Do you need a place to ditch bad links?
-
This is not a question as such, more a gift
I have registered a domain name to ditch bad links.
For example, let's pretend I have a page on my site:
and have never done any good SEO to promote this page, just a load of spammy directory links.
The page used to rank for Viagra but then Google took manual action and I lost my ranking. Booo!
Now the page is of no use to me until I get all these links removed and the manual action revoked. Even then, I'll be starting from scratch re-building good links to the page.
Here's another option, simply re-direct the url to badlinksbin.com and say goodbye to all those spammy links.
This bypasses the lengthy link removal process.
Warning: I wouldn't recommend using this method if you have some good links in the mix, unless you can contact the site owners and get the links changed.
And, don't forget to change the name of the url first so the Viagra page still exists on your site.
As I've already set this up, I thought no harm sharing it and letting you guys use it too.
I hope it helps some people.
-
I don't control the original site, it's a SEO directory. There are links from it to a page on my site that I want to remove, so I figure I'll 404 the page on my site and re-direct the url back to the directory site.
It is rhetorical given that you've already confirmed that it's enough to 404 the page.
-
I'm confused - why would you link out to another site and then 301-redirect that 3rd-party page back to the original site (especially to the home-page on the original site)? I honestly have no idea how Google would treat that - I think it would send a bit of a mixed signal, but it could be seen as an internal link. If you control the original site, though, this would have no benefits on search or users, so I'm just not clear on the motivation.
-
I don't follow, sorry.
In this scenario:
www.badlinksdirectory.com/pagewithmylink
links to
and re-directs to
Presuming I've changed the url of /targeturl so the content still exists on my site and /targeturl is effectively 404'd.
How are the links consolidated?
Wouldn't it become just an internal link but with a detour?
-
Redirecting to the root domain can preserve the link value, but it won't shake loose any penalties. You'd basically just consolidate those links.
-
Thanks for clarifying, I appreciate it.
Out of interest, what are your thoughts on re-directing the link back to the source? e.g. re-direct www.badlinksdirectory.com/pagewithmylink to www.badlinksdirectory.com
This is of course a somewhat moot point given your response, but I'm just curious what your opinion on this would be in a rhetorical scenario.
-
As best we know, 404s should kill the page as a link target, which essentially severs the links. I don't think Google views the link on a domain-wide level at that point. If they did, then honestly it's likely the same rules would apply to other HTTP headers, including 301s. If the page is dead, you're pretty safe at that point. I don't think 301-redirecting the bad page is going to have any additional positive impact.
Re: "breaking rules", the problem is that it's very subjective. Let's say that a bunch of SEOs realize that Penguin and other link-based penalties created an opportunity, and they start taking their own pages with bad links and 301-redirecting those to competitors (maliciously). If Google sees that pattern and then they see you 301-redirecting your links to a 3rd-party site, they may not be able to separate you from the pattern. In other words, they're going to assume bad behavior.
That's speculation, of course (in this specific case - I've definitely seen them mistake bad intent in other areas). I just don't see that you'd be gaining anything by taking on that risk, even if it's small.
-
Hey Dr. Peter, thanks for your reply. No need to apologise, I really appreciate your critical opinion. I'd like to explore this a little further if I may. If I 404 the page (which is something I've considered), the links are still pointing at my domain, so remain potentially harmful until removed, right?
Same applies if I meta noindex it, I'm still stuck with the links. And with link removal being a major part of SEO at the moment I'm seeing more and more webmasters applying a charge to remove links, so it's either costly or a stalemate.
Obviously, that's what the Disavow Links tools is there for, but I haven't seen much evidence of it working... not quickly anyway.
In your opinion would re-directing to badlinksbin.com move the links out of harms way?
I take your point about negative SEO and concede the activity may have the same hallmarks, but I'm not actually breaking any rules here, right?
-
It seems like you're trying to share something you believe is helpful, so I apologize if this comes off as overly critical, but that's really not a good tactic at all. First off, it's unnecessary. If you are fortunate enough to be able to isolate and redirect a page with bad links (as you said, assuming there aren't good links in the mix), then you'd do just as well to 404 that page entirely. There's no need to redirect it somewhere.
