'Stealing' link juice from 404's
-
As you all know, it's valuable but hard to get competitors to link to your website. I'm wondering if the following could work:
Sometimes I spot that a competitor is linking to a certain external page, but he made a typo in the URL (e.g. the competitor meant to link to awesomeglobes.com/info-page/ but the link says aewsomeglobes.com/info-page/).
Could I then register the typo domain and 301 it to my own domain (i.e. aewsomeglobes.com/info-page/ to mydomain.com/info-page/) and collect the link juice? Does it also work if the link is a root domain?
-
Thank you guys for your answers!
I realize that other strategies are more effective and less 'gray', but I was just wondering if it could work in theory. I'm not planning on buying hunderds of broken typo domains, but I figured that a link from a direct competitor could be pretty valuable. But if 301's lose juice like Gareth said, one link might not be even worth it.
@Takeshi; Thanks for suggesting Xenu, I'll check it out!
-
Broken link building is a GREAT strategy for building links. I've used the tactic on a number of my own sites and seen great results. It's a quick, easy, and cheap way of getting links from relevant sites, even your competitors!
Another way to do it is to go into archive.org and re-create the content that was originally on the 404'd page. This is if the page has a lot of other links going to it, and you want to build out a secondary site instead 301ing to your main. Then you can link the secondary site to your main, or use it however you want.
You can also do traditional white hat broken link building and use the broken link as a way to start a conversation with a webmaster, and get them to link to you.
You can find tons of broken links by looking for links pages on your niche, or running Xenu link sleuth and similar tools on pretty much any large site that's been around for a few years.
Bottom line:
Domain name registration = $10/year
A link from the homepage of a direct competitor = PRICELESS!
-
Hi Roel,
Personally, I wouldn't bother with this kind of strategy. First you have to purchase the domain, then pay for hosting the domain and all for what? Some extra link juice?
People get too obsessed with gaining link juice to increase their own PR and they forget the main purpose to creating links. Not only will the links (if they are good quality) help you in the SERPs, they can also direct valuable traffic to your site that could potentially create sales or conversions. How valuable is a link from an unrelated typo to your business really worth?
There is also the possibility that the typo link won't last long. Either the webmaster realises the error and fixes or removes the link, or the webmaster of the non-typo site notices the typo and asks for it to be changed. You are then left with a useless domain.
My advice, just focus on building good quality links.
Adam.
-
Definitely NOT worth the effort!! 301 redirects have lost a lot of power over the years. I've had clients in the past buy hundreds of sites with PR and redirect them all (not from my advice), and it still did not get them to where they wanted to be.
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
-
Penguin: Is there a "safe threshold" for commercial links?
Hello everyone, Here I am with a question about Penguin. I am asking to all Penguin experts on these forums to help me understand if there is a "safe" threshold of unnatural links under which we can have peace of mind. I really have no idea about that, I am not an expert on Penguin nor an expert of unnatural back link profiles. I have a website with about 84% natural links and 16% affiliate/commercial links. Should I be concerned about possibly being penalized by an upcoming Penguin update? So far, I have never been hit by any previous Penguin released, but... just in case, you experts, do you know what's the "threshold" of unnatural links that shouldn't be exceeded? Or, in your experience, what's the classic threshold over which Google can penalize a website for unnatural back link profile? Thank you in advance to anyone helping me on this research!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | fablau0 -
Submitting url to link directories seen as un-natural link building?
Hi I have been a lurker for a long time, so I finally took the step to make my 1st post, and will hopefully start giving back more in the future since I have gained invaluable info from this great site Background I hired a new freelancer on our team of SEO consultants ("specialists") During the course a month he (the new consultant) submitted our website to numerous link directories (he assured me this is good), today I received the report of the work he had been doing for the past 4-weeks. I opened the report and I was furious and wanted to sack him there and then The Problem / My Question He had submitted our website to 150 directories with various levels of page rank, ranging from 7-1. Most of the directories are totally irrelevant to our niche (we are in the catering business) and he had gone and submitted the site to directories such as "finance busters", "questfinder" etc For all 150 submissions he used: exactly the same url exactly the same title exactly the same description exactly the same keywords My Concern Am I right to be worried about this? Or am I completely wrong and may this actually have an effect (even if none)? The way I see it is that Google is seeing 150 duplicate links coming from irrelevant directories all within a months time, which will trigger a red flag and possibly do major damage to my site, which has always been strictly white hat and been doing pretty well. p.s does link directory submissions even count these days anyway? Thanks for reading and advice very much welcome
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | timthetanker0 -
Is there any reason to Nofollow Internal Links or XML Sitemap?
