Are Old Backlinks Hurting Or Helping?

[CatBoxer]

I have a ton of old backlinks for products that I no longer carry but I have redirected them to other pages within the site. I was told by an SEO expert that these links are hurting me rather than helping because people click on the links and then leave.

These backlinks are from reputable blogs, news sources etc and my spam score is only 1%.

Are these links really hurting me?

[sarahwalsh]

i would hire an seo agency that specialises in building white hat links. they need to work through every link, to say whether its good quality or not. i would recommend getting an excel spreadsheet of the links, and marking next to it, whether its quality or not. a link building company can then advise you on the quality of the links.

[seoelevated]

There are quite a few factors to consider. Let's start with why redirecting obsolete products can possibly hurt ranking. Most likely the scenario to which the SEO Expert was referring is that search engines may see a large volume of returns to the search results page, followed by clicking other results, as an indication of a result which does not meet users' needs.

In the case described above, it is possible for such redirects to "hurt", but only in the context of a specific query. For example, let's say you used to stock footballs. And now you no longer carry any of those. And you've redirected your old football product pages to a sporting goods category page, but where no footballs can be found. Then, yes, this might cause search visitors to return to the SERP and so it could potentially hurt. But if so, then it would be hurting for a search for "footballs". Because if the visitors were searching for something you DO have in stock, then after being redirected they wouldn't immediately return to the SERP. And so, if you no longer stock footballs, why would you worry about losing rank for the search query "footballs".

Now, with that same example, let's say that some of your football pages also ranked very highly for "gifts for athletes". And you redirect to a relevant category. Those visitors are more likely to convert. Same landing page, different search query.

For this reason, in general, it's usually a good idea to redirect the old products to relevant category pages, if you have any. There are exceptions, of course. So, the trick is to look at what kinds of terms those specific pages previously ranked for, and whether there is still value in ranking for any of those specific terms. Remember, you don't own an overall "rank" on Google. You rank for specific queries, independently.