Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Link Building
Log in to post

Category: Link Building

Chat through link building best practices and outreach techniques.

  • Czubmeister


    When you go to the URL and the link isn't there, what does it mean? Looks like the link may have been around since 2011. Any clues?  What is an old comment on the story or something? From openexplorer URL: http://espn.go.com/espn/espys/?ov=bestplay Title: 2011 ESPYS - July 2011 ESPNHD Anchor Text: http://www.l a d e n t i s t.c o m    (I don't want a link to them so I spaced it) Page Authority: 51 Domain Authority 100 Number of Links: 7 Followable = YES Origin = External Target URL: http://www.l a d e n t i s t .com/

    | Czubmeister
    0
  • TheGrid


    I have been using Wordtracker for about 10 years for my keyword research. They have recently unveiled a new link builder tool. I was wondering if anyone had used it or could give me some feedback on it

    | TheGrid
    0
  • RankStealer


    Hi Guys My client has been offered a link from someone within their industry on their blog. The blog has 20 categories and multiple (hundreds if not more pages within each category). The owner of the website has said that would be happy to give my client a link on each of their pages (including their homepage). They have done this for another couple of people who they like before, so I typed these domains into OSE and noticed that for each page it shows a link and also the page authority. Domain Authority of this blog giving the link is 71 Home Page PA - 76 About us PA - 60 it goes on.........the least PA being shown is 52 so lets for arguements sake say the other 18 or say categories are PA of 52 too. My question is surely the OSE is not accurate to imply that my client could be passed page authority from 18 categories at 52 each + home page of 76 + about me page of 60? Hopefully you understand the point I'm trying to make

    | RankStealer
    0
  • jereprieto


    I'm doing SEO for an apartment rental web-site. We have one web-site for each destination. And for some (popular) destinations we have a separate domain for some languages. For instance: http://www.barcelonacheckin.com/en for English and http://www.barcelonacheckin.com/fr for French In another destination we have http://costabrava-ok-apartment.com/en for English and http://www.location-costabrava.fr/ for French. We have good result with the separate domains for languages. But I'm facing two problems: We do not get any progress in the ranks in English in any Web-site There's a lot written about SEO in English and there are many opportunities to build relevant links. But we are out of sources for eg. French. Our SEO routine exists of participating in forums on famous travel web-sites, guest post exchange with our blogs, link exchange and presence in Social media. Can anybody give us some suggestions?

    | jereprieto
    0
  • Demosthenes


    Hi, I have a niche directory and sometimes clients remove themselves because they have discontinued their business practice. If they sometimes provide me with their own website (as they will no longer use it either), is it wiser for me to: a) directly point their URL 301 to my own directory b) keep their website as is, and add a url link to my directory in their homepage c) keep their website as is, and add an anchored link with the industry keyword to my directory Thanks! D

    | Demosthenes
    0
  • cbielich


    I know after the Panda update it seems that back linking is a no no but its hard to believe that its not still effective. What about paid links? Are there any trusted sites out there? Thoughts?

    | cbielich
    0
  • ypl


    My SEO firm confirmed on 4/5 that they've removed links from a site www.fantake.com.  However, as of today, it still shows on GWM there are 1100 links coming from that site. Questions: where can I find out bad links from root domain listed on GWM?  There are some domains showing they have hundreds of links to our site. Between the lag time of GWM crawling, is there a tool that  I can use and verify if a link is indded removed?

    | ypl
    0
  • ypl


    We plan to re-direct our current site to a new site (with a new domain name as well) because the current site has many unnatural links and it would take too many hours to fix it and yet, the result is unknown and also the site has issues with userability and other SEO issues. Our question: since the current site is associated with unnatural links, but, it is a domain with 12 years history, should we re-direct it to the new website?  My understanding is that no one is sure if the penalty will be carried over, is it something we can cut off if it happened? or should we not to risk re-direct, and just start from fresh?

    | ypl
    0
  • CanineConcepts


    Hello, My 'air intelligence' campaign is indicating my site has no external links, but I know from Google analytics that there is over a 1000 links. How long should I expect SEOmoz to take to discover all the links. Regards

    | CanineConcepts
    0
  • thriveseo


    Recently two of my clients purchased a listing in the Yahoo Directory, but they don't show up in the SEOmoz campaign analysis.  Is there a reason why?

