Link reclamation: What happens when backlinks are pointing to other page than the most related page? Any risks?

[vtmoz]

Hi all,

We have started link reclamation process as we failed to redirect our old website links to newly created pages. Unfortunately most of the backlinks are pointing to a page which already has lots of backlinks. Just wondering if I can redirect the old pages to the other pages than the actual related page they must be pointing to make sure only one page doesn't take away all the backlinks. And what happens if Google find that backlink is pointing to a different page than the actual page?

Thanks

[ThompsonPaul]

If you consider this question from the search engine's point of view, you'll be able to answer this for yourself, vtmoz.You're essentially asking "can I manipulate incoming links to send authority where I want it to go, even if that means frustrating/deceiving someone who tries to use that link to find what they're looking for?"

When you think of it that way, the answer's pretty apparent. And in fact, Google has stated that when you try this, they just consider it a "soft 404" ( so a "not found" even though the resulting page might return a 200 found status code) and remove any authority value the link might have had.

So yes, the major risk is that you'll be throwing away the value of those incoming links, both for authority and for the actual visitor traffic that will be misled and likely bounce as a result.

The vastly better solution is to redirect those links to point where they belong, then use internal links from those strong pages to other related pages on the site to transfer the ranking authority around to other related pages. You should also make sure there is a strong call to action on the highly-linked pages so that you can lead new visitors to take other beneficial actions on the site.

Make sense?

Paul

[Dalessi]

Try to get links to the most relevant page for each search term you are targeting. The link text is important and will influence search engines as to the correct page for each search term. Try to target only one or two important keywords per page. It can be difficult to do, but it will make things more clear to people and the search engines.

Best Regards