How to handle bad DoFollow links to pages on my site that no longer exist
-
I briefly had a forum on one of my sites, but after getting inundated with spam I decided to remove it for the time being. During the brief time it was up, most of the spammers were stopped from registering, but a few managed to get through and posted tons of links to their prescription drug sites. These posts were deleted almost instantly, but the spammers also created DoFollow backlinks on high authority community sites like ning.
The forum posts they linked to were deleted immediately, so the links never went anywhere and the forum has been deleted entirely for a few months now. When clicked, the spam backlinks now bring someone to a "Sorry, that page doesn’t exist" page on my site.
My site suffered a bit in the last Panda update and it made me look through my backlink profile, finding lots of these links - even though the pages on my site are long gone, could these links be hurting my site?
Can a DoFollow link to a site help or hurt the main domain, even if the actual page it's linking to is deleted?
-
Thanks Charles, I will try to get these links taken down.
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
-
Nofollow links can hurt site rankings ?
can irrelevant nofollow links hurt site rankings? our website is about selling perfumes ... https://janraber.com/
Link Building | | hiseo770 -
When pitching a whitepaper as Push Content for Link Building, is it ok to give the person I'm pitching a link to a landing page with a form on it?
When pitching a whitepaper as Push Content for Link Building (i.e. pushing out content that my client has created), is it ok to give the person I'm pitching a link to a landing page with a form on it? Or should I create a landing page with the whitepaper included on it? I’m not sure if the client will be ok with this b/c I know they use the whitepaper for sales purposes to gain leads. For example, my pitch email would include a line such as this, "the whitepaper can be found at LINK and I'd love if you could share it with your readers." I think it may be weird/a little wrong to ask a webmaster to include a link on his site to a landing page with a form to get the whitepaper. Does this make sense? What have others done with whitepapers as Push Content for link building?
Link Building | | ArketiGroup1 -
Do links to my website improve all pages?
I'm currently building links to my home page (through directories) and blog pages. However, none of these pages are actually targeted pages for main keywords. In SEO, do links to any webpage of a site contribute to the improved rank of other pages?
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
What should be the ration of inbound link between Home page and Internal pages?
What should be the ration of inbound link between Home page and Internal pages? And also wanted to clear my doubt, suppose My website is related to Technology niche with different technologies like PHP, Java etc. Is this better idea to submit internal PHP page link in PHP related directories? Although I know that in the most of the directories have very large number of categories.
Link Building | | Perfect0070 -
Multiple Links from High Ranking Site Vs. Links from Multiple Domains - What's More Important?
I understand it is important to get links from many quality domains. Currently, I do have links from top domains (PR, Trust) and it I can get more from (high rank) pages on these same domains. Would it be better to focus on expanding my reach (find additional domains to link from) or to continue to build links from the current domains I have a connection with? What is weighted more? I realize doing both is important, but trying to figure out how to best use my time. Thanks! David
Link Building | | DWill0 -
Pursuing Links on Sites You Have a Link From
Is it a bad idea to spend resources to get a second link from a site that already links to you? It seems like the marginal value of each additional link is much smaller than the first link.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Links from Real Estate Websites Link Page, Do or Don't?
It seems that real estate sites have at times been under heavier scrutiny from the search engines. But real estate agents get networking, which makes acquiring those links a little bit easier. Plus with localization of search, I think real estate sites may give off a good GEO scent. Should SEO's go for links from real estate websites? Does a reciprocal link devalue said links?
Link Building | | Thos0030