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existing backlinks on purchased domain - can I keep them?

by Dunder
9 replies
  • WEB DESIGN
    • |
I just bought a new domain and discovered that it still has a lot of backlinks in the search engines.

Is there an easy way to keep those backlinks passing link juice to my site without recreating the pages that they link to?

How do I keep the seo benefit?

The incoming links go to a wide variety of pages that must have existed on the domain when a previous owner had it.

I don't really want to manually recreate a lot of pages, but I would like to keep the backlinks for seo purposes.

Anyone got any easy ways to deal with this?
#backlinks #domain #existing #purchased
  • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
    Hi Dunder,

    The links won't go away unless the owner of the other websites physcially take them off their site. This is very unlikely.

    What I would suggest is that you setup some sort 404 redirect.
    This will make the search engines believe you still have pages up for all the links pointing to your website.

    This will keep your links in the Search Engines much longer..

    Hope this helps

    Bruce
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    • Profile picture of the author Dunder
      Originally Posted by Bruce Hearder View Post

      Hi Dunder,


      What I would suggest is that you setup some sort 404 redirect.
      This will make the search engines believe you still have pages up for all the links pointing to your website.
      Bruce,

      Thanks for advice.

      Any pointers on how I do that?
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    • Profile picture of the author wayfarer
      Originally Posted by Bruce Hearder View Post

      What I would suggest is that you setup some sort 404 redirect.
      Bruce, I think you mean a 301 redirect. The 301 status code along with a Location header redirects the user agent to the new location, and tells the user agent (browser, search spider, etc) that the content now exists in a new, permanent location.

      If you're on Apache, you can place a file called .htaccess in your root directory, and place commands like this:

      Code:
      Redirect 301 /old-file.html http://my-domain-name.com/new-location.html
      A 404 is a "File not found" error, and will naturally occur if something isn't found on most servers, though it is usually better to direct the traffic to a custom page so that the design of the 404 landing page matches the rest of your site.
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      • Profile picture of the author Dunder
        Thanks for that - I think it is something like that that I will need.

        The only problem is that a do not have a list of the pages that the links point to, so using the code you have shown will be difficult to do.

        The problem is there are thousands of backlinks, and from the few that I checked so far they are all going to lots of different pages.

        Is there any way to put something generic which will handle them all without me needing to know the actual pagenames involved?
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        • Profile picture of the author Bruce Hearder
          No I didn't mean a 301, I mean a 404..

          Lets ay you have links pointing to your site that link to a page that doesn't exist.

          You don't want to point them all to a common page becuase, Big G and the othe Search Engines will soon see lots of duplicate content. different urls, all have same content.

          What you want to present to the search engines is a unique page, that does not generate a 404, but a 200 success message and each page having slightly different conent.

          If you are using WP, then a plugin like :

          http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/smart-404/

          Might just do it for us..

          I use some custom coding that makes pages on the fly for me..

          Hope this makes things a bit more clearer..

          Bruce
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  • Profile picture of the author wayfarer
    Originally Posted by Bruce Hearder View Post

    Hope this makes things a bit more clearer..
    You used the term "404 Redirect". A Status of 404 should not happen when there is a redirect. It seems you meant "redirecting instead of giving a 404" which is fine, but your terminology was non-standard and might confuse.

    I believe that if you don't have content that is related to the old content, you should just let it go 404. Take the pages that resemble your site, things such as "About", "Articles", "Contact Us", "Tips", and redirect them to the appropriate place on your site. If, however, there is old pages that say, for example "What I did last Tuesday with my new puppy", it is probably better for users if you just let them know that content no longer exists. Make your 404 page meaningful so they can easily navigate to the rest of your site.

    Originally Posted by Dunder View Post

    The only problem is that a do not have a list of the pages that the links point to, so using the code you have shown will be difficult to do.
    Do yourself a favor, and open a google webmaster account: webmaster.google.com. Then perform all the necessary steps to prove ownership of the site. Google webmaster will then tell you nearly all of the links that are pointing at the site, and to which pages they are pointing. This is a much more accurate and inclusive way of doing so than a simple link:site.com search
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    • Profile picture of the author Dunder
      Thanks for the comments and suggestions.

      I am not bothered about real human traffic, because I don't really imagine too much real human traffic is going to come via the links, but I would like to try and preserve the seo benefit of the links.

      We spend a lot of effort trying to get backlinks to our sites to help it rank in the search engines.

      It seems a shame to let a mass of backlinks just disappear from my site if I could find an easy way to retain them.
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      • Profile picture of the author wayfarer
        Originally Posted by Dunder View Post

        I am not bothered about real human traffic, because I don't really imagine too much real human traffic is going to come via the links, but I would like to try and preserve the seo benefit of the links.
        This is a common mistake in the thought process of marketing your site. I personally get 75% of my traffic from links not search engines, and my traffic is not insignificant. I'm not talking about traffic from forums like this of course. Signature links are almost totally worthless. If a link is not likely to generate real human traffic, it isn't likely to be percieved as beneficial to search engines.

        Leaving out the human situation means that you'll be designing your site for search engines, not human visitors, which is an error of the highest sort. If you don't design your site for visitors first, it is pretty much certain you'll fail.

        My personal traffic percentage is not typical, but I would say only 50% of your traffic should come from search engines, otherwise you are spending your energies in the wrong places.
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        • Profile picture of the author Dunder
          Wayfarer,

          I believe you have missed the point of my original question.

          I am building the site for visitors, and all the new site building will be done from that standpoint, but, this domain happens to have a mass of backlinks still active.

          I purchased the site for it's domain name, not the backlinks, and didn't even know about them until after I registered the domain.

          Everyone spends a lot of time building backlinks to their site to increase their link popularity and help in search engine rankings.

          This site has a lot of backlinks, some of which are from high pr sites.

          If I can find a way to easily retain them and retain the seo benefit of that, then I would like to do so.

          If I can't find a way to do that, then I will just move on and forget about it.
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