cornered, and a defensive editor does nothing. Explicitly permitting them to say no makes a yes cheaper, and it also gets you a straight answer either way, which is worth having.
Then the ask, with a reason that benefits them. We have updated the guide and it is now more useful gives them editorial justification for the change. And the offer to supply a sentence or a section is what turns a five minute task for them into a thirty second one. Most of these requests fail on effort rather than on willingness.
The sign off thanks them for the original mention regardless of the outcome. Partly because it is decent, and partly because a publisher who linked once may link again, and the relationship is worth more than this individual placement.
The follow up
One bump, then leave it
Send this about ten days after the first email if there is no reply. It is shorter, it repeats the ask in one line, and it hands over a sentence they can paste without thinking. At the follow up stage you are almost never fighting an objection, you are fighting a full inbox, so the job is to reduce the reply to a single click.
Subject: Re: Quick note about a link on {{source-page-title}}
Hi {{editor-first-name}},
Just bumping this once in case it got buried, then I will leave you alone.
Short version: the link to {{target-url}} came out of {{source-page-title}} during the last update. If it was deliberate, no problem at all and I will stop asking.
If it was not, here is a sentence you can paste straight in:
{{ready-to-paste-sentence}}
Thanks either way.
{{your-name}}Then stop. A third email on a favor request converts almost nobody and costs you a relationship you might want next year. Record the outcome, note the publisher's responsiveness on their record, and put the effort into the next recovery instead.
Before you send
Diagnose the loss first
The most common mistake in recovery outreach is sending the same email regardless of why the link disappeared. Different causes need different asks, and using the wrong one wastes the single approach you get.
If the source page returns a 404 and the content moved elsewhere, do not ask for the link back. Ask for it to be carried over to the new URL, and include both URLs. This is an easy yes because you are helping them fix their own migration.
If the page loads and your link is simply gone, that is the case this template is written for. Editorial removal or accidental loss during an edit, and the fastest response wins.
If your own target URL broke, fix your side before contacting anyone. You would be surprised how often the link was removed because it pointed at a 404 on the requesting party's own site, and emailing someone to complain about a link you broke yourself is a bad look you cannot recover from.
If the link is present but now nofollow, or the page picked up a noindex tag, this template is the wrong tool, and what the attribute change actually costs you is a separate question. Nofollow is usually policy. Noindex is sometimes accidental, and a genuinely helpful email pointing it out lands better than a request, because you are telling them about a problem with their site rather than asking for a favor.
Match the cause to the ask
- Page moved: ask them to carry the link to the new URL
- Link removed, page fine: this template, sent fast
- Your target broke: fix yours first, then ask
- Went nofollow: usually policy, record and move on
- Page noindexed: tell them helpfully, do not ask
- Content retired: nothing to recover, log the loss
- Partner removed after unpaid reciprocity: pay up first
The process
Running recovery as a routine
Recovery works best as a weekly habit rather than an occasional panic. The whole thing takes under an hour a week for most teams.
- 1
Detect the loss quickly
This is the step that determines everything downstream. Whether you use scheduled monitoring or a monthly manual sweep, the gap between removal and detection is the single biggest factor in whether recovery works. Weeks are recoverable. Months usually are not.
- 2
Diagnose the cause
Check the source page status, whether the link is absent or just changed, whether your target still resolves, and whether the page is indexable. Five minutes here picks the right email and stops you asking for something that makes no sense.
- 3
Find the right person
The original contact if you have one, which is the argument for storing contacts on the domain record rather than in your inbox. Otherwise the author byline, then the editor. A generic contact address is the last resort and converts poorly.
- 4
Personalize the opening line properly
One true, specific sentence about their publication. Not a compliment about their great content, an actual reference to a piece you could describe. This is the whole email, functionally.
- 5
Make the yes cheap
Include the exact sentence you would like inserted, with the link already in it. The difference between asking someone to write something and asking them to paste something is most of your conversion rate.
- 6
Follow up once, then close it out
Ten days later, short version, ready to paste sentence included. Then record the outcome either way, because your own recovery rate over time is far more useful than any published benchmark.
What moves the needle
Six factors in recovery success
Ranked roughly by how much each one seems to matter, based on how these requests tend to go.
Speed of detection
The dominant factor. An editor who published an edit last week remembers it. One who edited eight months ago has no context and no motivation.
Whether removal was accidental
Most losses are collateral damage from redesigns and consolidations. Accidental losses recover well. Deliberate editorial decisions rarely reverse.
Existing relationship
A publisher you have worked with will read your email. A cold contact may not open it at all. This is the long term argument for treating partners as relationships.
How little work you ask for
A ready to paste sentence converts far better than a request to re-add a link. Reduce it to a copy and paste and you remove the main objection.
Reaching a real person
Named author or editor beats a generic contact form by a wide margin. Storing the original contact is what makes this possible later.
Knowing when not to ask
Sitewide nofollow policies, retired content, and sites you would rather not be linked from. Not sending is sometimes the right call.
