Morally Right vs Strategic 404 Question

[Michael4g]

Hey,

I bought my domain name not even thinking of the backlink profile advantages. However, now I have about 140 links back to my site delivering 404 errors. Some with DA only in the teens, but some more.

What would you consider the right way to go about this? Should I redirect them to my homepage? Should I try to disavow them? Any thoughts are welcome.

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Hi Michael,

Redirect them to the homepage, in this case it doesn't make sense to disavow them as they probably won't hurt you because of the quality but more that they might be sending traffic to pages that don't exist. Forcing users to a page that they can do something on would be the most valuable thing.

[Guest]

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[Carson-Ward]

You will see no benefit from mass-301 redirects to the home page, and it might even hurt. The only way to get value is if you redirect it to identical or similar content. I wouldn't even count on that adding value or traffic now that the site has changed hands and content has been gone for a while.

Still, if you can recover (and have the right to use) the old content, it might be worth 301 redirecting - or better yet, putting on the same URL so no redirects are necessary. Only do this if the content was good and the links were quality links. Otherwise let them 404.

If you can't put up the same or similar content, don't bother. Focus on building the site naturally.