Can I just delete pages to get rid of bad back-links to those pages?

[zingseo]

I just picked up a client who had built a large set of landing pages (1000+) and built a huge amount of spammy links to them (too many to even consider manually requesting deletion for from the respective webmasters).

We now think that google may also be seeing the 'landing pages' as 'doorway pages' as there are so many of them 1000+ and they are all optimized for specific keywords and generally pretty low quality.

Also, the client received an unnatural links found email from google. I'm going to download the links discovered by google around the date of that email and check out if there are any that look specifily bad but I'm sure it will be just one of the several thosand bad links they built. Anyway, they are now wanting to clean up their act and are considering deleting the landing/doorway pages in a hope to

a. rank better for the other non landing/doorway pages (Ie category and sub cats) but more to the crux of my question..

b. essentially get rid of all the 1000s of bad links that were built to those landing/doorway pages. - will this work? if we just remove those pages and use 404 or 410 codes will google see any inbound (external) links to those pages as basicly no longer being links to the site? or is the TLD still likely to be penilized for all the bad links coming into no longer existing URLs on it?

Also, any thoughts on whether a 404 or 410 would be better is appreciated. Some info on that here: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=64033

I guess another option is the disavow feature with google, but Matt Cutts video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA&feature=em- kind of makes it sound like this should just be used for a few links, not 1000s...

Thanks so much!!!!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Yes, Google has indicated they won't count links to a page that either 404s or 410s. Most SEOs would suggest a 410, (permanently removed)as there is some indication that Google will drop these pages out of the index faster.

After this, you might consider using GWT Remove URL feature. This would be easier if the URLs were all in the same directory, and you could wipe the entire thing out at once. But a disclaimer: even though this would speed dropping the pages from the index, I'm not sure if it would speed in dropping the links to those pages from the ranking algorythms (but one can hope, right)

After this, since you relieved an unnatural link warning, you should strongly consider filing a reconsideration request. I might wait a few weeks before doing so, to make sure the incoming links were dropped, and check Google's responses.

As you mentioned, I'd be careful about using the new disavow feature. It's so new and untested we can't really predict the results at this time.

Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.

[zingseo]

Hi Cyrus, thanks heaps for your answer, this was very helpful! Just wondering whether you might be able to point me in the direction of Googles resources on the 'not counting links to a 410 page' issue... So I could read up on that a little more?? Thanks again!

[Cyrus-Shepard]

Google's official documentation says they treat 410's the same as 404's (although I've heard otherwise through the grapevine)

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html

Some other resources:

Here's where John Mueller (Google guy) says to 404/410 a page to drop a link:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/glDIZyRs5bs/discussion

http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40132

[zingseo]

Thanks very much! Greatly appreciated