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Broken inbound links. How to redirect?

  1. photojourn
    Member

    I just had a look at Google webmaster tools for my blog http://photojourn.wordpress.com and it shows quite a few inbound links are returning a 404 not found error. I checked some of these and they are linked to pages where the permalink was changed not long after posting.
    Is there a way to redirect these inbound links to the new permalink?

    Thanks

    John

    The blog I need help with is photojourn.wordpress.com.

  2. thesacredpath
    Member

    That is one of the drawbacks of changing permalinks. Once Google indexes your blog, it can end up getting to posts between the time you publish and the time that you change a permalink.

    The only thing I can suggest is to change the permalinks back to what they were before (what google has) but then again, they have probably also gotten the new permalinks so then those will be broken.

    My suggestion is to wait it out. It should take about 6 months for things to get corrected.

    Also, in google webmaster tools, I believe there is a way to inform them that you want certain links pulled from their indexes. It may take a few weeks for them to get around to it, but that would be my only other suggestion.

  3. photojourn
    Member

    That a shame. Lots of good links. Probably explains the drop in pr too :(

  4. thesacredpath
    Member

    Yes, I'm sorry you got caught up in that.

    One suggestion for everyone out there is that once you publish a post, NEVER change the permalink after that. You never know how quickly the search engines will pick it up, and if you change it then you are going to suffer from broken links which will have an effect on your page ranking.

    Even if several days later you have second thoughts and go in and change the title of the post, leave the permalink alone. It won't match the post title, but at least you don't end up with broken links.

  5. pornstarbabylon
    Member

    Yeah I noticed that once and made sure to either edit within minutes or leave the title as is.

    Pagerank drops for many unknown reasons that many still wonder about today. I started with a six and it dropped and went up and back down and now it's stuck at three. Pagerank will drop if you buy a new domain.

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