Cutting off the bad link juice
-
Hello,
I have noticed that there is plenty of old low quality links linking to many of the landing pages. I would like to cut them off and start again. Would it be ok to do the following?:
1. create new URLs (domain is quite string and new pages are ranking good and better than the affected old landing pages) and add the old content there
2. 302 redirect old landing pages to the new ones
3. put "no index" tag on the old URLs (maybe even "no index no follow"?)or it wouldn't work?
Thanks in advance
-
Hello all,
Thank you for your answers,
Oleg, I am not that keen on meta refresh, as it is poor user experience - apparently it needs to be about 10 sec, as shorter time G. may treat as 301. Wonder what is the shortest time I can use which will lose the link juice but wouldn't disturb my visitors.
Gagan, in regards to 301 redirecting the bad page to 404 page..isn't that easier just to make it 404 without redirect?
Mike, what do you think is the best solution to keep the traffic but cut off bad links to specific landing pages.
I will be testing 302 soon from old URL to new one. Wonder if I ALSO should put 404 on the old one...or maybe no index...or it doesn't matter? What are your thoughts?
-
Does it seems perfectly okay to make the site page (linked by spam links) to have 301 redirect to show 404 error page
As if its a CMS system where many other pages are linked through other subcategories too of the component, so the option of cutting down the bad page, which is hurt by low quality links is through 301 redirect to land to 404 error page. Will it diminish or rather make completely off the value of all spam links pointing to it and finally does not affect the site at all.
-
Upon further research, you are correct. A noindexed page is still crawled and indexed, just not in SERPs. So any links will still be followed and the page is still a part of the website. With this in mind, I think you should 404 the page and redirect via meta refresh after some time. Reach out to the webmaster's of the good links and ask them to change the new URL.
I still don't think a 302 is the way to go in this scenario. Ideally, you'd experiment with different options and see which produces the best results.
-
Personally I would go with Oleg's original suggestion: "If your rankings are being hurt by these links, I would move them to a new URL and 404 the old page. I would then go through the link profile for the old URLs. Find all the high quality links and contact the webmasters asking to change it to the new URLs."
-
Sure, But Oleg said, "If you noindex the page, G won't be able to access it and it will lose all its authority".
If in case the page loses all its authority - does it still will pass on the negative value to the domain or other pages due to low authority or spam backlinks pointing to it
If its true, then may be making the page cut off from site by marking it 404 is a better way !!
-
NoIndex won't cut the links. It will just remove the page from the SERPs. So you'll still be hit with the bad links to your site and organic traffic will be cut off.
-
Sure, thanks
Does it mean if we noindex it - can it be safely presumed that all the low quality links pointing to that url will be nullified and it will not have any negative effect to the site. I mean there wont be any need for making the page 404, if we still use that page as regular part of the site, like for filling forms etc.
Many thanks, once again for your detailed reply
-
So his goal is the have users redirect to the new page without having Google pass the link authority to the new URL.
If you noindex the page, G won't be able to access it and it will lose all its authority. But any user that visits the page will still be redirected to the new url. There is no such thing as a 404 redirect.
Meta refresh is another way to redirect users to a new page without passing authority. As long as the time is greater than 0 (meta refresh of time=0 is treated similar to a 301), it shouldn't pass authority. So same deal, noindex the page and set up a redirect for users, not bots.
-
Hello Oleg,
Am also interested in knowing more about it
Does marking a noindex, follow or noindex, nofollow to that page is a better way than 404 redirect ?
Also, i dint get you for meta refresh redirect. What does it mean like ?
-
302 by definition is "Temporary Redirect", which is not applicable here. According to this 302 experiment, 302's did actually pass some authority down (which may or may not hurt you). I do see the UX advantage to having the old URL redirect to the new page though.
Another alternative is to block the page via robots and set up a redirect or noindex the page and set a timed meta refresh redirect to the new page.
-
Thank you Oleg,
I have checked and have a few .gov.uk links going to some of those pages which generates some traffic, so not sure if 404 on them is the suitable in the situation.
On the other hand why 404 is better than 302? They both stop link juice passing but 302 passes the traffic.
-
If your rankings are being hurt by these links, I would move them to a new URL and 404 the old page. I would then go through the link profile for the old URLs. Find all the high quality links and contact the webmasters asking to change it to the new URLs.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Back links issue and how to resolve it
Hi there! We have a client who has been generating back links from external sites over a period of two years with all the same anchor text which all link back to the home page. This anchor text is also their main search phrase they wish to score highly on. In total, they have roughly 300 domain names linking to their site. Over 50 of these domain names all have the same anchor text. These links have been generated through articles and blogs. So roughly 20% of the total number of links all have the same anchor text. Over the past 6 months the client has noticed a steady drop in their rankings for this term. From the back link analysis we have done, we believe it is this which is causing the problem. Does any one else agree? For the remedy, do we go in and see if we can change the anchor text or disavow them through Google webmaster tools? Suggestions? Thanks for your help! P 🙂
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Globalgraphics0 -
Nofollow for reciprocal links?
