Forwarding Empty URLs to Homepage for SEO & Old Backlink Salvaging - Is there any value or risk?
-
Our company owns about 30 URLs that we aren't currently using. Is there any SEO value to be gained by forwarding these content-less URLs to our homepage if they aren't currently indexed by google?
Some of these sites were previously in use at low traffic volumes by companies who licensed use of our brand and URL. After parting ways a year or longer in the past, no 301 redirection was done to save the link juice, so it's long gone at this point. However, there may be some sites on the net that are still linking to various pages on the URL. What would be the best course of action to salvage any value of these URLs until they are in use again as full websites?
Insights would be greatly appreciated!
Cheers,
Justin
-
I'd would 301 them. It's not going to hurt you. It could help you. The best value you would get for these would be if there were links to those domains, then some of that link juice would be passed on.
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
-
New websites issues- Duplicate urls and many title tags. Is it fine for SEO?
Hey everyone, I have found few code issues with our new website and wanted to see how bad those problems are and if I have missed anything. If someone can take a look at this and help me it would mean the world. Thank you. all! We hired an agency to design a new site for us and it's almost ready, but the other day I found some problems that made me wonder if this new site might not be as good as I thought and I wanted to ask you to take a look at the code and possibly help me understand if from SEO prospective it is sound. But I really want someone who understands SEO and web design to look at our code and point out what might be wrong there. Here is a link to the actual site which is on a new server: http://209.50.54.42/ What I found few days ago that made me wonder something might not be right. Problem 1. Each page has 3 title tags, I guess whatever template they are using it automatically creates 3 title tags. When you do " View Page Source" For example on this url: http://209.50.54.42/washington-dc-transportation when you view the code, the lines Lines 16,19 and 20 have the title tag which in my opinion is wrong and there should only be one. Could this hurt our SEO? Problem 2. Infinite duplicate urls found All following pages have INFINITE NUMBER OF DUPLICATE URLS. EXAMPLE: http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy/8, http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy/1048, http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy/7, http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy/1, http://209.50.54.42/privacy-policy you can add any type of number to this url and it will show the same page. I really think this 2nd problem is huge as it will create duplicate content. There should be only 1 url per page, and if I add any number to the end should give a 404 error. I have managed to find these 2 issues but I am not sure what else could be wrong with the code. Would you be able to look into this? And possible tell us what else is incorrect? I really like the design and we worked really hard on this for almost 5 moths but I want to make sure that when we launch the new site it does not tank our rankings and only helps us in a positive way. Thanks in advance, Davit
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Davit19850 -
Does the url in for your homepage impact SEO
Is there any harm to SEO having a homepage url that is not clean like www.domain.com. For example citi uses https://online.citi.com/US/login.do Does that matter in any way? Would a company like citi benefit from changing to www.citi.com as their homepage?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kcb81781 -
Homepage Deindexed?
Hi guys, One site we have been working on which is: https://tinyurl.com/j5m8vld Homepage seems to be deindexed by Google Australia. From initial perspective it seems it could be high velocity of links too soon, but not 100% sure as there are no messages in GWT. It could be duplicate content issues as we found duplication of the homepage e.g. https://tinyurl.com/zzds5mf which is the exact same as the homepage. However, don't think this would cause the homepage to be indexed which had strong rankings before it was deindexed (ranking for 100 keywords). Any suggestions would be very much appreciated! Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jayoliverwright0 -
Pagination, Javascript & SEO
Hi I need some help identifying whether we need to rethink the way we paginated product pages, On this page http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches when clicking page 1,2, etc - we have javascript to sort the results, the URL displayed and the URL linked to are different. e.g. The URL for these paginated pages is for example: page2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:30&orderBy:5&pageView:list& Then the arrows either side of pagination, link to the paginated landing page e.g. http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 - this is where the rel/prev details are - done for Google However - when clicking on this arrow, the URL loaded is different again - http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches#productBeginIndex:60&orderBy:5&pageView:list& & doesn't take you http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 I did not set this up, but I am concerned that the URL http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/workbenches?page=3 never actually loads, but it's linked to Google can crawl it. Is this a problem? I am looking to implement a view all option. Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Are these good backlinks?
