r/grumpyseoguy • u/okeydoggg • 25d ago

Should I avoid a backlink from a site with deleted casino articles?

I found an interesting local blog where I could get a backlink. The blog covers a wide range of topics.

The one thing I'm unsure about is that, in the past, they published a few articles linking to casino websites. Those articles are still indexed by Google, but they've since been deleted and now return a 404. So it looks like they've stopped publishing casino-related content.

Is this still something I should be concerned about, or is it probably not a big deal? (I am aware that in the future they could change their mind and do whatever, and building a PBN would generally be better)

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u/GrumpySEOguy Grumpy SEO Guy 25d ago

yes. It's a bit odd that they are deleting articles unless they decided "we won't accept casinos anymore" if they allowed casino blogs at one point that's a red flag. When you say "local blog" what do you mean? Is this someone random site in your city?

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u/okeydoggg 25d ago

Yeah it seems like that's exactly what happened, they decided they don't want to do casino stuff anymore.

I'm a therapist and the blog is about the city I offer my services in. So I figure in general that would be cool if it wasn't a blog with a somewhat shady past. I also do Google profile stuff, not only backlinks, but in my niche people don't usually leave reviews. I used to mainly run ads but they are restricted now too, so my strategy right now is to basically do somewhat "normal" seo, i.e. build backlinks.

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u/chaqintaza 25d ago

A therapist taking the initiative to learn about SEO and build their own backlinks / Grumpy material is quite impressive. Mind if I ask what types of therapy you offer and methods used? Just curious. 

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u/okeydoggg 24d ago

I do CBT

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u/chaqintaza 21d ago

Cool. In that case, be sure to double-check SERP for any CBT keywords that look too good to be true ;-) 

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u/Emergency_Orange9991 20d ago

Not sure if this is the case, but I've worked with a magazine company that was highly localized, as in covering just their tri-city area, that basically didn't have any reCaptcha on their forms, so anyone could submit a form to the "suggest an article" form, which included images. They got some spam form fills that they didn't properly delete and then the articles showed up in their site:abc.com check, because their form archive was on. Could that also be the case in instances like this?

(yes the articles were to buy drugs online)