Inbound Links from Broken Pages
-
Hi all,
We have a client who has a lot of inbound links from external pages that are broken/404. The 404 pages are EXTERNAL and linking to my client's pages, but their domain still has authority and their home page (and other pages) still load.
My question is: what should we do about this? Do we detox those links, or are they still sending some juice given that they have domain authority, despite the fact that the pages linking to my client are broken?
So in other words:
- My client is: yyyy.com
- They have a link from vvvv.com/services, which is a broken page
- So what should we do about this?
Thanks all!
Gavin
-
Hi Gavin,
Agree with Martijn here - links from 404ing pages are very unlikely to either help or hinder a website, just as inbound links to pages on your site that 404 also don't help / hurt.
You probably do not need to do anything about these links. However, if they were very good links in the past and you would like them back, you could consider contacting the webmasters of the sites with the broken pages and asking them if they are aware of their errors and / or would consider updating.
Cheers,
Jane
-
Hi Gavin,
Probably by now the links to your client have lost their value as Google also noticed that these pages are giving a 404 response instead of a 200. That's why I won't bother about them, probably they will disappear one day from Open Site Explorer or any other link profile research tool you're using.
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
-
Ecomerce: Would 4 link sections leak too much link juice?
Hello, In my content management for our ecomerce site, I've found that there are sometimes links to sites in our industry that have "helpful links" sections. Several strong sites link directly to these resource sections. There are 4 different topics that fit this trend in our industry. Would it leak too much link juice to make 4 comprehensive link sections and place a link to them on our "Useful Articles" page? Or should I stick to one comprehensive link section? Or perhaps a small link section? Or none at all? Thanks.
Link Building | | BobGW0 -
Build links to home page or internal to rank internal pages?
I understand that naturally people link to the home page and internal pages - probably the home page more often than not. In order to build a natural looking link profile I also understand that I need a variety of anchor text, brand and url links. Should I be building links mainly to the home page with only a few to internal pages? Ultimately I want my internal pages to rank for specific terms so in my head it makes sense to concentrate my link building effort to internal pages but that would seem unnatural to google I'm sure. For arguments sake if I only built links to the home page with a mix of the anchor texts described above would these internal pages rank eventually anyway as 'link juice' flows throughout the site? Or is it an absolute must to build some links to internal pages. Could a page rank for a keyword without having any links to the site with the keyword anchor text (simply url links) based on the page title/content? Also what is a good ratio of home page to internal links? I would assume around 10:1? A lot of questions I know but I'm confused as to what will be the best strategy.
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
Is it better to link back to the root domain, or the specific page you're optimizing for?
I'm working on a project our site - building links for iPhone Repair. For the term "iphone repair miami" - is it more ideal to link to the root domain (xxx.com) or to the subpage that is about iPhone Repair (xxx.com/iphone-repair)? I would imagine the latter - but obviously that page has less authority than the root. Thanks!
Link Building | | preemo0 -
We have links from our page at .com and .com/. Should we be concerned about this and try to merge?
When running link reports for our page .com, it redirects to .com/. We do have links for both URLs, but .com/ is significantly more than the other. Should we be concerned by this? Are we losing some links because of this?
Link Building | | hanapin0 -
Total Links vs Ext. Followed Links
Hi I'm fairly new to SEO and SEOMOZ. I've created a campaign for my own site and I've added 3 competitor sites. There are 1,385 total links to my site and a massive 49,450 links to one of my competitor's site. However under "Ext. Followed Links", there are 1,045 to my site and only 911 to the same competitor site. Am I correct that it is the "Ext. Followed Links" which are more important from an SEO point of view as the other links have the "no follow" attribute set? Or have I got this wrong? Thanks James
Link Building | | avecsys0 -
Root domain registered in search engines, inbound links to www sub-domain. A problem?
I just discovered that our site is registered with the major search engines without the "www" sub domain. Both domains resolve directly to our site, which I need to get corrected. I had planned to have the root (honestabe.com) forwarded to the sub (www.honestabe.com). However, I then found that the sub-domain is not listed with the search engines. Of course, naturally almost all of our inbound links include www. Does Google differentiate between links with and without the sub-domain? In other words, if I forward the www address to the root, will I still get the SEO benefit of those inbound links using www? I'm trying to figure out how to approach this. I'm hoping someone is going to make me feel really stupid for asking this and say it's no big deal. However, I have a feeling this could be a mess.
Link Building | | honestabejosh0 -
What % Page Metrics & Social, What % Links?
It seems that a lot of the focus of SEOs, especially whitehat SEOs like SEOMoz and Distilled has shifted a lot more towards improving page metrics (bounce, return rate, etc) and social metrics. I'm curious - And of course, I'm just asking for guesses - But what percent of ranking do you think is page metrics, social metrics and other non-link based metrics and what percent do you think are link based metrics?
Link Building | | DerekP0 -
External links--Does it matter which page they go to?
I'll be doing some linkbuilding in which I will be asking manufacturers of the products we sell to link back to our site. My thought was to have a single page for our "Valued Suppliers" with a badge that I would give them the embed code for. If the URL goes to a "Valued Supplier" page on our site where there are multiple manufacturers, will this help my entire site or only the page that's being linked to? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | AC_Pro0