    | thriveseo
    0
  • Shivvyt


    How do you scientifically value advertorial links. I have a site who is willing to buy advertorial in large online sites which will contain links. (I would prefer they invested in content on their own site). The DA on these sites is universally extremely strong. the PA of the examples I've seen is pretty low. The site has strong DA matching it's main competition and is performing pretty well in terms of ranking. Question: how do you value this kind of link in terms of the amount of £ the publications want to charge. Anybody have a formula or a logical process which would provide solid advice rather than don't infringe Google's T&C's which I've already mentioned to them. Any thoughts appreciated.

    | Shivvyt
    0
  • ClarityVentures


    Hi Mozzers! I'm trying to streamline my company's link building process, and I've noticed we don't have a great way of tracking /measuring our inbound links yet. Obviously methods like Open Site Explorer are great for getting a big-picture view of inbound links, but do you guys use other methods for measuring your link building campaign? What are they? Thanks!
    Meg

    | ClarityVentures
    0
  • nvs.nim


    Last couple of days we read things about Google algorithm and some things about companies or people doing "negative seo".. At first, nothing was wrong... if you play the game by the rules you won't get penalized you think... right? Today I checked rankings for some sites we're optimizing, and I fell of my chair! A site that was building better rankings week by week just dropped heavily and we have no clue if it's the algorithm update... Attached there are some screenshots, the first one showing the ranking for one of the most important keywords for that business, the others are link profiles & moztrust & rank for that root domain. As you can see, link profiles are much stronger that competitors, but that important keyword is dropping in rankings... We still have to do some on page optimizations (double title tags & some some canonical tags that have to be added, but that can't be the reason for this major drop?? Or am I missing something??? Any ideas? Are External Followed links growing to fast? (The blue line in screenshots is the site we're working on) rankings-may.jpg moztrust.jpg followed-links.jpg

    | nvs.nim
    0
  • RankStealer


    As the title says really, I'm sure the answer is Yes, but I cannot remember why probably one of the many things I read somewhere along the line and can't recall the reasoning can anyone enlighten me please?

    | RankStealer
    0
  • DancingWebmasters


    What is currently the best practice to not let pagerank flow to policy, contact and other less important pages on an e-commerce website? Pages have to be visible on the home page, (currently in the footer) so unfortunately they cannot be moved to a "single" url. How likely is that a PR5 home page can sculpt PR4 first category pages if the # of outgoing links are at a reasonable number and structured well? Currently the home page is PR5, but category pages are only PR3  - and not structured properly...

    | DancingWebmasters
    0
  • yousayjump


    Hi all I design and develop websites for clients within the UK.  With each website I build, I always add a link to the footer of the website which links back to my website. I have always used the link anchor text "Site By Jump" but then decided to try to use the link anchor text to our benefit by changing the links across all of our portfolio of sites to be: "Graphic Design by Jump"
    or
    "Web Design by Jump" In the hope that this helped us rank better for those keyword phrases. Now something occurred to me the day.  Most of the websites I build have no relevance to the content on our website.  For example, I could build a website for Baby Food and add a backlink to our homepage which doesn't even mention the words "baby food". In some cases, the websites can have thousands of pages, each with this footer link appearing at the bottom of each page. My question is, could these backlinks potentially be seen as black hat or spam to a search engine? I.e. thousands of backlinks from websites that have no relevance in terms of content all linking back to my homepage? Thank you for reading and any advice would be greatly appreciated.

    | yousayjump
    0
  • Webmaster123


    I have a site that is about 1-2 years old but I haven't worked on any backlinks yet. How many links is too many too quickly? I am looking to hire a firm to do my seo and I've received a lot of positive feedback from their customers and other seo experts in the area.

    | Webmaster123
    0
  • freestone


    I have been looking closely at my backlinks.  I readily admin that I have not worked on backlinks in years since for e-commerce there is little white hat opportunity but here is what I find in doing a detailed analysis. I mostly have back links that are pointing to our nicely ranked site (well it use to be pre-penguin) being hyjacked by crappy sites that just put us on the their site in order to try and rank.  I have no way to prevent this.  They are like a cancer.  Point me to the Doctor. Is Goggle penalizing us for these guys listing us in long pages list to create pages that obviously exist for one reason...... To display Adword Ads....isn't that a twist that simply sucks for use but has Google making money either way. If they want to penalize us for them stealing our link then we should get a say in accepting the link. Advice on dealing with this?  Do I have to hire someone to create enough good links to overcome this trash that I have no control over ? Perhaps my competitors are doing this.  I simply can't tell. Any advice is appriciated.

