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
-
INBOUND LINKS FROM OTHER OWNED BRANDS HARMING MY MAIN SITE?
Hey, I work for a company that owns 5 brands, all pretty large sites with 10,000s of pages. We have one primary site, that has inbound links from all the other owned sites (4) resulting in 950k backlinks pointing to the domain. For context, the primary domain has 781 referring domains (with 4 of them being the other owned sites). My question was, will this excess of linking be harming the primary domain? Will the ration of backlinks to referring domains be seen as a negative quality indicator? Charlie
Link Building | | charliehowes10 -
Internal links: How do I find keywords that are not linked to a URL?
Hi Moz members I'd really like to place an internal link of every instance of an important keyword phrase "cycling caps" or "cycling cap" to my eComm category page
Link Building | | andystorey
https://www.prendas.co.uk/collections/headwear/cotton-caps I feel this would not only help my customers browsing my store, but I believe it will help from an SEO perspective. How can I search my site using Moz, Screaming Frog, Google etc to find every time cycling cap(s) is used but is not linked to the above URL? I can then apply the same for cycling jerseys, socks, etc Andy0 -
Outgoing links
Hi Guy's, We have a website with no outgoing links (only Facebook). Is this a good way to score better in the SERPS? Or is it better to have some outgoing "relevant" links for a natural linkjuice? Thanks!
Link Building | | Happy-SEO1 -
Missing Inbound Linking Domains
For some reason, our websites seem to be missing a number of authoritative inbound linking domains which seems to be a primary driver in lowering our domain authority as compared to our competition. Does anyone have any feedback as to why this might not be populating or is there something additional we need to do to have these show up? If it doesn't show up in MOZ is it likely that Google might also not be seeing these as inbound link domains? Thanks as always MOZ Community!
Link Building | | Leithmarketing0 -
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 -
Do links from the second page of an article pass link juice?
I have been writing for some sites with a high overall page rank and the articles are being viewed as quality by search engines as well. However, they usually put a link to my site at the very end of the article and then break the article down into two pages to increase ad revenue. It seems that I'm not getting much credit for that link even if the page has a high SEOmoz/PR score. I want to know if I am getting the benefit from these links. If not, how do I make sure I get the most bang, even if my link is on a second page of the article? Here is an example of what I mean: http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2012/08/22/kanban-for-customers-how-to-increase-transparency-in-your-business/
Link Building | | LawrenceWatkins0 -
Link Farming
Are link farms still bad? I still am not sure about this question. I know that some people still do link farms. If they are bad, wouldn't a directory be considered a link farm? For instance I can get my site on a .EDU, but it will just be a list of links. Is that bad?
Link Building | | blackrino0 -
Internal linking
I 'am using a seo component (sh404sef) for a joomla website, for the time being, any internal linking is organized. I've been said the sitelinkx is not advised (a component dedicated to build internal links) with sh404sef... How could i manage to set it up fastly ? Tks a lot..
Link Building | | mozllo0