Second, it could actually look manipulative. Redirecting a page full of bad links to a 3rd-party site would look to me like negative SEO. I have no proof Google penalizes this particular behavior, but it seems like a red flag that could potentially cause risks for the site setting up the redirects.
Even if the risk of that happening is <5%, it's a risk on top of doing something completely unnecessary. Just kill the page (404 or Meta-Noindex if it still has user value) - it's a clear signal to Google. If you start getting weird with 301-redirects, you could raise alarms.
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
-
Link juice - What could be the reason for our bad internal page Page Authority
So OK we have a domain authority currently of 41, we are well established but unfortunately we don't have any pages with PA. I have a fair idea of why this is the case but want to get some other opinions before I form my strategy. 1.It appears our internal link structure is not great and is not very organised 2. It appears we have 58 links going externally on some pages. Some of these external links are social media icons in the footer which are followed. Is there any other factors I should be aware of when building PA on some of my inner pages. Any Thoughts would be appreciated.
Link Building | | CAQ1 -
Removal of Bad Links
Before I started doing SEO for the company I am currently working in, they had an Indian company doing loads of spammy SEO work for their site. My question is as follows; should i try to remove the links that were inserted there. I am doing link building now in a natural way, which obviously takes days to get a link - not minutes. I'm worried that the link profile is full of years of spammy links and I can't dilute it as fast as I would like. Here are a few links to different sites that the company created links on: http://youdoze.com/ http://www.video-bookmark.com/ http://mylinkvault.com/ http://www.puplinks.com/ http://huzoo.com/ How do I go about this?
Link Building | | EcomLkwd0 -
Bearshare links?
I am doing competitor link research and so far 4 of the 4 have had links from search.bearshare.net What kind of site is this? I am sure it isn't valuable but I can't figure out how it is getting crawled.
Link Building | | EcommerceSite0 -
How to handle bad DoFollow links to pages on my site that no longer exist
I briefly had a forum on one of my sites, but after getting inundated with spam I decided to remove it for the time being. During the brief time it was up, most of the spammers were stopped from registering, but a few managed to get through and posted tons of links to their prescription drug sites. These posts were deleted almost instantly, but the spammers also created DoFollow backlinks on high authority community sites like ning. The forum posts they linked to were deleted immediately, so the links never went anywhere and the forum has been deleted entirely for a few months now. When clicked, the spam backlinks now bring someone to a "Sorry, that page doesn’t exist" page on my site. My site suffered a bit in the last Panda update and it made me look through my backlink profile, finding lots of these links - even though the pages on my site are long gone, could these links be hurting my site? Can a DoFollow link to a site help or hurt the main domain, even if the actual page it's linking to is deleted?
Link Building | | adventurenick0 -
Are links from every page of a partners website to my website bad for seo?
I have asked a partner website to link to my website in the Menu Bar. Which has resulted in a link to my website from every page of the partners website (Over 1000 Pages). The link is not a "nofollow" link, it is a regular link. Can this have any negative effects in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | raghavkapur0 -
Are Directory Links a Good Source of Branded Links?
I am trying to increase the number of branded links for a few of my sites since the links are too heavily weighted on anchor text. If so, would you recommend a service like Directory Maximizer?
Link Building | | rise10 -
Link building
i want to ask a question. i am sure this is kind black hat seo. look at this web site http://www.199999dollars.com/ if we also create website like this and put a banner as domain for sale and in the footer put back links to our domain ? thanks
Link Building | | idreams0 -
What to do with some good links I have?
I have some pretty strong links from relevant sources linking to the homepage of a site I deal with. The links are usually from a PR3-5 pages and display specific result about the linking site. Sometimes they come from badges. We offer several services, so sometimes the page is about one service and next time about the other. Currently all of my pages link to the homepage. Would it not be better to link to the specific product page related to the page I have? Also I can do a canonical to the service pages? Which would be best?
Link Building | | Svetoslav0