Bought a site with links to it, want to redirect those old links to another site...

[PROFRBcom]

OK, here's the scenario.

We bought a website in our niche that has some decent links pointing to it.
These incoming links are from other relevant websites in our niche.
Many of those links are old and pointing to dead pages which simply result in 404 errors on the purchased site.
This website we purchased isn't something we are going to develop or promote further.


I was thinking that we might take those broken links and just redirect them to an entirely different website altogether in order to harvest some of the link juice at a website we actually care about? I don't know if any of the link juice would flow through in this scenario though.

Does anyone have any experience / advice with something like this?

[MichaelCorfman]

I would think the safest path would be to redirect to other pages on the site you bought. It might work fine to redirect them to another site too, I just don't have the expertise to know. What were you planning to do with external links to pages that do still exist on the site?

Michael

[PROFRBcom]

What were you planning to do with external links to pages that do still exist on the site?

There aren't any external links to currently existing pages, other than the home page. The content was lost/stolen... Do not want to redirect the entire domain however as it has a purpose for existing.

[wonderpunter]

Create new content with the same url links are pointing to, drop another link to your other site in their to get some benefit of the juice also, or you could just redirect the page to your site however, I wouldn't take this risk personally perhaps one page but a few?

[MMM]

Would do the same as Wonderpunter. Create the content and from place a link to my main site from 1 page that gets the most links. Maybe HP.

[Former Member 14]

The inbound links which point to the domain you've purchased, I'd simple add new page content, but keep the same URL structure on the original inbound links. Give that new content and pages to mature for a good 2 to 3 months. Then add a couple of links to those newly created pages, point back to your money site. BUT do not overdo it. Take your time, don't go crazy adding outbound links

[PROFRBcom]

Create new content with the same url links are pointing to, drop another link to your other site in their to get some benefit of the juice also, or you could just redirect the page to your site however, I wouldn't take this risk personally perhaps one page but a few?

I wonder what type of risk we're talking about here?

Could Google potentially penalize me for having another website redirect pages to me? If that were the case, couldn't I/we/someone go out and buy ****** spam domains, point links to each other, and redirect those links to competitors as negative SEO?

Or maybe I'm taking the example too far before you answer the question heh. Can you clarify?

[PROFRBcom]

Create new content with the same url links are pointing to, drop another link to your other site in their to get some benefit of the juice

Create the content and from place a link to my main site from 1 page that gets the most links. Maybe HP.

The inbound links which point to the domain you've purchased, I'd simple add new page content, but keep the same URL structure on the original inbound links.

Arrrrgggghhhh...

This website we purchased isn't something we are going to develop or promote further.

Really trying to avoid putting content on this site. That's not it's purpose! It's not for sales/profit any longer

[GaryTheScubaGuy]

Run a link juice tool like LRT, Majestic or some comparative tool on all the URL's (use Scrapebox with the HTML only filter to get a complete list). Sort the results by keyword. Don't worry about KEI right now, you want to identify your top 10. Now use that keyword list and put it through LRT's 'Content Gap' tool and pick your top 3 - 5. Pay a pro to write content on these ($20-$50 each) and redirect (302) the original page on the old site to this new page you create (with the same link structure). Old content can be found on archive.org, as long as it wasn't complete trash. 301 the remaining MAIN directory links (the ones in your navigation) to a custom Sitemap on the main site. Don't redirect them to the main page (I assume there are 100's) as that's making everything useless and potential red-flags any sitewide links. You'll hear "302's" are bad because of some algorithm changes a few years back but TODAY, they boost the page quicker. Then 5-6 months you can change to a 301 or keep as a 302. They carry no penalty like the used to.

The other idea I have is to use a subdomain but this would be if the above can't be accomplished or afforded and is a bit too detailed to post right here, right now.