How important are links after Panda
-
I have noticed that the sites in my niche that were at the top of the SERP's are still at the top of the SERP's after panda. I have also heard people theorizing that links are no longer important, its now all about bounce rates, time on site, etc. Is there any consensus about how important links are after Panda?
thx
Paul
-
Backlinks are the foundation of the original algorithm. Check out the first paragraph in "Design Goals" section 1.3.1 in Brin's and Page's original paper on google: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html The last couple of lines point to how backlinks are what guide's google to figure out relevance to a significant degree.
However, as people have both witnessed and experienced, google's punishing specific types of links like blog networks right now and also probably taking into consideration notions like what Geoff Kenyon wrote back at the end of January before a lot of the sh*t hit the fan: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/anchor-text-distribution-avoiding-over-optimization
I think the key is to keep the ratio more heavily weighted towards the brand and the urls of the original website and definitely not having too much of one specific anchor text. However, some companies still seem to be "under google's radar" like this one I noticed recently: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.autson.com. I guess if you "make it appear natural", you can still make it under their radar. At the same time, I would HIGHLY encourage a larger proportion being more naturally built links despite the pain and time it takes.
Google's going to constantly disrupt the business though...how else can they keep their stock price going up by pumping it with all the adwords spends?
-
Links are still very important. Not quantity but quality of sites linking to you. There has been some recent talk on google's statements on anchor text and debate around whether they still consider it or how much relevancy anchor text plays. But at the end of the day links from good sites are very important.
-
I like what "Optimize and Monetize" said. Links is like Oxygen. Think of them as Website Food. That's the nature of the internet. Social signals, internet citations, activity on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and local / niche directories, yellow pages, forums etc based on the nature of your website/business, it all adds up. Panda is just trying to find and discount the effects of the "manipulations" per se. I hope that helps :). Good content, Good links - Works.
-
How important is oxygen to you?
Very important. Links still have value....Panda just created a way to discount and penalize certain types of links. Good for you that you weren't affected. Keep building strong solid manual links and you will continue to see value.
Hope this helps.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Are we confusing Google with our internal linking?
Hi all, We decided to give importance to one of our top pages as it has "keyword" in it's slug like website.com/keyword. So we internally linked even from different sub-domain pages more than homepage to rank for that "keyword". But this page didn't show up in Google results for that "keyword"; neither homepage, but our login page is ranking. We wonder why login page is ranking. Has our internal linking plan confused Google to ignore homepage to rank for that primary keyword? And generally do we need to internally link homepage more than anyother page? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Importance of Links for Local Search
**According to an article about the "no no's for local SEO" links are not very important. Here is an excerpt: "**Local SEO is very different when compared to traditional SEO. The importance of backlinks in local SEO isn’t as important. In other words, links simply don’t matter as much when it comes to local SEO. Googles’ local search algorithm treats links completely differently than its standard algorithm." How accurate is this statement? Wouldn't more links help your local pages rank better in non-local organic results such as the results outside of the new carousel?
Algorithm Updates | | pbhatt0 -
Direct Domain Name Anchor Text Spammy Links
Hello! I have a website that has been hit with around 120-150 spammy bookmarking sites which I believe are just scraping content from one another or were added by someone that was hired earlier or maybe some other action, but that really doesn't matter. My question is whether I should be worried about that many domains linking to the site in question with anchor text that is "www.domainname.com" and linking to the domain itself? I have done quite a few researches on this issue and the general conclusion is these don't help, but they don't hurt your rankings either. I wanted to hear from the SEOMoz community about it though. My opinion is Google doesn't take them seriously and we shouldn't worry about them, try to take them off and we should simply work on our content, guest posts, produce our generally great deals on our services and move on. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Njave_MCP0 -
So, useless link exchange pages still work?!
After 3 years out of SEO I thought things might have moved on, but apparently not. Bit of back link research and all the top sites in my niche have tons of reciprocal links to barely relevant sites. Do I really have to do this? I mean I thought this was so out of date, it's not much better than keyword stuffing. So, should I just forget my lofty principles asking myself 'is this of any value to my users?' and just take the medicine?
Algorithm Updates | | Cornwall0 -
Google Panda - large domain benefits
Hi, A bit of a general question, but has anyone noticed a improvement in rankings for large domains - ie well known, large sites such as Tesco, Amazon? From what I've seen, the latest Panda update seems to favour the larger sites, as opposed to smaller, niche sites. Just wondered if anyone else has noticed this too?Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Digirank0 -
Will too many [img no alt-text] links harm a link profile?
Hi everyone. I have a client who has a lot of sponsorships etc and therefore a lot of inbound image links (many of them sitewide). Unfortunately most of these don't have alt text, and [img no alt-text] links now make up over 50% of their link profile. Should I be trying to correct this and requesting updates from the people who are linking? Obviously I wouldn't want loads of keyword stuffed alt texts, but maybe I should request alt texts on the brand name or URL instead. Do you think this would make a significant difference and be worth the time it will take to contact all these webmasters? Thanks in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | QubaSEO0 -
One SERP Result, Two Different Link Destinations?
Because my vocabulary isn't up to par, it may be easier for you to skip ahead to the image I've attached. One of my web pages shows up in the Google SERP like this. It has the blue "title" link that goes to one page (URL A), and under that, there is a green "breadcrumb" link that goes to a different page (URL B). Any idea why this is happening and how it can be fixed? Thanks in advance, Benjamin FjhUX.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | 1000Bulbs0 -
How is important domain age now?
Just as topic states, how important do you think domain age is? Do you think getting old domain for the new website will do any difference? Lets say website A used to sell apples... went out of business after 5 years of business. If I would get that domain and will star selling apples again can I expect some extra boost because of the age? Cheers
Algorithm Updates | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0