Case: Soft-404 detection → 18 hidden reclaims

Case: Soft-404 detection → 18 hidden reclaims

Soft 404s return 200 but show 'page not found' content. Standard checkers miss them. A client found 18 reclaimable links others overlooked.

Workflow:
1. Crawl competitor and partner outbound links (3,400 links).
2. Status-check returns only 90 hard 404s — but flag 200s with thin content or 'not found' strings in the body (47 soft 404s caught).
3. QA gate: confirm each soft 404 is genuinely dead, not a JS-rendered page (29 confirmed).
4. Map to replacements, outreach 15/day.

Result: 18 links from soft-404 reclaims alone, a vein most competitors never mine.

Definition of done: hard + soft 404s both checked, 29 contacted.

Automation fits at step 2 — add a body-string matcher to your status checker.