I have a lot of spammy links coming to my 404 page (the URLs have been removed now). Should i re-direct to Home?

[jagdecat]

I have a lot of spammy links pointing at my website according to MOZ. Thankfully all of them were for some URLs that we've long since removed so they're hitting my 404.

Should i change the 404 with a 301 and Re-Direct that Juice to my home page or some other page or will that hurt my ranking?

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

What I would do is take advantage of a backlink audit and assess which links are toxic enough for removal or disavow.

I would not redirect spamming backlinks to your homepage - try to remove these and if you hear nothing back, disavow them.

The way I assess spammy links:

• Does this link help my website?

• Is this link relevant to my website?

• Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?

• Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?

• If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?

• Are the links from directory templates? (example)

• Inspect URLs with blatant spam words

• Free

• Porn

• XXX

• Submit

• Directory

• Paid

• Links

• URL

• Sex

• etc.

• Check for multiple domains and URLs on the same IPs

• This can usually show link farms or spam

Pull your backlinks from a few different sources like OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs, and most importantly, Google Search Console (formerly Google Webmaster Tools), as different tools pull different data.

If you see spammy links, redirecting will potentially hurt your ranking. Be safe and take the proper steps listed above.

Hope this helps! Good luck!