Adventurous 301 redirection chain

[muzzmoz]

Picture this - if you have a spirit for adventure!

1. Client builds Alpha****Domain.com
2. Then builds a number of backlinks to Alpha****Domain.com
3. Client also creates a number of 301 redirects from several older domains to AlphaDomain.com
4. Client then changes Alpha****Domain.com to Beta****Domain.com
5. They create 301 redirects from Alpha****Domain.com to Beta****Domain.com
6. But then... they 'park' Alpha****Domain.com (ie. no longer accessible)!
7. About one year later, client changes a whole bunch of URLs on Beta****Domain.com without keeping track of changes. Thankfully, the hosting service (Shopify) automatically creates some redirects, but it's more by accident than design!

Questions:

1. After step 6 above, are the 301 redirects created in steps 3 and 5 now totally redundant and broken? If AlphaDomain.com no longer exists, surely all redirects to and from this domain are broken? Or can they be recovered?
2. What happens to all the backlinks originally created in step 2?
3. Finally, can anything be done to recover lost URLs in step 7?

Yes. What a mess!

[GPainter]

Phew, what an adventure a user must be going on each time! Now the horror part of the adventure - audit! - ARGH! That fun time in an SEO's life when they get elbow deep into numbers etc. The best strategy is to find all the links and rejig them  rather than have link to link to link etc. just cut out the middle man and go direct. Assuming that the link is even worth doing that for!

but to directly answer:

1. The original domain is still there so the value is still there, it's just going to a dead domain, if you repoint that should still work but this is a bit of a grey area!

2. Same as if they went to a 404 on a live site, they are still there just not going anywhere, you resolve it the same way if you had a 404 page with a redirect that can benefit a user looking for a resource.

3. Yes, you just need to go to the original source and ensure it points to the correct place.

Its all a bit of a grey area and may  do more harm than good especially if the links are a bit dodgy but you can still move a link that points from A to B same as you would an internal link with a 404.Hope that helps and good luck!

(formatting edit, seems to have gotten lost!)