I am trying to understand how to build good backlinks. I've read or been told that anchor text is bad (understood), websites with unrelated subjects is bad (understood), paid-for links are bad (?), "submitted" and article to get the link is bad (?), or it is a link/farm directory are bad (?). This is actually really confusing to me! Please bear with my silly questions, I am an engineer with an MBA, stay-at-home/homeschooling mom that helps run my husbands business. My brain gets full fast! Ha! I thought maybe if I post some of the links we have built, someone could look at them and tell me if they are good or bad. This way I can go forward understanding better. Articles... I thought that writing articles was a GOOD thing! Now I see that submitting articles isn't? So what about these two articles where my husband, as an expert in his field, wrote an article for a popular mag/blog. http://coastalanglermag.com/red-snapper-season/ (they did the hyperlink wrong and I am trying to get the publisher to fix it) http://www.bdoutdoors.com/article/shark-encounter-capt.-gregg-rapp/ (this is a pretty funny story if you read it) Blog stories... what about when someone copies your blog post as a story on their website? Or someone scrapes your content? http://jeremyrymill.tumblr.com/ http://www.bdoutdoors.com/article/heart-pressure/ http://www.sportfishermen.com/board/showthread.php?t=2627767&p=3294972 (we post fishing reports and they get copied) Un-related Directories... http://www.mobileresources.net/mobi/Glowing_Deep_Sea_Fish/ (I didn't create this!!! I guess they just crawl and link?) Related "farm" Directories http://www.sportsmansresource.com/ffishtarpon.htm Other directories/citations such as yellow pages, city search, etc. These are okay right? Local hotels and what not... concierge's link to me, I don't even ask them to http://laquintacocoabeach.com/things-to-do/index.cfm Paid - I pay for MOZ Local! Isn't that paying??? AND, I paid for a whois listing on enom... is that bad too? NOW FOR THE BAD.... these are bad right? http://darman.niniyoo.com/Sea-Leveler-Sport-Fishing-Charters-Inc-FL.html (I have no idea how this got there) http://teensnow.comwww.whoisbusinesslistings.com/Other/10/23490/Sea-Leveler-Sport-Fishing-Charters.html (what the heck is this??? how can they even append a website on a website?) http://forums.gq.com.au/member.php?u=1813973 (I think this was created on my behalf by my part-time SEO) If you have read all the way down to here, my sincerest thanks! Thank you for your time!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CalicoKitty20000 -
SEO Consult?
Is there anyone here that I can pay to give me a deep analysis of my website and my competitors with recommendation on what to do? I am a small business and I cannot afford expensive monthly SEO fees. I can probably afford a one time consult fee, then I can do the work myself. Or maybe I can pay a-la cart for some of the fixes. I understand this may not be something SEOs want to do since they make their money off doing the work and may not want to share trade secrets. I just thought I would throw that question out there. I've been working on trying to SEO my site for a year now... I was improving and happy with my progress until October and lost 30 positions over my tracked keywords. I have no idea why. I'm kind of at my wits end! 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CalicoKitty20000 -
What to do about old urls that don't logically 301 redirect to current site?
Mozzers, I have changed my site url structure several times. As a result, I now have a lot of old URLs that don't really logically redirect to anything in the current site. I started out 404-ing them, but it seemed like Google was penalizing my crawl rate AND it wasn't removing them from the index after being crawled several times. There are way too many (>100k) to use the URL removal tool even at a directory level. So instead I took some advice and changed them to 200, but with a "noindex" meta tag and set them to not render any content. I get less errors but I now have a lot of pages that do this. Should I (a) just 404 them and wait for Google to remove (b) keep the 200, noindex or (c) are there other things I can do? 410 maybe? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jcgoodrich0 -
URL with a # but no ! being indexed
Given that it contains a #, how come Google is able to index this URL?: http://www.rtl.nl/xl/#/home It was my understanding that Google can't handle # properly unless it's paired with a ! (hash fragment / bang). site:http://www.rtl.nl/xl/#/home returns nothing, but: site:http://www.rtl.nl/xl returns http://www.rtl.nl/xl/#/home in the result set
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EdelmanDigital0