<b>Reclamation-Before-Building Decision Gate</b>

<b>Reclamation-Before-Building Decision Gate</b>
Reclaiming your own lost links beats building new ones. Run reclamation first every cycle.

1. Pull your own lost backlinks (Ahrefs 'Lost' report, last 90 days).
2. Categorize each loss:
— Page went 404: restore it or 301 to a match.
— Link removed by editor: outreach to re-add.
— Domain died: drop, unrecoverable.
3. Restore and re-pitch before allocating any hours to net-new prospecting.
4. Automation fits at step 1: scheduled weekly lost-link export with diff alerts.

Definition of done: every recoverable lost link from the last 90 days has a restore action or a re-pitch logged before new building starts.