Inbound Links from Broken Pages
-
Hi all,
We have a client who has a lot of inbound links from external pages that are broken/404. The 404 pages are EXTERNAL and linking to my client's pages, but their domain still has authority and their home page (and other pages) still load.
My question is: what should we do about this? Do we detox those links, or are they still sending some juice given that they have domain authority, despite the fact that the pages linking to my client are broken?
So in other words:
- My client is: yyyy.com
- They have a link from vvvv.com/services, which is a broken page
- So what should we do about this?
Thanks all!
Gavin
-
Hi Gavin,
Agree with Martijn here - links from 404ing pages are very unlikely to either help or hinder a website, just as inbound links to pages on your site that 404 also don't help / hurt.
You probably do not need to do anything about these links. However, if they were very good links in the past and you would like them back, you could consider contacting the webmasters of the sites with the broken pages and asking them if they are aware of their errors and / or would consider updating.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Hi Gavin,
Probably by now the links to your client have lost their value as Google also noticed that these pages are giving a 404 response instead of a 200. That's why I won't bother about them, probably they will disappear one day from Open Site Explorer or any other link profile research tool you're using.
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
-
Moz bot not discovering important links (high DA sites link)
Moz bot is unable to crawl and discover my links on the high authority websites like microsoft, linkedin, pinterest, etc. Where is the problem?
Link Building | | TechG0 -
Root or Inner page for Links?
Hi everyone, I am starting my link building campaign after parting with many an SEO company. I have been able to establish some links which I have used my targeted keywords as anchor text. I have also linked these to the relevant product pages on my site. I am now however, wondering if I should have link them just to my main domain name? My site only has a rank of 21 so I just wondered if I should at the start be building keyword links to the main domain? I am also building branded links to the main domain as well as doing keyword linking too. Thanks Michelle
Link Building | | nutjobshell0 -
What are inbound links worth after Panda and Penguin, since a site ranks for the NATIONAL keyword "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS!?!?
ARE INBOUND LINKS TODAY ALMOST WORTHLESS??!!? After having been the KING of SEO, down to the toilet? Today I got a great sample from a fellow SEO professional showing a site, rockymountainfurniture.com rank for "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS FROM 3 DOMAINS and a domain trust of 14!!!! ON A NATIONAL, VALUABLE, HIGH QUERY VOLUME KEYWORD!! I was stunned, but is this the "NEW SEO WORLD" we live in, so we should skip spending hundreds of hours on link building? There are over 32 different types of inbound links but this is much MORE than a radical change, this is turning SEO as it was up-side-down. Any input, thoughts, ideas?
Link Building | | yvonneq0 -
Posts and Page linking
Can I link from the post to page? I read on semoz that in order to avoid crazy linking I should not link from a post everywhere. Is it ok to link from some post which is in a category to a page?
Link Building | | VillasDiani0 -
Numerous (20K+) inbound links from ONE site in short time period
I'm somewhat new to SEO, but from what I understand, slow link growth can provide better results than highly aggressive link building campaigns. A site of mine was recently featured on a 90+ DA (55 PA) blog directory, and was featured for the entire state, therefore I received almost 20,000 inbound links from the site (from every company/listing in the state). The links have been mostly recorded (17,000) in Google webmaster tools (Yahoo Site Explorer claims around 23,000). However the site dropped 2 pages in rankings for numerous SEO related keywords since webmaster tools listed the links. Many of them are PA 50+, though a majority of the linking pages are PA 1. A few other inbound links were created from other root domains, roughly 8-10 or so in the past month. The question is, would a large amount of links like this all of a sudden trigger some kind of "penalty" from search engines (Google, especially)? And, do the PA 1 pages take away from the quality of the 55 PA links?
Link Building | | Smith-Digital0 -
What % Page Metrics & Social, What % Links?
It seems that a lot of the focus of SEOs, especially whitehat SEOs like SEOMoz and Distilled has shifted a lot more towards improving page metrics (bounce, return rate, etc) and social metrics. I'm curious - And of course, I'm just asking for guesses - But what percent of ranking do you think is page metrics, social metrics and other non-link based metrics and what percent do you think are link based metrics?
Link Building | | DerekP0 -
How long for SEOMoz to reflect new inbound links?
I have carried out some minor link building for my new site (site A) and have some links back from several directories and 1 from ezine and one from squidoo as well as a few partner sites and such. I also have another site (site B) which was linking to site A several times from a footer link, this has now been amended to just one link. The problem is that SEOmoz still only shows 3 linking domains to site A (there are at least 12 if you perform a manual search) and it is still showing many links from site B even though there is now only one. All these changes where made at least 3 weeks ago, how long before Seomoz picks them up.
Link Building | | IPIM0