Broken Incoming Links from External Site - What to do?

[Prospector-Plastics]

Our Google Webmaster 'page not found' reports consistently show two Chinese websites that have approximately 50 broken links each to non-existent pages on our website. One site is a PR5, the other a PR1.

Two of our Chinese employees have contacted the site owners (even talking with them over the phone) to discuss the errors, where the broken links live on their sites, and how to fix them. They have contacted the site owners three times in the past three months, but still the broken links have not be fixed.

What do you recommend we do?

[NakulGoyal]

The pages those links link to, were they removed / changed by you at some point. Do you have a page you can redirect those URLs to ? If yes, setup 301 redirects on your server for those URLs to the correct new pages that you may have. If you do not have that content anymore, think like the user who might click on the links from those external links and redirect them to the page that is most optimal for that user.

I hope that helps.

[crackingmedia]

Hi Nathan

If the links are legitimate from good sites and you want them to link to the correct pages on your site, but are not having success with the Chinese site updating them, then it may be simplest to use URL redirection.

If your site is hosted on a Linux server then you can create URL redirection via an .htaccess file in the root folder of your site. If your site is hosted on Windows server, then similar methods exist.

Essentially, this will mean you can intercept the broken links when they arrive at your web server and before they end up reporting a 404 page not found error. In doing this, you can redirect the broken link to the actual address on your site. The result will be that the links will work and also the search engines will change their index for your site to the current address.

So where you currently have a backlink going to mydomain.com/missing-page.html, your URL redirection can signpost the visitor (human or search spider) to the correct page mydomain.com/correct-page.

It would read something like this:

Redirect 301 /missing-page.html http://mydomain.com/missing-page.html

one for each broken link.

I hope that helps,

Peter

[crackingmedia]

Just posted at the same time but a little later than Nakul - ditto answer!

Peter

[Digital-Diameter]

This is very common on larger sites and is very simple. Implement 301 redirects. They pass most of the juice. For maximum benefit, also, be sure they refer to the page most relevant to the topic of the links.

Note: On the PR 1 site if you feel that they are lower quality do you want the links? If not, remember the disavow tool.

[GregB123]

Hi Peter and everybody,

Are there some broken links that are just TOO BROKEN to fix because of the URL used?

I have some linking to my site this way: http://mysite.com/http://mysite.com/randomword  that the 301 direct form on my cPanel just will not accept. Perhaps because of the repeated http part?

Also we have some with weird symbols like this: http://mysite.com/">najboljih  and this http://mysite.com/…word/new-word.html   that the 301 redirect form will not accept. Again I guess the % and & signs are the problem?

It would be nice to get rid of these as they are creating a growing pile of 404 errors. Any suggestions?

[crackingmedia]

Hi Gregory

To answer your question re the two links you have shown as examples...

http://mysite.com/http://mysite.com/randomword

Yes, this is essentially two links as follows: http://mysite.com/ and http://mysite.com/randomword so you need to split these.

http://mysite.com/">najboljih  and this

http://mysite.com/…word/new-word.html

The first one is not a valid link - this decodes to http://mysite.com/">najboljih

The second one has tried to encode non-standard characters so it is represented as two digit Hexadecimal codes - this decodes to http://mysite.com/ÔǪword/new-word.html which with the %xx codes could decode to a genuine URL but it looks suspect.

Are these links from another site?

Peter

[GregB123]

Hi Peter,

They are all links from other sites. I have many versions of these types of links hanging around in my 404 report. I have not worked so far to "split" the ones that look like 2 URLs stuck together.

I will try to attach some screenshot bits from my GWT accounts so you can see what I see. Also I attached the form used by my cPanel for doing 301 redirects. Let me know if the image is not clear.

I really appreciate your help. Thanks!

baka-404-errors.jpg

[crackingmedia]

Hi Greg

If these links have been arriving at your site and producing 404s then they must have a legitimate format so you should be able to redirect them. BUt it may be a limitation of your cPanel redirect form that is rejecting the links you are entering.

In your form, essentially you should need to select the domain you are creating a redirection for (.e.g. bestdryingrack.com and then copy the text after the domainname/ (i.e. after the forward slash) into the textbox alongside. In the redirects to box below enter the full URL including http:// for the page you want the link redirected to.

If you are on a Linux server then your cPanel will be adding the redirections it creates into a file called .htaccess in the root of your web server. If the form doesn't work, then it may be worth trying to add the redirections manually to the .htaccess file.

There is a site here which will help you create the 301 redirects and may not be as fussy as your cPanel form is.

I hope that helps,

Peter

[GregB123]

I've bookmarked that .htaccess 301 redirect generator page. Always been afraid to mess with that file before, but maybe it's time to learn. Thanks again Peter!

[Prospector-Plastics]

Thanks Everyone for your input!

To further clarify, the 2 Chinese sites in question have essentially slurped our pages and in their automated process, have created non-existent links that have never existed on our website and that have no pattern similarities in URL structure.

Based on this, I am inclined to disavow the PR1 site, but work to 301 links from the PR5 site via .htaccess.

Thoughts?