Can 404 results from external links hurt site ranking?
-
Hello,
I'm helping a university transition to a brand new website. In some cases the URLs will change between the old site and new site. They will put 301 redirects in place to make sure that people who have old URLs will get redirected properly to the new URLs.
However they also have a bunch of old pages that they aren't using anymore. They don't really care if people still try to get to them (because they don't think many will), but they do care about the overall search engine rankings.
I know that if a site has internal 404 links, that could hurt rankings. However can external links that return a 404 hurt rankings?
Ryan
-
Well if those external links coming in passed link juice and they no long link due to a 404... Then you will lose link juice... So this could potentially affect rankings.
I would either 301 the broken links to the new most relevant page or better still contract the external sites web host and ask them to change the link to the new address (depending on the amount of links).
-
It won't hurt rankings, but I think this is a great opportunity for you to turn those broken links into good links. You should find all of your broken links, contact the site owners, and let them know they can fix that link with a new link to a different page on your site that is still relevant.
Here is a guide for this:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/broken-link-building-guide-from-noob-to-novice
Hope this helps!
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
-
IT's Hurt My Rank?HELP!!!
hi,guys,john here, i just began use the MOZ service several days ago, recently i noticed one thing that one keyword on the first google search result page, but when i done some external links,the rank down from 1 to 8, i think may be the bad quality external links caused the rank down. so my question,should i delete the bad quality links or build more better quality links? which is better for me. easy to delete the bad links and hard to build high quality links. so what's your better opinion,guys? thanks John
Technical SEO | | smokstore0 -
My site doesnt give any 404 error
Hi guyz, I've realized that when someone try to access some url that doesn't exist on my site, my site gives a custom 404 page but not give any 404 http status code.
Technical SEO | | atakala
It still give 200 http status code. My system is IIS based how can I solve it?0 -
How many links can i do in a day
Hi, I built a niche site yesterday, the domain was 1 week old. What is the safest way to do link building? I.e How many links should i do in order to be in safe? So far, i've concentrated on building my social profile. Like getting as many retweets as possible. Slowly getting facebook likes and added few youtube videos with my link in it. Now i am on to link building. I will only do legit link building methods. Currently i am gonna get 2 press releases. But can you tell me no. of links i must get in a day. PS: The keyword i am competing is highly competitive.
Technical SEO | | Vegit0 -
Is Over use of Twitter to link back to your website affect google rankings
Having a debate here that needs to be settled. A friend is using twitter to link back to his site but is falling down the google rankings. I think that he is over using and creating double content which looks like a robot . Can any body elsse explain this Better Please Thanks in advance for your help
Technical SEO | | Feily0 -
Rel canonical = can it hurt your SEO
I have a site that has been developed to default to the non-www version. However each page has a rel canonical to the non-www version too. Could having this in place on all pages hurt the site in terms of search engines? thanks Steve
Technical SEO | | stevecounsell0 -
Way to find how many sites within a given set link to a specific site?
Hi, Does anyone have an idea on how to determine how many sites within a list of 50 sites link to a specific site? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Where can I find a good definition of "link juice"?
I have heard the term link juice being used in many different contexts. Where can I find a good definition for it?
Technical SEO | | casper4340 -
Will using https across our entire site hurt our external backlinks?
Our site is secured throughout, so it loads sitewide as https. It is canonicalized properly - any attempt to load an existing page as http will force to https. My concern is with backlinks. We've put a lot of effort into social media, so we're getting some nice blog linkage. The problem is that the links are generally to http rather than https (understandable, since that's the default for most web users). The site still loads with no problem, but my concern is that since a redirect doesn't transfer all the link juice across, we're leaking some perfectly good link credit. From the standpoint of backlinkage, are we harming ourselves by making the whole site secure by default? The site presently isn't very big, but I'm looking at adding hundreds of new pages to the site, so if we're going to make the change, now is the time to do so. Let me know what you think!
Technical SEO | | ufmedia0