I think if the links are broken and Google has been made aware of such, ie it has recrawled and cached the page (simply add "cache:" in front of the URL for the last cache copy - if the URL itself is broken, check if it is still indexed in Google), then it would know that the link has been broken and shouldn't count it.

If that's the case, I don't think the disavow would have any benefit, unless of course if the link were to return, which could be a possibility.

If the page is cached and that cached version has got the broken version = no worries.

If the URL is broken and the page is no longer indexed = no worries.

If the URL is broken and still indexed = check to see if any other links point to that URL (including the URLs site navigation and/or sitemap, if applicable.  If not, should deindex soon.  If there are links, I'd disavow.

Just my two pennies, hope it helps!

Hey there

In terms of a link building tactic, I wouldn't recommend spending too much time on this.  If done sparingly and on relevant sites with good content/discussion, it could give you a slight ranking increase - but the effect is likely to be small and attempting to scale it could look quite spammy.

I would much rather approach forum posting as a relationship and a traffic builder.  If you can engage on forum communities, help out people where you can and really add worth there with help, tutorials, resources etc., you could very well build positive enforcement for your brand, as well as driving qualified traffic to your site that already trusts you, thus may be more likely to convert.

If you can do that, I think forum posting can be great.  As a side-effect, having a few forum links won't be so bad.  But don't approach it with the mindset of building links - build the relationships first and a few sparingly used links to your site can be a nice added benefit.

If you go and forum post just to build link, you'll see little to no value whatsoever.

Hope this helps.

It's by no means essential.

I've worked on a number of international sites and you quickly realise that while a website is setup with a geographical TLD and is fully served for that language's audience, the server is located in the US - where so much hosting is.  Regardless, this has not stopped the site's ability to rank.

Similarly, evidence of links from a different country working can unfortunately be found in places like SAPE - the russian link network.  I've seen countless of websites rank #1, #2 with links from these websites in Russia, Uzbekistan and so on - Google wouldn't be targeting these links if they didn't work.

However, my mindset has always been to acquire links from places that are going to send the most targeted and relevant traffic to your site.  In the scenario you've given, this would most likely mean trying to earn as many Japanese backlinks as possible.  Links from other places may increase organic visibility, but more often than not referring traffic from links you've earned can be far more qualified and convert more often - so I would aim to get them via links from the country.

Just my £0.02