Dealing with links to your domain that the previous owner set up
-
Hey everyone,
I rebranded my company at the end of last year from a name that was fairly unique but sounded like I cleaned headstones instead of building websites. I opted for a name that I liked, it reflected my heritage - however it also seems to be quite common.
Anyway, I registered the domain name as it was available as the previous owner's company had been wound up. It's only been in the last week or two where I've managed to have a website on that domain and I've been tracking it's progress through Moz, Google & Bing Webmaster tools. Both the webmaster tools are reporting back that my site triggers 404 errors for some specific links. However, I don't have or have never used those links before. I think the previous owner might have created the links before he went bust.
My question is in two parts. The first part is how do I find out what websites are linking to me with these broken URL's, and the second is will these 404'ing links affect my SEO?
Thanks!
-
Removing 404 urls from Google indexes is a never ending job and often requires multiple submissions until they go away.
But when should you submitt them for removal?
If Moz finds them but Google is not reporting them yet in wemaster tools or Analytics...
should you be proactive and submit them to google for removal?
OR
Wait until the show up as an error by Google? -
Hi Matt,
Yes they all are! I'm going through the responses now and trying out the suggestions.
-
Hey mickburkesnr!
Are any of these answers helpful?
-
This is a common problem, you have three options:-
Attempt to get the links taken down (by contacting the Webmaster)
Use the Google Disavow Tool tool
Recreate content on the siteTo do any of the above as you mentioned you will need a list of URLs to fix, I would recommend using Google Webmaster tools & Moz Open Site Explorer.
You can also use Google search engine and search for the following:-
"-site:yourdomain.com yourdomain.com"Remove speech marks
Hope this helps.
-
It's my opinion that the Gary Illyes quote is a little out of context for the situation. Dead inbound links (404 errors) could be a bad thing, if the links are of good quality. It's more than likely Mr. Illyes was addressing on-page 404s, and in that context I would mostly agree.
Though to be pedantic, 404 errors slow page load time - and speed is a ranking factor. So while broken on-page links may not result in a direct penalty, it definitely doesn't do any favors for on-page SEO.
-
Before we get to the links:
Apologies in advance for all of this, but I know it can be helpful for your current situation and in the future.
The first thing that would have helped is using SEM Rush to possibly get an idea of the domain's ranking history. I say 'possibly', because it's not so great with domains/pages that geo target smaller cities. A site could be going gangbusters for Paducah, Kentucky targeted queries, and SEM Rush more than likely won't pick up on that. Major metros? Yea varily.
SEM Rush can also possibly help you determine if the site has been hit by various algorithm updates. Generally if a sharp drop in organic traffic occurs within, or shortly after, the same month of a spam related update there's a good chance the site has been penalized. If such is the case, it could more than likely hurt your efforts for some time.
In more competitive niches - penalties aren't always the case. Sometimes the competition is fierce and sites lose traffic to competitors at the time of algorithm updates. Use Moz's Google Algorithm Change History to help with those efforts.
There's also the possibility that whoever owned the domain previously made some pretty bad mistakes with their front end deployment. You can use Wayback Machine to possibly figure some of that out (you may even be able to grab a sitemap). Sometimes people/companies had enough rope to hang themselves, no algo or competition necessary.
Now... to the links!
The short answer to your second question is variable. You may have some really great links out there that are currently pointing to a dead page. On the other hand, you could have a ton of spam. So you can hurt your search engine optimization efforts through inaction or action. The rest of this is a general overview of what you should do.
It's always a good idea to get more than one source of link data. Always. Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and Open Site Explorer are all good 'free' sources of link data. I would also recommend Ahrefs and Majestic.
All of those sources will tell which page has received links, as well as the anchor text used. Ahrefs and Majestic in particular are pretty good at showing you which inbound links lead to a 404. From there, you can choose whether or not you want to 301 to a new page with comparable content.
Just make sure that you're not bringing in a whole lot of spam links, and be especially judicious about links with exact match anchor text. A boiler plate example would be 'keyword city'. The rest of your decisions should be based on Google Quality Guidelines with special attention paid to the Link Schemes section.
And should some of those linking domains not pass your judgement call, add them to your disavow file to be safe. You can disavow entire domains, so you're not bogged down in individual link entries. Just make sure to note that you had just purchased the domain, and the domain looked suspicious. Here's the official documentation for the disavow tool.
Best of luck, and I'm sure you'll have more questions. Feel free to post them here.
-
Hi,
To check broken links/URLs (the http response ‘404 not found error’) on your website) you can use Screaming Frog SEO spider which is free in lite form, for up to 500 URLs.
http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/broken-link-checker/
Gary Illyes from Google says "Whoever came up with the idea that having 404s gives a site any sort of penalty, you're wrong. Utterly wrong."
Please also read this post @ https://plus.google.com/+JohnMueller/posts/RMjFPCSs5fm
Hope this helps.
