Broken Incoming Links from External Site - What to do?
-
Our Google Webmaster 'page not found' reports consistently show two Chinese websites that have approximately 50 broken links each to non-existent pages on our website. One site is a PR5, the other a PR1.
Two of our Chinese employees have contacted the site owners (even talking with them over the phone) to discuss the errors, where the broken links live on their sites, and how to fix them. They have contacted the site owners three times in the past three months, but still the broken links have not be fixed.
What do you recommend we do?
-
Thanks Everyone for your input!
To further clarify, the 2 Chinese sites in question have essentially slurped our pages and in their automated process, have created non-existent links that have never existed on our website and that have no pattern similarities in URL structure.
Based on this, I am inclined to disavow the PR1 site, but work to 301 links from the PR5 site via .htaccess.
Thoughts?
-
I've bookmarked that .htaccess 301 redirect generator page. Always been afraid to mess with that file before, but maybe it's time to learn. Thanks again Peter!
-
Hi Greg
If these links have been arriving at your site and producing 404s then they must have a legitimate format so you should be able to redirect them. BUt it may be a limitation of your cPanel redirect form that is rejecting the links you are entering.
In your form, essentially you should need to select the domain you are creating a redirection for (.e.g. bestdryingrack.com and then copy the text after the domainname/ (i.e. after the forward slash) into the textbox alongside. In the redirects to box below enter the full URL including http:// for the page you want the link redirected to.
If you are on a Linux server then your cPanel will be adding the redirections it creates into a file called .htaccess in the root of your web server. If the form doesn't work, then it may be worth trying to add the redirections manually to the .htaccess file.
There is a site here which will help you create the 301 redirects and may not be as fussy as your cPanel form is.
I hope that helps,
Peter
-
Hi Peter,
They are all links from other sites. I have many versions of these types of links hanging around in my 404 report. I have not worked so far to "split" the ones that look like 2 URLs stuck together.
I will try to attach some screenshot bits from my GWT accounts so you can see what I see. Also I attached the form used by my cPanel for doing 301 redirects. Let me know if the image is not clear.
I really appreciate your help. Thanks!
-
Hi Gregory
To answer your question re the two links you have shown as examples...
http://mysite.com/http://mysite.com/randomword
Yes, this is essentially two links as follows: http://mysite.com/ and http://mysite.com/randomword so you need to split these.
http://mysite.com/">najboljih and this
http://mysite.com/…word/new-word.html
The first one is not a valid link - this decodes to http://mysite.com/">najboljih
The second one has tried to encode non-standard characters so it is represented as two digit Hexadecimal codes - this decodes to http://mysite.com/word/new-word.html which with the %xx codes could decode to a genuine URL but it looks suspect.
Are these links from another site?
Peter
-
Hi Peter and everybody,
Are there some broken links that are just TOO BROKEN to fix because of the URL used?
I have some linking to my site this way: http://mysite.com/http://mysite.com/randomword that the 301 direct form on my cPanel just will not accept. Perhaps because of the repeated http part?
Also we have some with weird symbols like this: http://mysite.com/">najboljih and this http://mysite.com/…word/new-word.html that the 301 redirect form will not accept. Again I guess the % and & signs are the problem?
It would be nice to get rid of these as they are creating a growing pile of 404 errors. Any suggestions?
-
This is very common on larger sites and is very simple. Implement 301 redirects. They pass most of the juice. For maximum benefit, also, be sure they refer to the page most relevant to the topic of the links.
Note: On the PR 1 site if you feel that they are lower quality do you want the links? If not, remember the disavow tool.
-
Just posted at the same time but a little later than Nakul - ditto answer!
Peter
-
Hi Nathan
If the links are legitimate from good sites and you want them to link to the correct pages on your site, but are not having success with the Chinese site updating them, then it may be simplest to use URL redirection.
If your site is hosted on a Linux server then you can create URL redirection via an .htaccess file in the root folder of your site. If your site is hosted on Windows server, then similar methods exist.