Hi, We have reciprocal links with our business partners. Their websites have been listed on our website with "nofollow" links and they link to our website with "nofollow" or "dofollow" links. Is this wrong having reciprocal links? And if they are our partners, "nofollow" or "dofollow" is better? I don't think there will be anymore link juice loss with dofollow links from our website?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
C-Block and link juice
We manage a couple of different domains on different hosting providers. I want to consolidate to one provider, but one site has some good links juice to another site (actually just one link). Should I worry about having both sites on the same C-block - and probably the same IP address?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ThomasErb0 -
Best Link Building Strategies in Modern SEO
Hello, In light of all the updates and also in guest blogging being only for nofollow links now, what's some of the best strategies for link building for ecommerce sites? We're in an industry where the content doesn't get linked to very much. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Potential spam issue - back links
Hi - we have a client whom we work with for SEO. During a review we noticed in Webmaster Tools, there was an IP address with over 30,000 links to our clients site. The IP address is 92.60.0.123. From looking up the IP address details, it looks like it is based in Europe - but we are unable to establish what it is, where the links are and who created it. We are concerned it could be a potential spammer trying to cause an issue with the SEO campaign. Is there any way of finding out any more details apart from the basic information about the location of the IP address? Also - if we submit a disavow via webmaster tools, we are unsure what issue it will have on the clients site if we do not know what it is and the type of links it is creating. Any ideas? Thanks for your help! Phil.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Globalgraphics0 -
Need advice on best strategy for removing these bad links.
Heres the scenario... We recently took on a new client who's previous seo company had partaken in some dodgy link building tactics. They appear to have done some blog comment spam, very poorly. The situation we are now in is this: We have a site with an internal page deemed more important than the homepage (the homepage has 60 linking root domains and the internal page 879). It looks as though the previous seo company submitted a disavow request, theres a message in webmaster tools from a few weeks back saying it had been received, but no further correspondence. I have doubts as to whether this disavow request was done correctly... Plus im not sure that Google has issued the site a warning yet as they are ranking position one for the keyword on the internal page. Our clients want us to handle this in the correct manner, whether it be to simply ignore it and wait for Google to send a warning about the links, remove the offending internal page and leave a 404, or try to disavow the links that google doesnt know about yet from 800+ websites. Suggestions for the best practice for dealing with this situation? Any advice is much appreciated, Thanks, Hayley.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Link Building: High Ranking Site vs. Relevancy
Hello, When link building, is it acceptable to link with a site that has high authority but has minimal relevancy to our site? For example, if we sell nutritional products and the link exchange would be with a site that relates to free coupons, would that work? Also, if we are publishing articles on other sites, should we also publish them on our own site? Should we add "nofollow" if we publish them in our site?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | odegi0 -
Is OSE data reliable and removal of malicious inbound links?
I ran a report on my site (www.rentscouter.com) using OSE and it is reporting some very strange inbound links like: anchor text = Megan http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/mmnr/smr/Paul_Henderson_Interview_Full_Clip_REVISED.f4v?m=pc&a=bookmarkList.view&target_user_id=1&search_type=tag&keyword=蒲田・大森・羽田周辺 http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/mmnr/smr/Paul_Henderson_Interview_Full_Clip_REVISED.f4v?m=pc&a=bookmarkList.view&target_user_id=1&search_type=tag&keyword=熱闘!甲子園%2F高校野球ゲーム http://www.hawkeyesports.com/photos/schools/stan/sport/m-baskbl/04-05action/Thumbs.db?pages10=10&size=9?pk=1 anchor text = Alexa's Mom http://www.lg.com/it/products/documents/LE8800.epk?action=view&pageId=214&start=69164 http://www.michigan.gov/documents/techtalk/SEM-0601_191695_7.dot?blogname=mahdid&sub=5&tpl=0 anchor text = http://fansofdavid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/4v5sh3k1.htm?seccion=busqarag_s&busq=Huesos&?seccion=basearag_c&id=3&?seccion=busqarag_s&busq=Huesos&?seccion=basearag_c&id=3&_pagi_pg=596 However, none of these seem to show up in my Google Webmaster account. And generally when I go to some of these links I can't find any reference to my site - is the OSE data bad or are these really shady links someone is building to knock down my site? What is showing up in GWT are a bunch of growing crappy links that redirect to some advertising site - does anyone know of a way to get these removed by Google as I doubt I'm going have any luck trying to contact the owner(s) of these sites: |
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BoulderJoehttp://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/252213-best_penis_enlargement_methods.htm |
|http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/252426-plumbers_and_gasfitters_needed_urgently.htm |
|http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/252451-the_importance_of_plumbers_and_more.htm |
|http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/253039-football_betting_systems_can_they_be_profitable.htm |
|http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/253131-my_teen_wants_to_know_how_sex_was_and_is_for_me_what_do_i_say.htm |
|http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/254364-why_marriage_counseling_is_good_for_you.htm |
|http://harleydavidsonjacket.org/article/254449-herpes_dating_service_what_is_it.htm | Yes, I know Google will theoretically and maybe eventually "ignore" such links, but that will be on Google time 4 weeks or 4 years - who knows. Plus, with a younger site with a thinner link profile - anything like the links above can't be helping me...... I'm trying to figure out why my site keeps bouncing between #5 and #255 for specific keywords and determining if I have a google penalty which is being discussed in this thread: http://www.seomoz.org/q/help-with-diagnosing-google-penalty
0