Thanks
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
-
Subdomain and Domain Linking Strategy
Here is my question for SEO. We are a mug printing company and we have a website specifically for bulk orders hosted at our main link (example.com). For the purposes of this example we will assume that we only print mugs for bands. Eg. orders for 100 mugs at a time for a band. We have had a need to create stores for bands so that they can then pass a link to their fans to purchase mugs. Our main website deals specifically with bulk orders only with customer provided logos, so extending this workflow to our main domain takes quite a bit of development time. Because of this, we purchased a service that allows us to create stores under the new domain stores.example.com. The root domain is the same as our main domain but there is “stores” in front of the domain. A band’s website that we would create would then look something like : stores.example.com/band1_merchandise These links are going to be spread by the band all over the web, and it is in my hope to be able to take advantage of this. Ideally stores.example.com/band1_merchandise being spread around will also give us a boost to www.example.com My question is how can we benefit the most from bands sharing the subdomain link such that our main website will be able to see an SEO benefit.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | masonwong0 -
Disavow - Broken links
I have a client who dealt with an SEO that created not great links for their site. http://www.golfamigos.co.uk/ When I drilled down in opensiteexplorer there are quite a few links where the sites do not exist anymore - so I thought I could test out Disavow out on them .. maybe just about 6 - then we are building good quality links to try and tackle this problem with a more positive approach. I just wondered what the consensus was?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lauratagdigital0 -
People buying links to their profiles on my site
As we have a major Penguin update looming in the background, I am looking for expert advice on how to deal with professionals buying into link programs whether they are doing it deliberately or not. Our site provides detailed profile information on hundreds of 1000's of professionals and some professionals apparently believed that buying into link program will lift their profile in the SERPS. About 10 professionals have paid shady link building companies to buy links to their profiles on our site. The biggest offender bought over 1,500 links to his profile. Aside from adding the known toxic links to our disavow file, what else can we do to avoid any link penalties? I can think of three distinct options and would love to hear feedback especially based on actual experience. Option 1. 404 the existing profile - "http://www.anysite.com/jones_smith" and create a new URL "http://www.anysite.com/jones_smith_1". Option 2. Keep the existing URL and fully rely on the disavow file. Contact the professionals and kindly ask them to stop buying links and to contact their link building companies to remove the links. Any other ideas?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | irvingw0 -
Keyword Specific Domain | Outranking trend
Hey everyone, i looked for a similar question but didnt found anything. Ive been having a lot trouble competing with other websites that use the "exact-keyword" domain (www.keyword.com), then they just stuff some mediocre content and rank 1-3 in Google SERP for that keyword I wasnt worried before because i thought they were going to be penalized or decreased in ranking. But they bought several keyword domains and outrank everyone in almost every word. Their conversion rate cant be that good because of the mediocre content, but still i dont like the fact that they rank better just because of the keyword. Any comment on this? , what would you do? Regards
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | JesusD0 -
Dealing with internal pages with bad backlinks - is this approach OK?
Hi all, I've just been going through every page of my company website, and found a couple of internal pages with nasty backlinks/profiles. There are a significant number of article marketing and rubbish directory pages pointing to these internal pages. These internal pages have low PR, yet are performing well in terms of SERPs. I was planning to: (1) change URLs - removing current (soon to be former) URLs from Google via Webmaster Tools. Then (2) remove website's 404 for a while so nasty links aren't coming anywhere near the website (hopefully nasty links will fail to find website and broken links will result in link removal - that's my thinking anyway). PS. I am not planning to implement any kind of redirect from the old URLs. Does this sound like a sensible approach, or may there be problems with it? Thanks in advance, Luke
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Partner Site Hit with Penguin - Links hurt me
I work for a network of international websites, the site I work on is for Canada. Our partners in Australia were hit by penguin hard because they hired a black hat SEO guy and didn't know. He was creating profiles on highly authoritative sites and keyword stuffing them. Now, they've completely dropped off the SERP. This is where the issue occurs, because we are all international partners we are all linked together on the header of every page so visitors can choose their country. Now, because they were hit hard and we have reciprocal links (not for rankings but for usability) will we be affected? It seems like we have, but I just want some opinions out there. Also, should we go ahead and stop linking our sites between countries to avoid this mess?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss0 -
Link Farms and The Relationship between 2 domain with a 301 Redirect
I have an interesting scenario: Domain A was worked on by a disreputable SEO company off shore. The owner of Domain A came to me for my assistance and evaluation on how the off shore company was doing. I concluded that he should terminate the relationship immediately. One of the bad things they did was register Domain A with a LOT of link farms. I started working on a new site that eventually we decided to go with Domain B (a better, but totally related domain name to Domain A). I added a nice new site and had my client write clean, relevant information for it. We've done all legitimate, above ground by-google's-recommendation SEO for Domain B. I have a series of 301 redirects from Domain A to Domain B. Since April 24th, organic search results have plummeted. I see many incoming links via Webmaster Tools as the massive link farms, but those link farms have Domain A in their databases, not Domain B. My question: is Domain B inheriting the link juice from Domain A insofar as the incoming links are showing up in Webmaster Tools as directly related to Domain A? Should I sever the ties with Domain A altogether? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KateZDCA1 -
Geo-targeted Organic Search Traffic to a sub-domain
For a client of ours, we are likely to create a sub-domain that is to be targeted at a specific country. Most of the content on this sub-domain will be from the main site, although with some specific differentiation to suit that geographic market. We intend to tell Google through Webmaster Centre that the sub-domain is targeted at a specific country. Some questions: a) Any idea how long it could take before google gives precedence to the content in this sub-domain for queries originating from that particular country? b) What is the likely impact of content duplication ? What extent of differentiation is necessary from a search engine perspective? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ontarget-media1