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How does anyone know what will be spammy in 1 to 3 years? With that logic you might as well disavow all links.

One of my clients has a busy e-commerce site and regularly removes entire ranges of products (which are seasonal). As soon as this is done we update the sitemap.xml and that sitemap is linked to Google Webmaster Tools. As such the 404s don't appear for very long at all, because the sitemap is used to determine which pages to crawl. Therefore the deleted pages are dropped and don't cause any issues (you can monitor this via Google Webmaster Tools).

Just had a look at http://www.askives.com/ and it looks like a non-spammy, genuine site (albeit auto populated or similar). I'd leave the links there. They look genuine enough.

Hi

If it's a small site you could manually update the expired job to say that the job is no longer available 'but you might like the following' and link to similar jobs. It would keep the visitor on your site and perhaps lead them to something they'd be interested in.

If you want to automate it I'd set up a standard 404 with a site search in it to recommend searching further (as opposed to losing the visitor completely). Not sure why it wouldn't be possible to set up a 404?

Hi Allan

You don't need to update the sitemap if the content has changed but the URL of the page remains the same. The only time I update sitemaps is 1. if there are new pages and 2. if we remove pages. If you don't update the sitemap after you remove a page then you'll get 404s (e.g. a busy e-commerce site when products are sold out and not going to be restocked, you'd remove the page).

I can tell you I don't use SEO hosting. I like to stay off Google's radar completely and SEO hosting companies are sitting ducks IMO.

I actually use this technique on my own and client sites and it's very effective. A word of warning though, this is not white hat SEO and as such I do disclose this fact to clients.

I don't 301 the expired domains because there would be little point in doing so. You need those expired domains being seen as separate incoming links.

I set my expired domains up as mini sites and have original content written for them. The content then has a couple of links through to my main site. They go on completely separate hosting accounts with a different C block IP address i.e. don't put them on your own hosting account because they will not count as incoming links from separate C block IP addresses (important). Also hide your whois information.

I've seen so many sites with blogs and social media accounts which are hardly ever updated e.g. blog posts that are more than 6 months old. It really makes you think they don't look like they could be bothered. I think seeing that a company is active on social media etc gives the impression that they are active and therefore makes your site look more up to date. I therefore don't think it's just the content quality that's relevant.

One of my clients sells lingerie and with it being lingerie there are a fair few photos of bottoms and some exposed breasts. Gosh.

Anyway I know how this affects Adwords campaigns - Google classifies the site as 'adult' and your ads don't show anywhere.

I also know how it affects image searches. However how does it affect text seaches?? Are rankings demoted because of nudity? I've worked with a clothing site with some nudity on it before and this didn't affect it, but would love to hear from anyone with specific experience of thisThanks

I'd suggest being more specific than 'Lost and Found' with your keyword for this page. I'd probably change it to 'Lost and Found Clothing' or 'Lost and Found Apparel' otherwise your potential customers are never going to find you.

Hi Allan

You don't need to update the sitemap if the content has changed but the URL of the page remains the same. The only time I update sitemaps is 1. if there are new pages and 2. if we remove pages. If you don't update the sitemap after you remove a page then you'll get 404s (e.g. a busy e-commerce site when products are sold out and not going to be restocked, you'd remove the page).

Hi

If it's a small site you could manually update the expired job to say that the job is no longer available 'but you might like the following' and link to similar jobs. It would keep the visitor on your site and perhaps lead them to something they'd be interested in.

If you want to automate it I'd set up a standard 404 with a site search in it to recommend searching further (as opposed to losing the visitor completely). Not sure why it wouldn't be possible to set up a 404?

I actually use this technique on my own and client sites and it's very effective. A word of warning though, this is not white hat SEO and as such I do disclose this fact to clients.

I don't 301 the expired domains because there would be little point in doing so. You need those expired domains being seen as separate incoming links.

I set my expired domains up as mini sites and have original content written for them. The content then has a couple of links through to my main site. They go on completely separate hosting accounts with a different C block IP address i.e. don't put them on your own hosting account because they will not count as incoming links from separate C block IP addresses (important). Also hide your whois information.

I've seen so many sites with blogs and social media accounts which are hardly ever updated e.g. blog posts that are more than 6 months old. It really makes you think they don't look like they could be bothered. I think seeing that a company is active on social media etc gives the impression that they are active and therefore makes your site look more up to date. I therefore don't think it's just the content quality that's relevant.

How does anyone know what will be spammy in 1 to 3 years? With that logic you might as well disavow all links.

There certainly is a right answer to my question - I already posted it here earlier today:

Disallow: /*?color=
 Disallow: /?*manufacturer=

Without the $ at the end which would otherwise denote the end of the URL.