Unlinked brand mentions are pages that name your business, people or products without linking to you. Turning them into links means finding them, checking each one is worth it, and sending a short, specific request to the person who can edit the page.
By Kristijan GjorgjioskiIndependent SEO consultantPublished 18 October 2026 · 7 min read
Somewhere out there, a writer has already said something nice about your business.
They named you in an article, a supplier list or an event recap. They just didn't link to you.
Those unlinked brand mentions are the warmest link prospects you'll ever have.
Here are the seven steps I use to find them, filter them and turn the good ones into links, without a single cold pitch.
An unlinked brand mention is any page that names your business, its people, products or original work without linking to your website.
Most people only search for their company name.
That misses a lot.
Here's what I look for on every reclamation project:
| Mention type | Example |
|---|---|
| Company name | "...according to Smith & Co, the..." |
| Misspellings and short forms | "Smith and Co", "SmithCo" |
| Founders and staff | A quote from your managing director |
| Products or services | A named product in a roundup |
| Your data or tools | A statistic from your survey, credited by name |
| Your images | Your chart or photo, credited in a caption |
| Broken or wrong links | A link to your old domain or a dead URL |
The last row isn't strictly unlinked.
But a link that lands on a 404 does you as much good as no link, so I fix those in the same pass. If you want more of those, my guide to broken link building covers the outward-facing version.
You don't need an expensive stack for this. You need four things:
Set aside two or three hours for the first pass.
After that, half an hour a month keeps it under control.
Start by writing down every way someone might refer to you.
Your list should cover:
Skip generic terms.
If your product is called "Pro Plan", searching it will drown you in noise.
Pair common names with a qualifier instead, such as your town or your industry.
Now search each name. Put it in quotes and exclude your own domain:
"Smith & Co" -site:smithandco.co.uk
Then narrow the results so you see the pages most likely to say yes:
"Smith & Co" plumbing-site: termsRecent pages convert best.
A writer who published last month still remembers you, and the page is still being maintained.
Next, set up Google Alerts for your top three names so new mentions arrive by email.
Then check your own records: press coverage, award announcements, event listings and supplier pages. If you run digital PR, every campaign creates a fresh batch.
Your PR team or agency usually holds the best list of all. Ask them.
Open each page and check it properly.
Use find-in-page to locate your name, then hover over it.
Look nearby too, because some writers link a different word in the same sentence.
Sort what you find into four groups:
Pro tip: For the dead-URL group, a redirect on your own site often fixes the problem with no outreach at all. Check your server logs or backlink tool for 404 pages that still attract links, then add them to your redirect map.
Not every mention deserves a request.
A link from a scraped copy, an auto-generated directory or a page nobody reads won't help you.
Asking only wastes your time.
I give each page a quick priority:
| Priority | Looks like | Action |
|---|---|---|
| High | Trade publication, local news, partner or association page, recent article | Ask this week |
| Medium | Older but maintained article, niche blog with real readers | Ask once the high list is done |
| Low | Scraper copies, thin listings, pages not in Google's index | Skip |
For the medium group, run the checks from my guide on checking backlink quality. If a site would fail as a prospect, it fails as a reclamation target too.
Sending your request to the wrong inbox is the most common reason it goes unanswered.
Work out who controls the page:
Avoid generic "info@" addresses when a named person exists.
A real name gets read.
For associations and partners, use the relationship you already have. A quick message to someone who knows you beats any template.
Keep your email brief.
The writer owes you nothing, so make saying yes take ten seconds.
Here's the structure I use:
Something like:
Hi Sarah, thanks for including us in your piece on commercial boiler servicing. Would you be open to linking the Smith & Co name to the page below, so readers can find the service you mentioned? smithandco.co.uk/commercial-boilers/ - thanks either way, James
Suggest the most relevant page, not automatically the homepage.
If the article mentions your boiler servicing, that's the page readers would want.
Don't offer anything in return. Google's spam policies list exchanging money, goods or services for links as link spam, and that includes "a free month" or a product sample.
If the publisher wants to mark the link as sponsored or nofollow, that's their call. Google's guide to qualifying outbound links says links with those attributes will generally not be followed, but they still send readers.
Send one polite follow-up about a week later, in the same thread.
Then stop.
Repeated chasers burn relationships, and some of these writers may cover you again.
Log every outcome in your spreadsheet:
Recheck added links after a month or two.
Pages get edited, and links sometimes vanish in a redesign.
I also tag referral traffic from reclaimed links in analytics. A proper GA4 setup shows which mentions send visitors who actually enquire.
These are the patterns I see most when a business has tried this before:
Mentions matter beyond links too.
Being named by trusted sites is part of how AI assistants describe you, which my guide on getting mentioned by ChatGPT explains. Tracking those mentions is its own job, covered in AI brand monitoring.
Open a spreadsheet today and search your company name, your founder's name and your best-known product, each in quotes, limited to the past year.
That one session usually turns up enough mentions for your first round of requests.
Unlinked mentions are just one source of links you've already earned.
My list of link building strategies covers the others, and my off-page SEO work puts links in context with reviews, listings and mentions.
If you'd like the finding, vetting and outreach handled for you, mention reclamation is the first stage of every link building campaign I run. Here's how my link building service works from gap analysis to live links.
They help indirectly. A mention on a respected site puts your name in front of its readers, can lead to branded searches and tells AI assistants that real publications talk about you. Google has not documented how, or whether, it uses unlinked mentions as a ranking input, so treat the mention as a reputation win and the link as the SEO win.
Better than cold outreach, because the writer already chose to name you, but nowhere near every request. In my campaigns, recent articles, trade publications and partner pages say yes far more often than large news sites, where editors rarely revisit published pieces. Judge the work on links gained per hour spent, not on a percentage.
Usually not. If the article criticises you, a link request will look tone-deaf and may prompt a follow-up piece. Deal with the substance first: correct factual errors politely, or respond through the proper channel. If the mention is neutral or balanced, such as a comparison article, asking for a link so readers can check the facts is perfectly reasonable.
Often yes, as long as the site is one your customers read. Google's documentation says links marked nofollow, sponsored or ugc will generally not be followed, so the ranking value is limited. But the link still sends interested visitors and makes the mention easier to act on. Prioritise followed opportunities first, then work through the rest.
About the author
Kristijan Gjorgjioski
Independent SEO consultant · 6+ years in SEO · 60+ client websites worked on
I'm an independent SEO consultant with 6+ years in SEO. I run audits, migrations and content programmes for businesses in Europe, the UK and the USA, and I build the automation behind my own research.
Book a free 30-minute call. I look at your site first and tell you plainly what I would fix, and in what order.