How do I best deal with pages returning 404 errors as they contain links from other sites?

[Towelsrus]

I have over 750 URL's returning 404 errors. The majority of these pages have back links from sites, however the credibility of these pages from what I can see is somewhat dubious, mainly forums and sites with low DA & PA.

It has been suggested placing 301 redirects from these pages, a nice easy solution, however I am concerned that we could do more harm than good to our sites credibility and link building strategy going into 2013. I don't want to redirect these pages if its going to cause a panda/penguin problem.

Could I request manual removal or something of this nature?

Thoughts appreciated.

[MatthewBarby]

Hi Craig,

You have a couple of option here. First thing I would do would be to analyse all of the links going to these pages. If there are any pages that you would say the links are actually of value then set up a 301 redirect to another relevant page on the site.

Alternatively, you could ask for the manual removal of links to the pages via the Google disavow tool. If there are only a couple of links going through to the old URLs then I wouldn't worry too much. I would just spend a while analysing and prioritising which pages need to be redirected urgently and then take a deeper look into their links.

Hope this helps,

Matt.

[Towelsrus]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for advice, much appreciated. I'll do a bit of digging and see what turns up.

Thanks

Craig

[wickedsunny1]

Hiz, you can use google disavow tool for this : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1 as stated by matthew.

[SorinaDascalu]

We do 301 redirects from URLs that return 404 errors for 2 reasons: 1) To not lose traffic 2) To not lose link juice So in your case I would do the following: To not lose traffic - I would check the stats of the website to see which of these pages received visits - if they are any I would do 301 redirects to pages that can provide the information the visitor was looking for in the first pace. To not lose link juice - For the remaining pages, I would check the value of the backlinks and see if they are worth it. If they are, I would do 301 redirect to the home. I personally don’t jump too easy in using Google disavowal tool. As they say on their official blog:

If you’ve been notified of a manual spam action based on “unnatural links” pointing to your site, this tool can help you address the issue. If you haven’t gotten this notification, this tool generally isn’t something you need to worry about. I’m not talking from experience here, but just from logic - if a bad link points to a page that doesn't exist on my site I don’t believe it can get me penalized.

[TommyTan]

Hi Craig,

Why not create an awesome kick butt 404 page with links that can direct people to pages that they are looking for?  This way, if your audience is interested, they can continue to navigate your site from your 404 page and you keep all the link juice to your 404 page.  Your 404 page might be one of the top visited page so you should take this opportunity to include links to direct people to the right pages they might be looking for.

One reason 301 redirect may not be good is because if someone clicks on a backlink to your stie and you redirect all your 404 traffic to your home page.  It might turn people off for sending them to your home page when they thought the link is directing them to something they are interested in.