Do you need a place to ditch bad links?

[Matt_Wilson]

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:

www.mydomain.com/viagra

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.

[Matt_Wilson]

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.

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[Matt_Wilson]

I don't follow, sorry.

In this scenario:

www.badlinksdirectory.com/pagewithmylink

links to

www.mydomain.com/targeturl

and re-directs to

www.badlinksdirectory.com

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?

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[Matt_Wilson]

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.

[Dr-Pete]

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.

[Matt_Wilson]

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?

[Dr-Pete]

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.