Backlink Redirection as Backlink Building Strategy?

[seo_plus]

Just checking in - i'm working on a site with tons of broken backlinks from high authority sites.

For instance, I've discovered that some 90% of their backlinks are broken, and these are from highly recognizable, name brand magazines, newspapers, blogs and the like.

Right now, the site has a Domain Authority of 48 (better than most in the industry from what i am learning) yet as the site has been around for years and has gone through 5 redesigns, there is an absolute ton of solid inbound backlinks that are getting 404's.

Using Screaming Frog (list mode) I've also learned there are a ton of 301's that turn out to be redirecting to 404 pages so that also starts to add up.

I always knew this was a problem / opportunity and I've always considered it a high priority to fix (301) broken links of this sort to improve ranking (you know, using htaccess or WordPress Redirection tools) -- and to avoid multiple redirects wherever possible.

In fact, I consider it a basic all-win, no-lose strategy.

I always assumed this was the case and I also assume this will continue to be so.

However, as a professional, I always want to double check my assumptions every now and then...

Is this still considered solid strategy?

Are there any issues that one should look out for?

[Joe.Robison]

This is definitely still a sound strategy, especially since you're essentially cleaning up parts of the web! You're reclaiming links already pointing to the clients site, so it's a fairly straightforward strategy. The title led me to believe you might have been snapping up deleted domains and redirecting to the client site, a general gray-hat strategy.

A few issues to watch out for:

• In order to recover the most value, try to recreate the original content on your site that the external sites were linking to. For example, if you had 30 external links to a resource page that's now dead, it would be best to recreate that page if it still applies to your business rather than 301 all the links to the home page
• Be wary of redirect chains, Google will stop following a few redirects chained together (4 or 5 hops)

Here's a good article from PageOnePower on the subject as well.

[danatanseo]

I totally agree with Joe Link Reclamation is a totally worthwhile endeavor. Keep on it!

[seo_plus]

thanks!

someone in another thread suggested CrawlMonster - so far "meh" -

I prefer MOZ and ScreamingFrog.

Anyone suggest any other tools for managing this process?