Failure mode: only hunting external broken links

Failure mode: only hunting external broken links
Mistake: you scan competitors and prospects but never your own site's inbound 404s. Live external links pointing to your dead pages = recoverable equity you already earned.
Fix internal-reclamation workflow:
— 1. Pull your own 404 report from GSC + server logs.
— 2. Filter for 404 URLs that still have external referring links.
— 3. Rank by referring-domain count and quality.
— 4. Action: 301 the dead URL to the closest live equivalent — instant recovery, no outreach.
— 5. QA gate: redirect target must match original intent, not just homepage-dump.
Automation: GSC API pull + a script joining 404s against the backlink export.
Definition of done: every inbound-linked 404 on your site is either restored or intent-matched 301'd.