I am viewing a new client's site and they have the following nofollow(S) on their site homepage. Is there a reason for this? Also, they people who originally built their site have a footer link on every page to their company (I guess to promote their work). They didn't "nofollow" that link lol... What are the thoughts on footer links? About Us Privacy Policy Customer Service Shipping & Returns Blog Contact Us Site Map Thanks James Chronicle
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Competitor outranking you with link spam. What would be your next steps?
FYI: I've already searched the forums for previous posts on this topic and although some are helpful, they don't tend to have many responses, so I'm posting this again in the hope of more interaction from the community 😉
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | adamlcasey
So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you? We have been ranking in position 1 for a major keyword in our space for the past 18 months. Today I logged into my Moz account and to keyword rankings to find that we have dropped to 2nd. So I placed the competitors website; who's now in 1st position, into OSE and looked under the "Just Discovered" tab. There are 258 newly discovered links, 95% of which use keywords in the anchor text!
So I reviewed the rankings for all of these other keywords being targeted and sure enough they are now dominating the top 1-3 spots for most of them. (some of which we are also attempting to rank for and have subsequently been pushed down the rankings) Their links are made up of: Forum and blog comments - always using anchor text in the links Article's posted on web 2.0 sites (Squidoo, Pen.io, Tumblr, etc) Profile page links Low quality Press Release sites Classified ad sites Bookmarking sites Article Marketing sites Our competitors sell safety solutions into the B2B market yet the topics of some of the sites where these links appear include: t-shirts sports news online marketing anti aging law christian guitars computers juke boxes Of the articles that I quickly scanned, it was clear they had been spun as they didn't read well/make sense in places. So my conclusion is that they have decided to work with a person (can't bring myself to call them an seo company) who have provided them with a typical automated link building campaign using out dated, poor seo practices that are now classified as link spam. No doubt distributed using an automated link publishing application loaded with the keyword rich anchor text links and published across any site that will take them. As far as I was aware, all of the types of links we're supposed to have be penalised by Google's Penguin & Panda updates and yet it seems they are working for them! So what steps would you take next?0 -
Disavow - Broken links
I have a client who dealt with an SEO that created not great links for their site. http://www.golfamigos.co.uk/ When I drilled down in opensiteexplorer there are quite a few links where the sites do not exist anymore - so I thought I could test out Disavow out on them .. maybe just about 6 - then we are building good quality links to try and tackle this problem with a more positive approach. I just wondered what the consensus was?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | lauratagdigital0 -
Infographic submission sites potentially offering paid links....
Good Morning/Afternoon fellow Mozzers, I recently created an infographic and am now looking to get it distributed via as many publications as possible. I discovered some great sites with collections of infographics.However I have discovered a multitude of sites offering to review and feature the infographic, or "express" submissions so the graphic features faster for a price..... links below. http://www.amazinginfographics.com/submit-infographics/ http://infographicjournal.com/submit-infographics/ 2 questions 1. Is this considered as buying links? My instincts say Yes. 2. Some sites offer mix of free and "express" paid submissions. If the answer to Q.1 is yes, should I avoid them all together even if my graphic gets picked up free? Thanks in advance for the feedback.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobertChapman0 -
Question #1 - My Cherry's Popped!
I recently acquired rights to a URL that is one of our keywords. Instead of developing a landing page with that URL and then only linking it back to the company root, I was thinking about adding a link within the company's global nav that pushes to this new URL (and new page content of course). Are there any Pros or Cons to doing it that way? Thank you so much!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GladdySEO0 -
Why Proved Spammers are on 1st Google SERP's Results
This question is related exclusively to few proved spammers who have gained 1st Google search results for specific terms in the Greek market, targeting Greek audience. Why he looks spammer and very suspicious? For instance, the site epipla-sofa.gr, sofa.gr, fasthosting.gr and greekinternetmarketing.com look suspicious regarding their building link activities: 1. suspicious spiky link growth 2. several links from unrelated content (unrelated blog posts forom other markets, paid links, hidden links) 3. excessive amount of suspicious link placements (forum profiles, blog posts, footer and sidebar links) 4. Greek anchor text with the keyword within articles written in foreign languages (total spam) 5. Unnatural anchor text distribution (too many repetitions) So the main question is: Why Google is unable to recognize/trace some of these (or even all) obvious spamming tactics and still these spammy sites as shwon below reside on the 1st Google.gr SERPs. Examples of spam sites according to their link building history: www.greekinternetmarketing.com www.epipla-sofa.gr www.fasthosting.gr www.sofa.gr All their links look very similar. They use probably software to build links, or even hack authority sites and leave hidden links (really dont know how they could do that). Could you please explain or share similar issues? Have you ever found any similar cases in your industry, and how did you tackle it? We would appreciate your immediate attention to this matter. Regards, George
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Clickwisegr0