What value do external broken links give to a domain?
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I ask, as I've just used opensite explorer to look at external links a competitor has, and I've found the high value ones at the top of the list go to a page that no longer exists on their site. Are these stiill of value in the SERP's, or have they messed up by not putting a 301 redirect on them?
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There are a couple tactics you could try:
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See if http://archive.org/web/web.php has a cache of the page.
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Use OSE, Majestic, etc to find backlinks to the page. Maybe one of the backlinks will include a description of what was on the page.
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Thanks Adam,
Great idea with replacing the link as well, if only I know what the missing page was about!
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Excellent answer Adam. Very well done.
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If they haven't 301'd the link, they are missing out on the link juice.
You could always try to convince the websites to replace the broken link with a link to a similar page on your site.
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