Links On Expired Domains
-
Does anybody know if a link on an expired domain affects your SEO?
I'm just asking because the SEO agency we used before used to create websites and then link to our company - very spammy.
We have since ditched this agecny, however they wanted an extortionate amount to remove these links. Therefore, we decided to wait until these domains expired and then the links wouldn't exist.
However, I am now completing a link audit and some of these sites are still appearing in the results (obtained from Link Research Tools) but I cannot access the links because the domains have expired.
Can anyone help?
-
If all of the domains are not expired you can use the disavow tool as well. That should be your first course in a situation like this, especially when someone is trying to extort you of bad links. If you disavow them, google does not penalize you for them and drops them out of your backlink profile.
-
Hi Brian
If the domain has expired, it should only be a matter of time before Google recrawls the page/domain and sees that the link is no longer present, therefore discounting the link from your link profile.
You could have a look and see if this has happened by typing into your address bar (if using Chrome) either:
cache:example.com
site:example.comThe first one will check to see if the URL is cached and the second one if it is indexed. If a cached version of the page no longer exists, the link has almost certainly been discounted, whereas if the domain is no longer indexed it would be safe to assume that the link will be discounted soon by Google as well.
I hope this helps - sorry to hear of your previous agency resorting to such backhanded tactics.
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
-
Domain change from .co.uk to .com - do you add .com to the referral exclusion in GA?
Hi Mozzers, Just wanted to double check that when a website domain changes from .co.uk to .com - do you add .com to the referral exclusion in GA? Do you also keep the .co.uk version in the list too? I have updated the property settings to .com Thanks Anthony
Reporting & Analytics | | Tone_Agency0 -
Cross-domain / subdomain tracking in GA?
Hi there, My client has a site website.com and a booking engine, booking.website.com They are currently tracking the main site and the booking subdomain as two separate properties in the same GA account. The issue is we can't see where users are originating on the subdomain property; it's all being counted as referral. My understanding is we need to set up subdomain tracking using Google Tag Manager in order for GA to pass the user data between the two subdomains. This is fine, except for this one line I am reading on Google's guide to cross-domain tracking: Subdomains If you have updated your tracking code to analytics.js, then no additional configuration is required to track subdomains. You can use cross domain tracking to collect data from a primary domain, like www.example.com, and a subdomain, like www.subdomain.example.com, in a single Analytics account property. That last line makes it sound like we should be using cross-domain tracking for this purpose. Are we correct in setting up subdomain tracking and NOT cross-domain tracking to be able to track users across subdomains on the same domain?
Reporting & Analytics | | FPD_NYC0 -
Redirecting one domain to another using utm tags
I have two live websites, which have both been live for over 10 years, so we have plenty of backlinks to both...domain1.com & domain2.com. Domain 1 and all urls is being merged into domain2.com. So 301 redirects will be setup for every page of the site....domain1.com/abc-1234/ to > domain2.com/abc-1234/ In Google analytics for domain2.com we want to be able to see which visits we have received as a result of a redirect from domain1.com. It is possible to see these visits that come in via organic, referrals and social etc, as those will come to us with the referral as domain1.com. However, with direct traffic, i.e. if someone types domain1.com into their search bar, these visits will be assigned as direct and we are not able to tell in GA if those users have typed in domain2.com, or domain1.com to get to our webpage. There are some suggestions in forums of adding utm_source tracking to all redirects (and add canonicals to those urls pointing to the non utm_source version), but my concern is that Google is going to have to go through one extra step to reach the page on the redirected domain. So without the utm source code Google will follow this route
Reporting & Analytics | | Sayers
domain1.com/123/ to domain2.com/123/ With the utm source code Google will follow this route
domain.com/123/ to domain2.com/123/?utm_source... then see's canonical, so moves to domain2.com/123/ So essentially I am giving Google one extra step to follow before it gets to the equivalent page on the new site. Is this an issue, and/or are there any other ways to track this redirection without adding extra parameters to the url?0 -
Buffer Link and Google Impressions
Afternoon, I noticed a spike in impressions over a couple of days in April, so I investigated Analytics to see where these were coming from. It appears these impressions were split between two URLs; one was a blog post, the other was the Buffer link to the blog post that we used on Twitter and Facebook. According to Analytics, this Buffer URL received 1000 impressions over two days, with an average SERP position of 16. This surely can't be right, can it? Is this just another Analytics quirk? After two days of a decent amount of impressions to this Buffer link, the amount of impressions dropped to pretty much zero. I know Tweets are now starting to rank, but this would be the Twitter URL, not the Buffer link to our blog post? Any ideas, Cheers, Lewis
Reporting & Analytics | | PeaSoupDigital0 -
Lost rankings after disavowing links
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0 -
Google Webmaster Preferred Domain Settings Help
I was recently running my SEO Moz report for my domain and saw a drastic drop in page rankings on the report. After some trouble shooting, I checked my Google Webmaster Tools and saw the "Preferred Domain for my Site has changed" the last week in which I saw the drastic drop. Under the "preferred domain" area, I have it set to www.marware.com but on most of the links to my site, it reads www.marware.com/ . We also have http://marware.com , but am not sure if this carries any relevance as the preferred domain is set for www.marware.com . Does the "/" make a difference in the "Preferred Domain" section? If so, how do I update it? Is there a way to confirm it is set up correctly? In the photo attached, what does "Linked Property" "Analytics Web Property" and "Associated Webmaster Tools Site" mean? Thanks in advance! T5tSCxm
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadaran0 -
Cross domain tracking setup in Google Analytics
I really need help on this, I can't figure it out. I need to track a few subdomains and and couple of seperate domains in one profile in Google Analytics. So I have: www.maindomain.co.uk sub1.maindomain.co.uk sub2.maindomain.co.uk www.anotherdomain.co.uk So the code I have placed on all of these domains is as following: I have then set up seperate profiles which filter out the data by domain. E.g. for sub1.maindomain.co.uk, I have user the fitler: Custom filter > Include > Filter Field = Hostname > Filter Pattern = sub1.maindomain.co.uk For the www.anotherdomain.co.uk, I have used the same filter. Now this all seems to be tracking visits and unique visitors okay, but I always have a very low pageview count, less than visits and sometimes zero. Could anyone shed any light on what I am doing wrong? Thanks in advance mozzers.
Reporting & Analytics | | MirandaP0 -
What is the most effective link building technique?
Hi seomoz community! My question is this: Which is more effective in a) generating traffic and b) increasing authority in the long and short term? Press releases or back-linking through blogs and forums? Some more detail: You have $6000 to spend over a 6 month period on which ever technique you choose. $6000 can buy you 20 press releases, each distributed to over 250 online news outlets (yahoo finance, td waterhouse, ABC, etc), emailed to editors of publications in your industry niche, and tweeted by 10 to-15 influential tweeters. Every release is published by the same news organization plus 5-10 new sources per release. The news organizations all have relatively high domain authorities (60-90) and generate 2500-3000 unique pageviews in total for each article. They also all link back to my site through the articles. $6000 can buy you 6 months of back-link building - outsourced overseas in India. Based on keywords that our target audience are using to find our competitors (long-tail included), we post links through blog/forum comments that appear in results when those search terms are queried. The blog/forums have varying domain authorities in our industry but none higher than 60. Again the question: Which technique is more effective in a) generating traffic and b) increasing authority in the long and short term? Press releases or back-linking through blogs and forums? My current website has a domain authority of 66. Please share your opinions or thoughts. Thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | fourthdimensioninc0