Ever-increasing content demands from individual users and budget-conscious companies are changing how websites are managed. More and more people run their own blogs, websites, online software, or social sharing applications.
So, after more than ten years, you would think that the 404 error would no longer be an issue. Yet, as we all “Stumble”, build sites, code, and develop applications, bad links still sneak through. Unfortunately, even basic typos can affect website ratings and the quest for quality Search Engine Optimization.
Here are some types of bad links:
Inaccessible Links: Web spiders can’t index these links because they are coded into JavaScript or Flash. If they can’t be found, the search engines can’t index them. Think twice before displaying content this way. Talk your clients out of it altogether if they are asking for SEO and are truly content-oriented.
Also, these links won’t be available to people who need to alter their computer settings to accommodate poor eyesight or other disabilities. Translation software may also be affected by embedded links whose characters are unavailable. Making your site accessible to others is a courtesy that has indexing benefits, as well as good “public relations” for the site’s overall reputation – especially if you are promoting a brand.
Link Polluters: Spammers make comments and create links randomly to various sites to increase their indexing results. This may have very negative consequences if your site is one click away from a porn or warez (illegal software) site.
If you decide to link to other sites without checking them out, SeoMOZ’s ranking factors report says that external links to low quality sites may impact your search engine rankings. Investigate your links – are they related to the message you want to get across? Do they contain good quality content? How do their own links score when you evaluate their rankings and other data? Google states:
“some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”
Broken Links: Even minor disappointments (like 404 pages) will drive away potential visitors and customers. They might even find a competitor because of a typo. Have someone else scan your code and an end-user test and re-test your links.
Think about your print media too. Work closely with your marketing team to ensure that everything is ready. Don’t spend the money on a colour ad and have a typo, broken link, or a URL that is not up and running. Test, test, and test again.
Untrustworthy (Hidden links): Some people have embedded white font text and used other style sheet formatting tricks to position key words or other links behind images and colours. This type of thing will catch up with you. Here’s what Google has to say:
“If your site is perceived to contain hidden text and links that are deceptive in intent, your site may be removed from the Google index, and will not appear in search results pages.”
One Way Ticket to Bad Links: 6 Examples to Avoid
- A Webmaster/Blogger re-uses a piece of code from the Internet, such as a WordPress plug-in for dynamic menu generation. The links are generated using script (flash).
Result: Links are invisible to web spiders and all of the pages in the “drill-down” structure do not get indexed. - A Webmaster/Blogger puts some external links on their website. The target domain URL expires and gets acquired by spammers.
Result: Link to a porn or warez site directly from your website! - A Webmaster/Blogger adds some links to YouTube, Flickr, etc. The targeted content is then removed because of a copyright infringement.
Result: 404s - A Webmaster/Blogger upgrades a WordPress installation and a plug-in malfunctions, such as a tag generation plug-in.
Result: Many internal 404s (or even internal server 500s) - A Webmaster/Blogger codes a typo or misspells a word in a URL.
Result: 404s - Automated link exchange software is being used at your organization.
Result: Spam infiltrates the system. The final links page gets more than 100 links and your site gets flagged as a link farm.
