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 I assume if the links are no longer active, and hence not showing up in webmaster or moz reports, I can probably ignore them, but I'm wondering if I should try and get them removed regardless?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
-
Are links on a press page considered "reciprocal linking"?
Hi, We have a press page with a list of links to the articles that have mentioned us (most of which also have a link to our website). Is there any SEO impact with this approach? Does Google consider these reciprocal links? And if so, would making the links on the press page 'nofollow' solve the issue?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mikekeeper0 -
Footer images links, good or bad?
Hi everybody! I have a very serius question because i have a problem with this. We run a website of voucher codes and we are looking that our rivals are putting their logos on footers of online stores with images, sometimes link to home, sometimes link to store within webpage. Should i ask for the same to online stores? I have scary to get a penalty by Google. Please help me with this and recommend me something because we are doing fair play but rivals are doing this and they get best results in SERPS. Thanks very much! Best regards!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pompero990 -
What are some of the worst links that you have come across?
I'm talking the least relevant and incredibly spammy. We've all done site audits and stumbled across some ridiculous ones. The funnier the better. I'm compiling a list of hilarious links that sites have gotten. Any input would be great!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | KevinBloom0 -
Considering which agency to choose for a link building campaign is starting to seem like beating a dead horse.......
So first off, I've got to admit, I really haven't shopped around enough on SEOmoz's Recommended page. I have been doing some shopping, and have considered a few different people. The two main people that we are considering (or should I be saying 'were' right now?) is a company called Mainstreet Host. They have the best price, and when I first came into my partnership with Roseann at Uncommon Thread, she had already paid for some $1,500 trial of sorts. Our problems with these guys? Roseann says the sales guy is extremely pushy They want us to pay them a monthly fee to "optimize 11 pages, create 12 blog posts on wordpress blog, rss on homepage for fresh content, blah blah blah..." I was stuck on the fact that they want a recurring fee for a fairly small job I just looked into their ability to rank for the keyword they are targeting, and they rank #2 for a keyword difficulty score of 83. BUT, I looked into their linkbuilding and it's pretty blackhat. Several blog comments, mostly guest posts on what looked like some sore of article marketing site, and a few missing links according to opensiteexplorer.org did not say anything about link building other than a single Press Release distribution I guess my question is, is the $6,000 they want us to pay for those services actually going to get us to rank for some competitive terms? like keyword difficulty score 30 - 60? The other guys we have been considering is OrangeSoda. Right off the bat, they seem awesome, i mean just take a quick look at their site. but just like with the other company, they have a pretty dark backlink profile too. The only thing that they really have going for them is a few paid links on some sort of what appears to be semi-legitimate advertising partner based network. Google was on their too, near the bottom, which I thought was very strange, because it clearly discloses that its a paid network. They are asking $7,200 for 12 hours per week of work, in which time they will help us go through and fix any technical aspects, create a blog, and create content, as well as build a link building strategy. Should I keep shoppping??
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Internal Link Structure
Hello Everyone, I'd be grateful for a little feedback please; This is my site, the home page
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TwoPints
of which is targeting the phrase jobs in **** (I'm sure you can fill i the gap
:)) I've made a few changes recently which has included having the
Contract jobs in **** | Permanent Jobs in **** | Temporary Jobs in **** & Today’s
jobs in **** links added to the homepage... Perhaps foolishly and impatiently, I did all of these at the
same time, whilst also changing the sites internal link structure, specifically
for all links to the homepage, which previously were like <a<br>href="/">Home and have now been changed to <a<br>href="/">jobs in ****</a<br></a<br> Meaning that I have 4500 internal links with the anchor text
'jobs in ****' But rather than seeing an improvement n my SERPs ranking, I have
gone from page 2 of Google to page 6, and falling...... Apart from being inpatient, what have I done wrong? Many thanks0 -
Can't figure out how my competitor has so many links
I suspect something possibly black-hat is going on with the amount of inbound links for www.pacificlifestylehomes.com ( http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.pacificlifestylehomes.com ) mainly because they have such a large volume of links (for my industry) with their exact targeted keyword. Can anyone help clear this up for me?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | theChris0 -
Are there *truly* any white-hat link-building tactics?
With our new knowledge -- yielded from J.C. Penney, Forbes, Overstock, content farms, et al -- that the link graph/link profile can be algorithmically mined by search engines to uncover non-natural patterns of links occuring over time, is there any level of link-building that is safe to engage in? If so, then what are those "bright white"-hat tactics that are 100% safe for a site to use?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jcolman0