    | freestone
    0
  • JFritton


    Hello, I've been newly hired to head up a decent sized company's digital marketing initiatives.  Between social media campaigns, web content development, ppc management, etc. I've been a bit overwhelmed. It looks like until my team gets a bit larger we may have to outsource link building, but with the new penguin update I'm worried about choosing the wrong company and ending up with a ton of spam links that gets us nailed. Does anyone happen to have any good recommendations? Thanks!

    | JFritton
    0
  • A_Q


    Hi all, I thought it would be interesting to see if people's perceptions of widget based link building have changed. By that I mean - Do you think it's ok to give somebody a tool to use oon their website with a reference to the creator of that tool or will that count as 'manipulative or unnatural' link building? I'll start the discussion off by saying... I think this type of link building is ok and legitimate as you are merely referencing the creator of the tool whose widget you are using on your website. My only caveat would be to ensure that the anchor text is not manipulative but relevant. Looking forward to hearing what you all think about this as I'm sure many people maybe put off by doing this.

    | A_Q
    0
  • harrygardiner


    Is there any benefit to SERPs of writing content for EzineArticles anymore or is it pointless?

    | harrygardiner
    0
  • RankStealer


    Hi I think we all agree that social network sites such as pintrest/instagram/twitter are all now no follow however I believe there is benefit in having them.... So I wondered if anyone had been experimenting with commenting on blogs which had no follow attributes and if there was any benefit in terms of improving your rankings?

    | RankStealer
    0
  • harrygardiner


    PRWeb claim their press releases are great for SEO - is this true?

    | harrygardiner
    0
  • katazoom


    Trying to build as many quality links as possible. Saw a suggestion on a recent blog to join the BBB but it cost $325.00. Is it worth it?

    | katazoom
    0
  • harrygardiner


    Everyone seems to say "focus on the long tail" but how can you justify focusing on such small search volumes (often zero according to Google) especially if the site you're promoting's revenue is ad based? Also, how do you even identify the best search terms to target? What are the best tools out there? Thank you!

    | harrygardiner
    0
  • veed23


    Got destroyed by Penguin because of questionable links. I had most of the links removed and my sites have been restored for the most part  - though lower than they previously ranking for keywords. What is the best SEO strategy to move up in rank? Link Building strategy? Is there a penalty for domains that have keywords in them?

    | veed23
    0
  • Crunchii


    Been wondering for a while if Google might be using CTR of links pointing your site? Anyone run any tests or have any clues?

    | Crunchii
    0
  • ProjectLabs


    Posting articles on the MyBlogGuest article gallery can lead to several sites offering to publish your guest post on their blog. However many of these sites will accept any guest post that links out to anything from socks to hotels. Would you avoid guest posting on these sites? (if it would take very little time to do)

    | ProjectLabs
    0
  • cbielich


    I have a site where my homepage is a PR3. My main menu contains 6 links which are all PR1's. Example: Homepage, link1,link2,link3,link4,link5,link6 I have figured a way to make things easier for my users by combining 3 of those 6 links to my home page. So basically link1,link2 and link4 will now point to my homepage where it will contain the content and tools all in one. I will do the proper redirects on those links to point to my homepage again so google knows I moved them. My question is by moving 3 PR1 pages to my home page which is a PR3 will this increase my pagerank for my home page?

    | cbielich
    0
  • FreddieChatt


    Okay so we all know that: 1 Link on 10 Sites > 10 Links on 1 Site (potentially untrue with spammy links on 1 site than 10 links on high authority but that's not the point of this discussion) I've had some discussions at work I seem to be fighting a losing battle... So the questions is... which is better? 1 Link on 1 Site vs 5 Links on 1 Site (same site) We seem to operate on the form of - once we have a link from the site (in most cases blogs for product reviews / guest posts) - that's it , we move on and never talk to them again. For continued growth of links, would it be beneficial if we guest posted on some sites once a month?  Then we get a steady stream of links each month.

    | FreddieChatt
    1
  • spotya01


    We are trying to find the best service to use to syndicate our articles. There are so many services to pick from. Our articles are from 500-600 words and are well written.  Can someone pass on a referral.

    | spotya01
    0
  • Doug_Hay


    I have a client that needs a new website with better navigation, etc. The site has been up for a number of years and has backlinks that I would like to keep when building the new site in WordPress.