Honest caveat
Why we will not quote a recovery rate
Most pages like this one open with a bold percentage. We took ours out, and it is worth explaining why, because you will see those numbers everywhere else.
This page previously claimed that teams recover between half and four fifths of editorially removed links using this template. We could not point to a study, a dataset, or our own measured sample behind that range. It was a plausible sounding number, which is exactly the kind of claim that does not belong on a page about doing SEO honestly.
The wider problem is that recovery rate is not one number, because links die in different ways. It varies enormously by cause. Links lost in a site migration where the content still exists recover at a completely different rate from links an editor deliberately cut, and both are lumped together in any headline figure you see quoted. A single percentage that averages across those cases tells you almost nothing about your own situation.
So here is the more useful advice. Track it yourself, split by cause. Record every detected loss, why it happened, whether you contacted anyone, and what came back. After a quarter you will have a real recovery rate for your own niche and your own relationships, which is the only version of this number worth putting in a client report.
One thing we will say without hedging, because it follows from how the mechanism works rather than from a statistic, and it is the whole case for monitoring on a schedule: detection speed dominates everything else in this process. If you take one thing from this page, make it the monitoring cadence rather than the email wording.
Terminology
Recovery vocabulary
Terms that come up in this workflow, defined plainly.
- Lost link
- A placement previously verified live that is not live now, for any reason: removed, page gone, noindexed, or switched to nofollow.
- Link reclamation
- Recovering links from unlinked brand mentions or broken URLs. Related to recovery outreach and usually a separate workflow.
- Editorial removal
- A deliberate decision to cut a link. The hardest category to reverse, and the one where an easy exit clause matters most.
- Collateral loss
- A link lost as a side effect of a redesign, migration, or content consolidation. Nobody decided anything, which is why these recover well.
- Recovery window
- The period after removal during which outreach still works. Short, and the reason detection speed beats email craft.
- Ready to paste sentence
- A complete sentence containing the link, supplied in your email so the editor's task is a paste rather than a piece of writing.
- Rel attribute change
- A live link switched to nofollow or sponsored. Usually sitewide policy, and usually not worth an outreach attempt.
- Recovery rate
- Share of detected losses restored after outreach. Worth measuring yourself, split by cause, rather than borrowing a benchmark.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
What recovery rate should I expect?
We are not going to give you a number, because we do not have a verified one and the numbers floating around the industry are mostly vendor marketing. What we can say with confidence is what moves the rate: how fast you detect the loss, whether the removal was accidental, whether you have any existing relationship, and how little work your email asks the editor to do. Track your own rate over a quarter. That figure is worth more than any benchmark.
Why does this template work?
Three reasons. It opens with genuine specific context, which proves you are not running a mail merge. It gives the editor an easy exit if removal was intentional, which removes the defensiveness that kills most of these requests. And it offers to do the work by supplying a sentence or a section, so saying yes costs them almost nothing.
When should I send a recovery email?
Within two weeks of detection, and detection speed is the part you control. After about a month the editor has moved on, the page has been recrawled in its new form many times, and you are effectively opening a fresh negotiation rather than reversing a recent change.
What if they do not reply?
One follow up after about ten days, then stop. The second email should be shorter than the first and should include a ready to paste sentence, because at that point you are competing with a full inbox rather than with an objection. After the follow up, record the outcome and move on.
Should I mention that we gave them a link?
Only if you actually did, and only lightly. If there is a genuine exchange history, a single clause noting it is fair. What does not work is leading with an implied debt, because it turns a favor into a transaction and invites the editor to reconsider the whole arrangement rather than just restore one link.
Does this work for a link that went nofollow rather than removed?
Usually not, and it is worth understanding why. A rel attribute change is nearly always a sitewide policy decision rather than anything about your link, so asking for an exception puts the editor in an awkward position. Record it, and factor the new policy into whether that publisher is worth pitching again.
What if the whole page is gone, not just the link?
Different email entirely. Check whether the content moved to a new URL, and if it did, your ask is easy and reasonable: please carry the link across to the replacement. If the content was genuinely retired, there is nothing to restore, and that is a loss to record rather than an outreach opportunity.
Can I automate these?
You can pre-fill them, and that is different from automating them. The specific context in the opening line is what makes the email work, and it cannot be generated from a merge field. Our own view is that recovery outreach is the worst possible place to save time, because the entire premise is that you noticed something specific about their page.
Related
Detection, then recovery
This template is the second half of the job. The first half is noticing quickly, which is where most of the leverage sits.
Lost link recovery
How detection, the recovery queue, and pre-filled outreach fit together.
Read moreBacklink monitoring
The scheduled checks that catch a removal within days.
Read moreMonitoring checklist
Free checklist of what to verify on every placement.
Read moreBacklink status checker
Diagnose one link before you write the email.
Read moreOutreach email templates
The other six emails: pitches, follow ups, and reciprocity nudges.
Read moreFor in-house teams
Why protecting existing links usually beats acquiring new ones.
Read moreRecovery starts with noticing
LinkSwapy detects removals on your monitoring cadence, drops them into a recovery queue, and attaches the partner contact so this email is a two minute job.