Removing Bad Links, Bad?
-
Our situation is this..
We recently went through a major redesign that included a significant change in content and URL structure. This of course cause a significant increase in 404 from our search traffic.
In an effort to minimize those 404s we requested that Google remove certain URL directories from their index. Doing this resulted in a 90% drop in the number of impressions we were getting from search.
My question is this, is it better to allow the 404s with a good landing page that explains the changes or better to remove the bad urls?
Much thanks...
-
Fortunately isn't too late, Google does allow us to put them back into the index.
That said, there isn't a way to determine which section would be appropriate on the fly and to manually map the individual pieces of content would be time and labor prohibitive. That said, would it be appropriate to do a 301 (permanently moved) on content that has been removed? I would think a 410 (gone) would be the most correct.
Any thoughts on what would be better, the high level of 404s or the a more accurate index on google?
Thanks again.
-
Why didn't you 301 redirect them to the most appropriate section?
It seems a little late if you already requested the 404s to be removed from the index.
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
-
Domain Authority and Links drastically decreased in less than a month
I'm fairly new to SEO, and am left completely perplexed about why our two SEO client's links and DA decreased so drastically in so little time. Looking at their stats on Moz, between May and June, their DA's went down by 3-5 (which, they were fairly low to begin with), and external links were halved! This is rather concerning to me as building their external links has been my focus for the past few months for both of them. There are a number of tweaks that I could make to site structure in terms of meta descriptions and page title length (though I can't fix that as the clients want to keep the titles as is), however there are no critical errors. I have also placed a lot of filters on both of their Google Analytics pages as they were getting what I just now realized was a ton of spam, though I don't see how that would affect anything. I just can't imagine what lead to all of those external link suddenly dropping. I imagine the drastic drop in those lead to the DA decrease, but again, I'm very new, so I'm not certain. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated. I have been panicking quite a bit since I've seen this!
Reporting & Analytics | | everestagency0 -
Page Name Tracking - Without UTM links
Hello, Our current site is fully html with no cms. We're moving to a newer version today with a typo 3 cms. My one worry is as follows; On some pages an internal link opens a jquery lightbox, inside the lightbox will be a video or download link. I cannot simply add a standard event url like I wanted to (utm_ link) as the pages are linked via the cms pointing to different pages, not the url's. We really need the following appearing in Analytics, whether its an event or landing page; The click of the light-box link The click of the video OR download link inside the lightbox. I would really, really appreciate any help on this as the new website is going live today, regardless whether this has been resolved. Thank you very much in advance of any replies. twY8s8B.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | Whittie0 -
Links from PA/DA of 1
My immediate thought is that a link from a website that has a PA/DA of 1 for both or either metric would be absolutely worthless, but I just wanted to make sure. Could this also be from it being recently indexed? Also is there a rule of thumb that anybody knows, or tries to follow at least? Obliviously the higher the better, but for example; A PA/DA of 15 and below is SPAM A PA/DA of 30 and above is GOOD A PA/DA of 50 is GREAT PA/DA of 80 is AMAZING PA/DA of 100 is GODTIER
Reporting & Analytics | | HashtagHustler0 -
Accidental Link not being removed by Google WMT
I operate two sites for a client. One is a local business and one is their national business. I used the same template for both sites (with changes) but accidentally left a link in the footer to the local site. Now the local site is showing 12k backlinks from the national site. I removed the link over 2 weeks ago but it still shows up in Google WMT in the "Links to your Site" section. It goes to a coupon page and not a "targeted" page but 12k links to the local site is 6 TIMES what I had before. My question is: "Is there a way to get Google to remove the link from Google WMT?" More specifically force it. Like I said the link has been removed for over 2 weeks but it still shows up in the Local site's Incoming Links section of WMT. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | DarinPirkey0 -
Lost rankings after disavowing links
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0 -
Spam link? Links from linguee.*
Hello, in a site, in which I'm working .. in webmaster tools i see a lot of links as following: With more links to your site: linguee.es 3.066
Reporting & Analytics | | jarizaro
linguee.com 2.964
linguee.pe 2.722
linguee.mx 2.721 Total inlinks to my site are 20.000, and links incoming from linguee.* are more than 50% !!! My site is about spanish courses in spain, but i think all these links are fuck*ng me. I checked if these links have nofollow tag, and not, they don't have this attritute. What can i do? My site is going down in Google. ¿disavow that domain? Please help.0 -
How do I find "bad" backlinks
Hi, I have used open site explorer to review our back links, but I don't know how to determine which ones are bad? For example, I think I am getting penalized for links from strictlygifts.com, but not sure. StrictlyGifts is a second site of ours that has a web hosting plan (our main site does not have hosting - long story). We use this site to store things that link to our main site, trophycentral.com. As an example, we have several online catalogs with hundreds of pages that link to products on trophy central. I have a gut feeling that this is hurting us, but I don't know how to confirm it. I can easily remove the links but don't want to if they are helping us. Can anyone help? Thanks!!!
Reporting & Analytics | | trophycentraltrophiesandawards0 -
Rel=nofollow link to a NoFollow, NoIndex Page?
I have a multitude of "schedule a demo" pages/forms on my site that are all identical, so I have on all of them. My question is, should I also place on the link to the "schedule a demo" pages? I know the generic rule is to never nofollow any internal links (per Matt Cutts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOOB_Q0MZY), but should that still apply if the link directs to a page that is noindex, nofollow? Thanks for your input in advance; don't want to run into, as Matt Cutts puts it, "a mini kerfuffle!"
Reporting & Analytics | | BethA0