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@davidvogel said in Best redirect destination for 18k highly-linked pages:

Technical SEO question regarding redirects; I appreciate any insights on best way to handle.

Situation: We're decommissioning several major content sections on a website, comprising ~18k webpages. This is a well established site (10+ years) and many of the pages within these sections have high-quality inbound links from .orgs and .edus.

Challenge: We're trying to determine the best place to redirect these 18k pages.

For user experience, we believe best option is the homepage, which has a statement about the changes to the site and links to the most important remaining sections of the site. It's also the most important page on site, so the bolster of 301 redirected links doesn't seem bad.

However, someone on our team is concerned that that many new redirected pages and links going to our homepage will trigger a negative SEO flag for the homepage, and recommends instead that they all go to our custom 404 page (which also includes links to important remaining sections).

What's the right approach here to preserve remaining SEO value of these soon-to-be-redirected pages without triggering Google penalties?

If redirecting each page contextually isn’t feasible, consider a blended approach. Redirect the most valuable or relevant pages to closely related section pages, and direct the remainder to a custom 404 page. This preserves link equity for high-value pages while reducing the likelihood of “soft 404” issues or other penalties.

@Alberto_Diaz said in Link Tracking List Error:

"I have been maintaining 5 directories of backlinks in the 'Link Tracking List' section for several months. However, I am unable to locate any of these links at this time.

Additionally, the link from my MOZ profile is currently broken and redirects to an error page, no to Elche Se Mueve.

Given the premium pricing of MOZ's services, these persistent errors are unacceptable."

If the backlinks in your "Link Tracking List" have disappeared, it could be due to a data refresh or syncing issue on Moz’s end. Try clearing your browser cache or logging in with an incognito window to rule out any display glitches. For the broken link in your Moz profile, check that the URL in your profile settings is entered correctly and that there are no typos or extra spaces. If the issue persists despite the URL being correct, it might be a redirect or server configuration problem on Moz’s end, which their support team would need to fix.