Contents
Why are backlinks important?
Backlinks are an integral part of maintaining and improving organic search performance. Sometimes, URLs are retired or removed without redirecting to a suitable alternative; therefore, the backlinks to those URLs become broken.
Users and search engines that follow these backlinks arrive at a 404 HTTP response. Users may exit the site because they may think the content that they are looking for does not exist. Search engines will not be able to follow the backlinks and the link equity that was delivered by the referring domain(s).
How to map redirects
This process investigates what content each broken backlink contained and select an appropriate redirect destination.
Redirect destination criteria
All redirect destinations MUST be indexable. The following URLs are NOT eligible:
- Canonicalised to another URL
- Does not return a 200 response (such as a redirect)
Mapping from the URL
It may be possible to select a new redirect destination solely based on the URL path of the broken backlink. Here are three mapped examples.
- The product page was located under a redundant directory, but is now under the latest directory; therefore, we can use the latter as the redirect destination. Use internal search to easily find the latest pages for products or article titles or topics.
- We can easily determine the new destination should be the newsletter directory that replaced the subdomain.
- The Victoria Beckham makeup campaign is no longer live and the site no longer offers any related products. It would be acceptable to use makeup product directory.
| # | Broken backlink | Redirect destination |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | https://example.com/product/689/advanced-repair | https://example.com/product/342/advanced-repair |
| 2 | https://newsletter.example.com/ | https://example.com/newsletter/ |
| 3 | https://example.com/makeup-collection-victoria-beckham | https://example.com/products/makeup/ |
Mapping using Internet Archive
If you cannot determine a redirect destination based on the broken backlink URL, use the Internet Archive (also called Wayback Machine) to find out what content existed on the page. Here is a tutorial on using the Wayback Machine if required. Here are two mapped examples.
- The broken backlink once contained content about a promotional collection of printed illustrations that is no longer offered. We can use the print product directory as a suitable redirect destination.
- The broken backlinks once contained an article that interviewed a prop designer. We can use the blog category ‘Confidence’ because this contain multiple interviews with creative professionals.
| # | Broken backlink | Redirect destination |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/penguin-85-prints | https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/penguin-prints |
| 2 | https://www.esteelauder.co.uk/estee-edit-article-custom-made | https://www.esteelauder.co.uk/discover/confidence |