Essentially, this will mean you can intercept the broken links when they arrive at your web server and before they end up reporting a 404 page not found error. In doing this, you can redirect the broken link to the actual address on your site. The result will be that the links will work and also the search engines will change their index for your site to the current address.
So where you currently have a backlink going to mydomain.com/missing-page.html, your URL redirection can signpost the visitor (human or search spider) to the correct page mydomain.com/correct-page.
It would read something like this:
Redirect 301 /missing-page.html http://mydomain.com/missing-page.html
one for each broken link.
I hope that helps,
Peter
-
The pages those links link to, were they removed / changed by you at some point. Do you have a page you can redirect those URLs to ? If yes, setup 301 redirects on your server for those URLs to the correct new pages that you may have. If you do not have that content anymore, think like the user who might click on the links from those external links and redirect them to the page that is most optimal for that user.
I hope that helps.
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
-
Links from sites with iffy link profiles?
So the site http://www.cadenas.de/ appears to have good decent scores from the various Moz ranks, but when I check out the site in OSE there are a lot of really sketchy links that jump out, online pharmacy/drug type links. I should also add that the negative links are seemingly going to a weird blog deep in the site and only appear when I select all links to the root domain in OSE. Everything about the site appears very legitimate except for the link profile which has me nervous. Would you guys pursue a link from this site?
Link Building | | CJ50 -
Link building for a non-linkable site?
Hello, I am trying to zone in on a link building strategy for a non-linkable site. What I mean by non-linkable is I have a construction site. It's a family owned and operated small business. Our clients are farmers and older people usually. We go do a job, do it right the first time, and leave. Basically even if a couple of people who link to me for some weird reason, this is no way in the realm of 6,000 that my main competition has. I have tried to get as many quality citation resources as possible by using get listed, and white spark. My domain authority is only 16 though, so I must be able to increase this somehow. I have listed with Google +, Bing, Yahoo and every other major citation I could find. So now with trying too increase links with other ideas. I read somewhere to donate to charitable organizations, but if they link back to me as a donor, in an unrelated field, isn't that spammy like? So a construction site donating to a disease website, and then getting a backlink in return, does that look weird. It just seems like there are so many rules that I do not want to mess something up. I do not want get spammy links, but not sure if citations count as links so I am doing a win-win thing? Thanks for any tips Chris
Link Building | | asbchris0 -
Links from non existant sites?
Hi! I'm new at all this 🙂 I've taken a look at the backlink profile for one of my sites as it's seems its been hit by this last Penguin update. I'm finding links to my homepage from sites that no longer exist, like this one: http://mikimoto-pearls.org - does this hurt my backlink? I mean, I would figure it does since there's nothing there? If so, how do I get the link removed? Do I even need to? Disavow tool maybe? Thank you!
Link Building | | Noviceseo0 -
What benefit does a site with a low DA get from someone guest posting who links to a site with a high DA?
I'm relatively new to link building and although this may be an obvious question I can't seem to find an answer anywhere even after searching Google.
Link Building | | JoshED0 -
Any value in link building to local pages on my site?
If I'm trying to rank for the term 'wedding band' with my url: http://www.musicliveuk.com/home/wedding-bands will linking to local pages such as: http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-acts/hire-wedding-bands/wedding-bands-london help the main page to rank? I added the 'local' pages to try and pick up any traffic from long tail search queries but my main focus is on getting the main page to rank as the traffic from long tail queries is so small. So is it worth me spending time building links to these local pages in order to try and help the main page rank?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Are links from flash sites worth anything?
I'm building some links right now and spotted an opportunity with a voiceover artists that we used for a marketing video. He posted our testimonial on his site and I plan to ask him to provide a link back. Thing is -- his site is entirely composed of flash content. Does this matter at all? Will this link still count? Thanks!
Link Building | | kylesuss0 -
Incoming Spam link removal
I spotted a few bogus links today on one of my clients sites got in touch with the sites via email asking for them to remove the links. also did a whois and emailed them but have had no reply. Whats the best solution to this if they wont remove the links ? Is there anything you can do. I am just worried these links may have a negative effect on the site.
Link Building | | onlinemediadirect0