What would you do about dead inbound links?
-
Hey guys,
I recently asked a question similar to this, but wanted to spark up a bit of a discussion around it to see what everyone's feelings were on it.
The web is always changing - as we're all too aware - so links you may have obtained (by however means) let's say 2 years ago may not be 'active' now. By that I mean you may have had a link from "example_-website.com" in 2010 and now "example-_website.com" is no longer an active website - but still shows a parked domain.
The thing is... this parked domain is still cropping up in OSE, suggesting that Google may still believe there's a link there - and may not have re-crawled that site to prove otherwise.
The issue I've had with this is an SEO company built links to the sites I'm working on now (one of the sites has been penalised as a result of their link building). These links aren't 'active' anymore and when viewed on OSE, they just head straight to a parked domain with no visible (or in-source) link to my site.
What are everyone's feelings on this? What would you all do?
I'm in two minds whether to re-write a section of the website.... but I'm swaying towards creating better content and NOT re-directing the old URLs to it (just contact the decent links and ask for a change of link).
Looking forward to seeing your responses and speaking to you all!
Nick
-
Not too bad really - there are some links that could be questionable, but they're just from press releases (the links themselves are OK, it's the other links on the referring sites that are concerning). The only real concern I had was all these 'rubbish' links that had suddenly expired and whether that was going to have some sort of effect on the site.
My instinct was telling me that there wouldn't be an issue - but thought I would make use of the community here to see if people had experience of this!
Thanks again!
-
Hi Nick,
No problems, how does the backlink profile look aside from the parked domain links mentioned?
-
Hi Greg,
I haven't had any webmaster tools notifications - but the ranking patterns (dropped by exactly 50 on one main keyword) suggest it might have been under review or something.
Just can't help being a tad paranoid with SEO these days! I'm working on the content side of things, and have created some more informative and detailed content for the website - it's just a case of getting it out there now and hoping people will share the content!
Cheers for the responses
-
Hi Nick,
Personally I would ignore those OSE link results from sites that are now parked domains, I would assume that Google has already cached the newly parked page & as a result the link is no longer active, or that Google will be caching the parked page pretty soon. It's probably just the case that the OSE data is out of sync, and you should see those old links drop off with the next linkscape update from SEOMoz.
I would definitely create better content and focus on building better links, you should definitely be aiming for quality over quantity with your new backlinks.
With regards to redirecting old URLs/creating new content on this site, have you received any webmaster tools notifications for the domain name in question?
Greg
-
Google knows it's a parked domain and will discount that link in time - don't sweat about it.
I had to deal with this exact issue for a new client. Our solution - we compiled a list of all the parked domains (over 500!) and sent that to Google with a detailed account of why we felt those links should be discounted.
It took about 2 weeks from start to finish, and although those links still appear in OSE, the rankings have returned for the client.
Hope this helps - Good luck!
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
-
Internal Link Building and Link Juice Quality
Hi There! I manage the website for a law office that covers many geographical locations. For very specific niche content, we would prefer to create one piece of content and link to the various geographic locations where we would handle that topic instead of posting multiple variations of the same content for each specific geographical area. If we put a button on these pages that has links to each location, will that have the same "link juice" effect to the pages we're linking that linking directly in the text would? (example: the Where can we help you? button on this page : http://www.zdfirm.com/volkswagen-recall/) Thank you!
Link Building | | ZDAdmin0 -
Why am I getting links in my link report from sites that no longer exist?
So, I have a link report from Link Detox. And I'm going through all of them and considering what sites need to be removed. and trying to find emails and contact webmasters. There is just one odd thing i'm starting to see more of. A lot of links are on websites or webpages that no longer exist. The link no longer exists. Some of the domains are even available for purchase. Why are these links showing on the backlink report and are they really harming my website? Also, do I need to add these links into the disavow document that I will submit to Google?
Link Building | | lightwurx0 -
Using sitewide links to improve link profile?
Hi Guys... When I look at my competitor's link profile, they often have thousands of backlinks. For example, one of our main competitor, he got 3,400 backlinks in total but only 80 referring domains. When I look at my link profile, I have around 50-60 referring domains, but hardly 80 backlinks. My question is, is it okay to get a few sitewide links (no-follow of course!) to get to the thousands backlinks? Or I will be able to achieve top rankings with my current link profile? Thanks!!
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Link Building
I'm having difficulty creating a solid link base. I would prefer to only have links that are on relevant sites that are likely to drive traffic rather then just adding my company page to site directories. I've checked out the whiteboard Friday edition of link building and have also used the new Moz analytics that helps recommend sites to link to, but all the recommendations were directories. So, could anyone hold my hand and guide me through the world of Link building? Your help, as always, is much appreciated. Thanks everyone Dave
Link Building | | david.smith.segarra0 -
Inbound Links By Date
Hi, Trying to discover some link building opportunities Is there any way to use the moz pro tools to get a list of a competitors inbound links based on the date they were discovered?
Link Building | | tvfoodmaps0 -
Link Pharming
My company has been using an SEO company for a while and have built up our pagerank to a 6. However, we have noticed that they're involved in link pharming - they're buildng extra websites and linking to our site on them. We are not happy with this as we know it will only be a matter of time before Penguin hits us. The contract with the SEO company is coming up for renewal soon and we're thinking of cancelling it. However, we are not sure if the company will delete all our backlinks, which will probably decrease our PageRank too. Has anyone here ever had a similar experience? What did the SEO company do when you cancelled the contract? Does anyone here work for an SEO company and what do you do when someone cancels your service?
Link Building | | AAttias0 -
Building Links
Hi everyone, I am new to SEO and in the process of building links the clean way. Any suggestions on how exactly I can find websites that are linking out to quality websites already? I went thru most of my competitors link building strategy - and 90% of their links are done either thru link exchange or paid links. So looking at my competitors strategy does not really help. So I need to find websites/blogs/forums that are ready to link to me if I can show them some useful content. How do I find these websites first? Please help! Cheers! Arjun
Link Building | | ArjunRajkumar0 -
Do sites on the same c-block and same server count as seperate linking root domains when linking to each other?
Lets say there are 50 businesses who have their website on the same server and are on the same c-block but the owners of the individual sites are different (i.e. they are all completely different sites not relevant to each other). Each of those sites are linking to each other due to a feature on the sites. This obviously increases the number of total links to each site but does it also increase the number of linking root domains? Or does this just show up as one linking root domain due to all of them being on the same server and the sharing the same c-block?
Link Building | | cinternicola0