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 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?

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.

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?

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.