Should I Be Concerned About Unnatural Links Pointing to 404 Pages?
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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.
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I know quite a few SEOs who would use 410s rather than 404s when cutting and running from bad links pointing at internal pages...
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Yes they are spammy, they have keyword-rich anchors.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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