    | Doug_Hay
    0
  • ec9awp


    I am currently in the process of cleaning up the link profile for a website that has been hit by Penguin thanks to loads of links from free directories with exact match keyword anchor texts (about 200 root domains from total of 300 root domains). I was wondering whether it's best to remove these un-natrual keyword anchor text links altogether, or change the anchor texts to brand (domain name, domainname.com, www.domainname.com, http://www.domainname.com)? I am currently trying to remove these links but was thinking it would be quicker to get to a healthier link profile (in terms of brand/commercial anchor text split) by altering the anchor texts and not removing them. Some of these directories are the worst of the worst on the other hand. Also note that I'm only really getting about a 30% response rate from the owners of these directories. Any thoughts? Many thanks in advance.

    | ec9awp
    0
  • hstdigital


    Hi guys I have 87,636 links from one website, of which 75,189 of those link to my homepage using my website name as the anchor. Another has 29,811 links back to my website, again the majority of the links using my website name as the anchor. Is this a bad thing? Let me explain how this has happened - a company by the name of Daylife uses our RSS feed and distributes this to hundreds of their clients, which include indiatimes, usatoday, dallasnews etc, now I noticed that the majority of these websites all link back to our website with the same anchor text used several times on a single page. Attached is an example. Would this be a bad thing seen as the majority of these links have the same anchor text and link to my homepage? Looking at my GWT there is an estimated 183,373 backlinks that are all like this. Our traffic has dropped since Mr Panda hit and I am trying to find out if this could be adding to the problem. Thank you for you time links.jpg

    | hstdigital
    0
  • TheGrid


    After all of the uproar with Google's recent updates in link building penalties, I am hearing even more from the Nuns of SEO about White Hat techniques and how if you just have great original content all will be right with the world. The truth of the matter is that it is impossible to remain competitive in difficult search verticals without SOME use of link purchasing or SEO aimed link campaigns. If you simply make a great site and wait for people to link to you naturally, your client will fire you before you get link #1. It is what it is, if I'm wrong tell me how.

    | TheGrid
    4
  • ocelot


    Hi We have allocated resources to write some great content (how to's, best practice, videos) etc which will benefit customers as they will find it a useful resource. We are using this not as a sales channel but as a trust and information resource to build a community It is currently located about 2 levels deep in our website, what are the best ways of getting people to find these articles on the web? I have placed some social sharing icons at the bottom of the page to Facebook and Twitter but are there other channels because at present the only way they will find this information as if they visit our website. Do we also need to be practive and distribute this content around the web perhaps as a guest writer?  which raises duplicate content problems as it would also be on our website or is there a better approach?

    | ocelot
    0
  • webfeatseo


    http://www.getedubacklink.com/ I found this site and was curious if anybody knew if they were legit or quality links in any way. My site has thousands of legit backlinks (none paid or even built through a service) so I was interested in building a greater diversity from domain extensions and thought edu links would be good. However most edu pages I find that allow any links are SPAMMED hard and not worth my time. Thoughts

    | webfeatseo
    1
  • RankStealer


    Hi Guys Im doing a little link building and in the industry Im working in there are quite a few directories....most offer free inclusion as long as you link back to them. This process can be slow due to the number of people trying to get listed. Also most offer a "express service" whereby you can get your site reviewed and uploaded faster if you pay a nominal fee circa £15. I'm not refering to any old directories these are directories which are industry specific and related to my site, however they are not confined to the country I am in (UK) but extend world wide So that got me thinking has anyone actually done any conclusive research which suggests that either A) you will not get any benefit from being included in such a directory or B) that you get penalised if you do so or C) none of the above and there is some benefit. I have been using open site explore and I can see these sites are giving link juice to my competition (as far as I can tell ofcourse) I found a site with almost all of its back links from these types of directories ranking on the first page for a very competitive term (67% using Keyword Difficulty tool) Would be interested to hear your thoughts / experiences

    | RankStealer
    0
  • RankStealer


    Hi Guys I have been checking out a couple of my competitors and noticed that in site explorer there were sites that were passing what I would consider strong amounts of link juice for their banner adverts. I checked the anchor text which was always (Img ALT) Also the links are follow and placed on the home page too. So I wondered how google view this Im sure adverts were supposed to be no follow and if so then do you think there is a benefit from me taking one of these banner adverts to increase the level of link juice passing to my site.

    | RankStealer
    0
  • jtay123


    Hi all, this is only my second question on SEOmoz since becoming a member over three months ago so sorry if it’s a little bit basic. As small part of one of our websites promotion we have been giving really good advice on good authority blogs/forums related to our product website. One of the sites we have offered advice on is from a US website and we added a link to our guide for the problem to our UK site. In hindsight the product solution is not branded the same in the US so our bounce rate is over 90%. So the question is when is a link from a related site not worth the high percentage bounce rate?

