Can 302's Negate Spam Link Profile?
-
To make a long story short, the previous SEO company we hired spammed us on LOTS of crappy links, many of which are still indexed. We're currently in the act of removing these links before we receive a manual spam penalty/notification + building new, stronger links to balance out our profile.
While most of these garbage links were sent to our homepage, many are linking our Services page (and a bunch to our .com/sitemap.html for some reason, lol).
Now we're in the midst of updating our entire website and the permalinks are going to change. While I'd normally 301 our old links to the new ones, Id rather not bring the horrible link profile with it if at all possible.
Would a simple 302 redirect effectively dodge the bad juju from these spam links to our Services page since they pass 0 juice? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.
Thanks!
-
Hey Carson,
Thanks for the response. 404/410ing was going to be my game plan initially, but I was curious if a 302 was "better" than returning dead pages. In either case, it's only a few pages so I don't think it matters much. Our traffic was from this page being used across our local citations which did receive referral traffic. They've since been changed to our root URL, so no worries on not 301'ing or 302'ing that link. 404 it is.
The majority of the bad links are to our root domain, so I've been busy lately sending removal requests and such and preparing out disavow sheets. I was hoping for an "easier" fix to simply get rid of the dead pages, but killing them does indeed seem best.
I guess I'll go with the original plan to kill the pages which have the bulk of the spammy links, 301 the "cleaner" old structures without links aimed at them, and continue trying to remove the spammy links to the root URL.
Thanks for the input!
-
Hi there,
Sorry, I thought I answered this! I think I lost my internet connection for a bit.
On pages where you have no good links you want to salvage AND no significant incoming (organic/referred) traffic, I would just return a 410 response code and kill them off entirely.
On pages where you have no good links but you do receive traffic, I would 302 redirect them.
On pages with good and bad links, I would either leave them (200) or 301 redirect them, clean up the links as best you can, and disavow those spammy domains (or pages, in fewer cases) that are spammy if they fail to take their links down.
Hope that helps!
-
Does anyone have any insight into this issue?
-
Hey George,
Thanks for the response.
1. I am not concerned with the old link structure losing juice from quality links as their simply are none. The only links built to our non-root URL are spam from the SEO package that was purchased in the past. And even if there were a few decent links, the ratio between quality and spam is so out of whack that it'd be a worthy venture if we could ditch the spam links IMO.
Also, the non-root URL pages these links have targeted that I want to 302 aren't anything I'm interested in ranking for down the line. They were our About Us pages and our Sitemap. I'd just like to distance our domain from these spam links at any cost and start "fresh."
2. The upgraded page has been completely rewritten, so there's no risk of duplicate content issues when the new site goes live. It's entirely different from the current version. The old URL is also going to be removed from the domain entirely, so I'd imagine Google would eventually remove it from the index.
I'm planning on submitting a disavow sheet down the line, but that's a last resort if link removal and tactics like these can't help clean up my profile.
Thanks for the help.
-
Hi,
You're far from being alone with the issues you described, but personally I wouldn't recommend what you're suggesting:
- Using a 302 from the old to new URL structure will impact every link pointing at the old URLs be they a quality or spam backlink.
- Using a 302 rather than a 301 means there's a good chance that Google will index both the old and new URLs and cause duplicate content and PageRank splitting issues. This is likely to make things worse for you.
If I was you I'd disavow the spam links per Google's policy (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en), set up 301s to your new URLs and following a bit of patience, start your SEO afresh with a clean slate.
George
@methodicalweb
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
-
Unsolved Are links from staff profile pages no longer good for SEO?
Hey there, We run a small site that lists lawyers and we have an opportunity to ask the lawyers to display a 'badge' on their own website's staff page, linked back to the page on our site that they are listed on. Initially I thought this would be good link building (i.e. the lawyer's own staff/profile pages on their website linking to our site where they are listed = a highly relevant link). I was less concerned about the authority of the law firm's sites, though these will range from sometimes low-ish to medium. I just assumed that Google would see the value in the lawyer wanting to link to our site where they are listed. However, our SEO has said that these days Google doesn't give much/any value to these types of links from individual staff pages. His advice was to try and get the badge added to one of their service pages (or their About page) which will be unlikely as the badge is person-specific. I thought I'd ask if this was everyone else's experience regarding Google not valuing links from individual staff pages? Thanks for you help 🙂
Link Building | | Andy-H0 -
Can affiliate links benefit or hurt my seo?
I have just signed up with a company to do affiliate marketing for my site. I am now in the process of reaching out to publishers and seeing who will publish my link on their site. Is there any benefit in terms of seo for having these links, and can there be any potential downside to these links as well?
Link Building | | whiteonlySEO0 -
Post index of quality back links; How long should you leave it to see if it's had any impact?
The question is pretty much in the title. We had a link from a Charity site (high PA/ DA) and from Metro online recently. Indexed about 3 weeks ago and 5 days ago respectively. No movement to speak off. (Previously we've seen significant boosts from far lesser links). Should I assume they have had no effect? Or is too early to tell I know it takes up to 2 months for some of our new pages to rank, same with passing authority from links? (Note: I appreciate the competition will play a significant part in this, but my question is specifically about how long one should leave to know one way or another. )
Link Building | | isaac6630 -
Inbound Spam Links
We've held Local listings at "A" for over a year. 2 weeks ago we dropped down to below the fold. I ran several reports and our backlink report shows roughly over 10,000 and it's growing every day along with new domain referrals with inbound spam links all using the same core anchor text term. One domain is responsible for over 2,000. These sites have Nothing to do with our industry and several in foreign languages. All these links are "NoFollow". My question is. Although "nofollow" is known to protect you, I'm wondering with over 10,000 of them coming from 345 sites, ALL using our one core term as an anchor text has red flagged us? If so,I'm planning on using Google disavow at the "domain" level. We are a local resort and until this happened we only had around 15 referral sites that are industry related. Hotels.com type sites and local tourist related sites. These new inbound spam links are so blatant and yes they're "nofollow", but I'm starting to wonder IF this off the wall inbound spam link pattern IS indeed affecting us? Any thoughts?
Link Building | | capekeysgal0 -
Do these types of profile links gets indexed typically?
Recently set up some profile links on high domain authority sites like Twellow and Manta - could I get some opinions on whether these links typically get indexed and pass value please? Also any tips on how to find profile links that do pass value?
Link Building | | Clicksjim0 -
Root Domain Link for Affiliate's Link
It seems my affiliate link: http://www.hrmsplugins.com?partners=21 is not being considered as a "root domain" backlink when this link is used on their website. Is there a reason for this?
Link Building | | delphia0 -
What's Angela/Paul link profile?
Hi, Very new to this and appreciate your time to read and answer my question. What's Angela/Paul link profile? and what should I look out for if someone is offering to provide this type of link building to me?
Link Building | | nojan0 -
Can link juice be passed in an iframe from domain A to domain B
Need to give our web partners our booking form which must be loaded in an iframe calling back to our domain. Is it possible to pass any link juice from their domain loading our iframe back to us. Was thinking of a "Powered by" text link in the form footer, but I'm guessing the link needs to be outside the iframe. Would love to hear any thoughts or workarounds on this.
Link Building | | apolloseo1