Do dead/inactive links matter?
-
In cleaning up the backlink profile for my parent's website, I've come across quite a few dead links. For instance, the links in the comments here: http://www.islanddefjam.com/artist/news_single.aspx?nid=4726&artistID=7290
Do I need to worry about these links? I assume if the links are no longer active, and hence not showing up in webmaster or moz reports, I can probably ignore them, but I'm wondering if I should try and get them removed regardless? I've read that google is increasingly taking into account references (i.e. website mentions that are not links) and I don't know if inactive spam links might leave a bad impression of a website. Am I being overly paranoid?
I imagine disavowing them would be pointless as you can't attach a nofollow tag to an inactive link.
-
Thanks. I had the feeling i was probably getting a bit carried away. I've been working so long at the link removals now, and I'm worried if I leave anything spammy we'll be stuck with this Penguin penalty forever, but I'll just ignore these links.
-
I think you might just be being slightly paranoid.
I really wouldn't worry about things like that.
There's no evidence to support that search engines currently or will ever take things like that into account. I think it would really skew the results if they did.
Just ensure that your cleaning your link profile and disavowing anything that would be considered unrelated, spammy or manipulative.
If your trying to clean things up from a brand perspective then it can sometimes be worth attempting to get rid of no-follow links that look spammy or are in bad reference etc. But to be honest, that's normally only necessary for well established brands.
Hope this answers your question.
Thanks
SilverDoor
-
If those are in comments I wouldn't care about it; if it would be in your pages I should for sure delete them.
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 on Brand Banners
Hi, For one of our ecommerce clients, we have brand banners on each brand page that links to their most popular product lines. Some of the banners just have a column of links, and some are paragraphs with copy and anchor text. Example below: Brand Line 1 Brand Line 2 Example 2: For the utmost in quality, performance and comfort, purchase Brand Line 1 . Brand Line 2 offers the perfect ease of use for beginners while not compromising on quality. Obviously these are just examples, and there are several links (more than 2) per brand, but I was wondering if this harms SEO in any way because of keyword stuffing? It makes sense to have the brand name in the link, otherwise the name of the lines might not make much sense (an example of this is one of the lines is called 849.. so without the brand name that doesn't mean much and looks weird) Do you think it would be better to have the links in just columns in the first example, or in paragraph format?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AliMac260 -
Could lots of links pointed to 301 & 302 redirects be a problem?
Hello, We've got hundreds of links found in screaming frog that are pointing towards 301 & 302 redirects. Could this be hurting rankings? We've got very few 404s. A lot of the problem is breadcrumbs of categories pointing to 302s, but the original category pages that are 302ed are not indexed so we may be OK. We can't change the 302 redirects, it's part of the cart. Could all these non-updated hyperlinks be the cause of continual ranking drop in Google? We've gone from the top 3 to the second page for our main terms. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
[linkbuilding] link partner page on webshop, is it working?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering about the effect of link building by swapping links between websites and adding a link partner page to the web shop containing hundreds of links. I have this new competitor coming in to the SERP of Google competing on the keywords I am targeting. The competitor has way more links than our web shop. The competitor has a page with hundreds of links to other web shops witch on there turn has a link to there web shop. (not all off them link back btw) I always thought it is no use sharing links with other websites this way in creating a huge page with hundreds of links. it is of no benefit for neighter website to do this. Still it does seems to work (?) and tis strategy is used by a lot of web shops in the Netherlands. How are you guys looking at this?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | auke1810
Witch of you guy's are using strategy like this?
Should I pick up this strategy myself?0 -
Footer Link in International Parent Company Websites Causing Penalty?
Still waiting to look at the analytics for the timeframe, but we do know that the top keyword dropped on or about April 23, 2012 from the #1 ranking in Google - something they had held for years, and traffic dropped over 15% that month and further slips since. Just looked at Google Webmaster Tools and see over 2.3MM backlinks from "sister" compainies from their footers. One has over 700,000, the rest about 50,000 on average and all going to the home page, and all using the same anchor text, which is both a branded keyword, as well as a generic keyword, the same one they ranked #1 for. They are all "nofollows" but we are trying to confirm if the nofollow was before or after they got hit, but regardless, Google has found them. To also add, most of sites are from their international sites, so .de, .pl, .es, .nl and other Eurpean country extensions. Of course based on this, I would assume the footer links and timing, was result of the Penguin update and spam. The one issue, is that the other US "sister" companies listed in the same footer, did not see a drop, in fact some had increase traffic. And one of them has the same issue with the brand name, where it is both a brand name and a generic keyword. The only note that I will make about any of the other domains is that they do not drive the traffic this one used to. There is at least a 100,000+ visitor difference among the main site, and this additional sister sites also listed in the footer. I think I'm on the right track with the footer links, even though the other sites that have the same footer links do not seem to be suffering as much, but wanted to see if anyone else had a different opinion or theory. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | LeverSEO
Jen Davis0 -
Webiste Ranking Differently Based on IP/Data Center
I have a site which I thought was ranking well, however that doesn't seem to be the case. When I check the site from different IPs within the US it shows that the site is on page 1 and on other IPs it shows that it's on page 5 and for some keywords it shows it's not listed. This site was ranking well, before but I think google dropped it when I was giving putting in too much work with it (articles and press releases), but now it seems to have recovered when I check with my IP, but on other data centers it still shows it prior to recovering. It was able to recover after not building links to for a period of time, it showed it moved back up from the data center I'm connected to, but it still shows the possibly penalized results on other data centers. Is it possible that site is still penalized? So the question is why does it show it recovered in some data centers and not others? How do I fix this? It's been about 2 months since it's recovered from some data centers. Is this site still penalized or what's going on? There are no warnings in web master tools. Any insights would be appreciated! This isn't an issue with the rank tracking software, I've tested this on a multitude of IPs with varying differences. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | seomozzy0 -
SEO dead?
What does everyone think about this article? http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenkrogue/2 … l-content/ I tend to think its off base, Link building still works and there are tons of things that have to do with SEO that have nothing to do with link building... I think its actually quite ridiculous and written by people that actually no nothing about SEO...kind of a lame attempt by Forbes, and if anything at all, this is just forbes practicing "SEO" with a link attraction post like this. Becase SEO, is NOT dead
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | imageworks-2612901 -
Links In Blog Posts: 1 Paragraph VS. Full Article
Hey guys, I've been using an article network to post unique articles (not spun). Been posting 1 paragraph articles with 1 text link. Just wondering what the main difference would be if I were to post a full article with 2 or 3 text links vs 1 paragraph with 1 text link, besides the fact that you get more links and save more time writing only 1 paragraph. Will the full article with 3 backlinks improve keyword ranks more or not by much? Cheers!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | upick-1623910 -
Link Building: Location-specific pages
Hi! I've technically been a member for a few years, but just recently decided to go Pro (and I gotta say, I'm glad I did!). Anyway, as I've been researching and analyzing, one thing I noticed a competitor is doing is creating location-specific pages. For example, they've created a page that has a URL similar to this: www.theirdomain.com/seattle-keyword-phrase They have a few of these for specific cities. They rank well for the city-keyword combo in most cases. Each city-specific page looks the same and the content is close to being the same except that they drop in the "seattle keyword phrase" bit here and there. I noticed that they link to these pages from their site map page, which, if I were to guess, is how SEs are getting to those pages. I've seen this done before on other sites outside my industry too. So my question is, is this good practice or is it something that should be avoided?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AngieHerrera0