    | jtay123
    0
  • veed23


    How do you know when your doing too much SEO? Started back on a couple of sites in which I had done very little to no Seo. Dont want to get an over-optimization penalty.

    | veed23
    0
  • Entrusteddev


    I know this is a bit of a difficult one to answer but would appreciate some opinions.

    | Entrusteddev
    0
  • absoauto


    We were penalized for a specific key phrase, I had included a link using that phrase to the targeted page in a header on another site. This resulted in hundreds of identical lincoming links using that key phrase to the page, so I'm guessing that's what did it. I've since rectified the problem but about how long do you think it will take for the penalty to be dropped? We were knocked down about 10 places.

    | absoauto
    0
  • reddogmusic


    If I have a blog at (for example) blog.mywebsite.co.uk (hosted on Wordpress), does this confer rankings to the top level domain (e.g. www.mywebsite.co.uk which we host ourselves)? Contained within the blog are many links to the main website (which is an eCommerce website) for all our key phrases, but it seemed like a good idea to keep the blog and the store separate. Alternatively, would it be better to use something like www.mywebsite.co.uk/news? Thanks! Alex

    | reddogmusic
    0
  • pasape


    Hello friends, I would like to know what link building strategies you recommend for a newly created websites? Thanks a lot!

    | pasape
    0
  • leonfrancois


    You can visit one SEO forum after the other and 50% of the folks will say 'do this' and the other half will say to do something else. It's always black hat vs white hat and then you still get the grey hat in between. So what does really work? Leon

    | leonfrancois
    0
  • ScottBaxterWW


    OK  - We are about to start the process of removing some bad / spammy links. Looking at OSE and WMT they both have different links? Some are the same but alot are different? Which tool would you pay more attention too? Or Would you merge the 2 documents together? Thanks, Scott

    | ScottBaxterWW
    0
  • InfabCorporation


    To say I'm new to SEO would be an understatement.  I am heading up marketing for a firm and they have zero web presence.  I've used Alexa.com to check out our competition and one site in particular has about 150 sites linking to it.  I dove in deeper and created a spreadsheet.  The majority of these links are sketchy, paid directory listings (or what look sketchy to me).  The confusing part is, they rank first on Google when I search for industry keywords.  Is it because of these directories?  Should I follow them or avoid them completely? I'm planning on creating content and pushing that out to reputable industry sites.  I figured getting links/mentions from these would help SEO.  Should I only target these high value sites or would submitting articles to the directories with "article" sections offer any assistance? It seems as though my SEO knowledge is limited to less-than admirable tactics, although not by choice.  I am planning to dive into paid search in the coming weeks but wanted to know of any "ground work" I could do aside from pushing content and paid search.  It seems like there are 1,000's of these paid directory sites and I find it hard to believe they will offer me a benefit...it's just the competition is on them and something is working.  Sorry this is so remedial, but I need to figure out where to go!

    | InfabCorporation
    0
  • seqal


    I work for a consultancy, and in the past most of our links have been acquired by giving away privacy statements etc for websites, including a link back in the body of the document, and making it a licensing requirement that the link be kept. We're launchinga new site.  We want this one to be whiter-than-white, and would appreciate some advice on the following options. Option 1: no links Remove the links from the documents, and don't require links for the use of the documents.  Leave a non-linking credit in the documents.  Perhaps ask nicely for links from other pages. Option 2: links on other pages Remove the links from the documents, but make it a licensing requirement that users will link to our site from another page on their site.  I appreciate that most won't, but some will. Option 3: retain the links Keep the links in the document, using domain name (with and without http and www) and business name anchor text. Option 4: script the links Use scripts to generate randomized links in the documents, so that no two are the same, but with relevant linking text for the most part. We're risk-adverse with the new site, and it will pick up some links "naturally".  We're therefore tending toward option 1, on the basis that it may well generate as many links as option 2. Which of these options would you choose?  Are there any other options we should be considering?

    | seqal
    0
  • ilyaelbert


    Do you guys think careful blog commenting is still a valuable day-to-day linkbuilding tactic? If I create a list of relevant unspammed blogs, and spend maybe 30 minutes per day commenting on 3-5 of them per day, while making sure that they're not inundated with spammy comments - is that worth my time?

    | ilyaelbert
    0

Got a burning SEO question?

Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


Start my free trial


Browse Questions

Explore more categories

  • Moz Tools

    Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

  • SEO Tactics

    Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

  • Community

    Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

  • Support

    Connect on product support and feature requests.

Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.