Should I Be Concerned About Unnatural Links Pointing to 404 Pages?
-
I bought an existing domain name on Sedo sometime ago and launched a new website on it in early June this year.
I noticed there are about 5 or 6 spammy links from directories that were obviously bought by the previous domain owner but they're pointing to pages that never existed on the new website.
Other than that, the link profile is 100% clean and it's quite good actually, lots of links from my content being shared on social networks.
So should I be worried about these links? Like a lot of webmasters, I'd like to avoid using the disavow tool, I really don't trust that thing.
-
I know quite a few SEOs who would use 410s rather than 404s when cutting and running from bad links pointing at internal pages...
-
Yes they are spammy, they have keyword-rich anchors.
-
I tried to contact the website owners but these websites seem to have been abandoned a few years ago.
I guess I'll leave it at that. If I get a problem related to unnatural linking, I'll know which ones are the cause.
-
As Chris said, not a biggie but I would contact the webmaster(s) to take them down (sounds like you are sure that they are spammy).
-
5 or 6 back links won't hurt you, its normal on a natural looking profile. You can always drop the sites an email if you are concerned.
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
-
Links to sub pages
Hi, if I am building links to pages outside of my home page, is that link still a referring domain. Also, does that link also help the SEO of the keywords targeted on the home page. Most of our links are home page targeted and we need to start ranking on subpages but need to know if these links only help the page they are aimed at
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing0 -
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 -
Is it worth 301 redirecting an old backlink from a 404 to a landing page?
I was reviewing the 404 report in webmaster tools, when I found a 404 back link from a 10 year old forum topic on a very high DA site. It seems the poster did a direct hotlink to a pdf that was on our site a very long time ago, but is now gone so you get a standard "can not be found" page on our site. Is it now worth redirecting the url to an appropriate landing page, considering the age of the post/ link and the sites DA, or is it not worth it because of the age of the link, its a forum, and we are still getting some juice from it anyway despite it being a 404, and won't get much more out of it. Just want to know it good practice if I find many such links (very old links to now 404 pages) Thanks
Link Building | | PaddyDisplays0 -
No Follow Links
On my campaign report from SEOmoz I have noticed that all my 3 competitors have 99% followed links versus 1% no-followed links. Should I do the same? How can I check were are the no-follow links on my site? I have found some tool online but it shows me that there are only 2 no-follow links on my website which are both www.cloudflare.com while SEOmoz report shows me that I have 1031...where can i view this links?
Link Building | | VillasDiani0 -
Link Building and Landing Pages
I'm embarking on my first link building campaign and I was wondering if its good practice to develop a specific landing page (a focused summary page) like I do in my PPC campaigns or should I use the URL to my homepage?
Link Building | | bmackrell0 -
Where do you buy your links from
OK which brokers / sites do you use to buy your links or gain links from and why.
Link Building | | therealmarkhall0 -
How does the number of obls on a page affect link juice?
If you have acquired a link on a home or other page; just how can you value the contribution of that link. If a home page has a DA=50 and 100 obls (outbound links) should the DA be discounted significantly and is there an equation which can be applied to help quantify eg 50/100 *10 therefore link from this page is same value as link from DA=5 with only one link? Just how diluted does juice become if number of obls is high?
Link Building | | seanmccauley0 -
Do image links with no alt tags pass link value?
"... an image link with no alt tag is useless to search engines..." according to a Nov 2007 seomoz blog post. Is this still the case in 2011? I ask because I'm about to obtain a banner link on a high-traffic site (chiefly for the clickthrough value) but I notice the site uses neither "title" nor "alt" tags.
Link Building | | Jeepster0
