Would this sneaky 301 redirect help or hurt?

I have a lot of incorrect links pointing to my website that pertain to one particular directory - /member/

These obviously result in 404 errors that could be better served by pointing to an important page (although I have customized my 404 page).

Can I scoop up every bad link for that one directory and do a 301 redirect on it and salvage that lost traffic, or would I be creating duplicate content that Google would frown on?

Essentially, something like /member/fdsfds and member/uoiuiou would both then be directed to the same page making it appear like duplicate content, title tags and all.

If I'm correct in that assumption that it might be harmful, how can I best salvage those incorrect links?

The principle and purpose of 301 redirects is valid in SE such as Google. It means the page has permanently move to a new location

In this case to salvage potential lost of traffic and page rank, doing a 301 redirects instead of giving that page a 404 status will help your site instead of harming it.

Just make sure your site is spam free and not filled with excessive duplicate content issues but the principle of doing 301 redirects is fine.

You mean:
- /member/fdsfds => 301 => /member/gone
- /member/uoiuiou => 301 => /member/gone

This is not going to be counted as duplicate content as the content will be unique at the new address and you are telling search engines that /member/gone is the canonical URL for /member/fdsfds and /member/uoiuiou.

That is the best way I know to use dead links. It is good for visitors and for search engines.

Jean-Luc

Hmmm thats interesting.

Are these links just to incorrect pages and its obvious where they were meant to go? IE the URL and anchor text are just mis spelled or are they completely random?

If you notice a dead link to your site you first contact the web master and get them to change it, then you do a 301 redirect if they don't fix it.

If there are lots of random spurious links I would suggest that you don't 301 redirect them.