It's been some time since I've done a thorough housekeeping on my sites. Waaaaaay to long if I'm honest about it.
So I've set time aside and started with a bad link check (used to use Xenu but now I'm an Apple man, I've used the Integrity app)
Sweet mother of Jxxxx! The link rot, especially with Government and quasi government sites, is incredible. Is there some unwritten law that says when there is a change of elected Government, or a realignment of Govt departments, that all websites have to be made over into something else or at least renamed. This is the one area I would have expected to remain relatively stable..... no way!
I'm seeing as much as 20% of all links returning a 404... which immediately raises a question.
If Penguin is about "unnatural link profiles" should we perhaps looking to see if everything is OK in our own back yard before racing off into disavowals, reinstatement requests and various other "technical" fixes?
It strikes me that when Google sees sites with such obvious signs of neglect, its probably not going to share the love.
