Open the Lost Links report in Ahrefs, figure out why each link died, and fix the cause. A page you moved needs a 301. A link an editor cut needs a short email. In a niche where new links are this expensive, an hour of recovery work usually beats a week of cold outreach.
Pull the Lost Links report first
Ahrefs logs every link it stops finding under Site Explorer, Backlinks, Lost. Filter to dofollow and sort by the linking site's traffic so the losses that matter float to the top. The report tags a reason for each: link removed, page dropped from the index, redirect, 404. Check it monthly. A lost link is easiest to recover while the editor who placed it still works there and the page still exists.
Sort the losses into three buckets
Every loss lands in one of three buckets. Your fault: you deleted or moved the target URL and the link now hits a 404 or a redirect chain. Their edit: the site refreshed the article and your mention fell out. Their collapse: the page or the whole site is gone. The first bucket is fixed with a redirect, the second with an email, the third mostly not at all — though the Wayback Machine will show you what the link was, which tells you what to pitch elsewhere.
Fix your own 404s before emailing anyone
Cannabis sites churn URLs constantly. Menus move, strains sell out, city pages get restructured, whole domains migrate after a rebrand. Every one of those changes strands links. Crawl your own 404s, cross-reference them against pages with backlinks in Ahrefs, and 301 anything that ever earned a link to its closest living equivalent. No permission needed, no outreach, and the recovered authority starts flowing on the next crawl.
Use the Wayback Machine, then write to the editor
When a live page dropped your link, check that page's history in the Wayback Machine before writing. You will see whether the link was cut in a deliberate rewrite or vanished in a template change — the second is usually an accident and an easy restore. Then email whoever edits the page. Two sentences: the old version linked to this resource, the current one lost it, is it worth restoring. Polite, specific, no pitch. Editors fix accidents; they ignore essays.
A worked example: the seed bank that moved its catalog
A seed bank migrated from /shop/ URLs to /seeds/ and left no redirects. Six weeks later its Lost report showed 41 dropped dofollow links, including a forum sticky and two grow-guide roundups that had sent steady referral traffic. The fix was a redirect map of thirty rules, pushed live in an afternoon. Most of the links were recovered without a single email, because the links never left — the destinations had.
Key takeaways
- Check Ahrefs' Lost Links report monthly and sort by the linking site's traffic.
- Bucket every loss: your 404, their edit, or a dead page; each has a different fix.
- 301 any URL that ever earned a link before doing any outreach at all.
- For editor removals, check the Wayback Machine first, then send two polite sentences.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find backlinks my cannabis site lost?
Run the Lost Links report in Ahrefs Site Explorer, filtered to dofollow. It lists each dropped link with a reason code, which tells you whether the fix is a redirect on your end or an email to theirs.
Is reclaiming a link really easier than earning a new one?
Usually. The linking site already chose to cite you once, so the editorial decision is made. You are asking someone to restore their own past judgment, not to make a new one about a cannabis site.
What should the reclamation email say?
Name the page, note that an earlier version linked to your resource, and ask if it is worth restoring. Two or three sentences. Skip the SEO language entirely; editors respond to a fix, not a favor.
What if the linking site deleted the whole page?
That link is gone. Pull the dead page up in the Wayback Machine to see the context it lived in, then pitch the closest equivalent site. The content that earned the link once will usually earn it again.
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