Are moderated external links in a "showcase" worth having?
-
We have some e-commerce software with several dozen websites that use our technology. The websites have links to the developer and design shops that made the site as well as the site itself. All of these sites are moderated so we don't have to worry about spam.
My question is should some or all of these links be rel=nofollow? The links are definitely pointing to legit development shops but those sites aren't always strictly related to e-commerce or the keywords we're trying to rank for.
Any thoughts on how to treat these links?
-
Just to clarify, our site provides e-commerce software, we're not an e-commerce site ourselves. Also, the links don't have keywords in them so that's not so much a concern.
Still, it sounds like you're saying there's little value in linking out in this situation. Thanks for the input.
-
If I had an ecommerce site, I would not want links to developers and design shops on my pages - especially if they are keyword anchor links. It sounds like their are multiple links here and I think that is also excessive.
In my opinion, the developers and design shops should be linking TO their clients rather than trying to siphon from them.
-
Are you saying its fine for my site but the individual sites might not want them as inbound links?
-
Google isn't stupid. Credit links are common and legitimate enough that it knows about them and how to handle them. However we've noticed 2 things regarding credit links since penguin:
1. Watch the anchors
There is a world of difference in intention between a link that looks like this: Site by XYZ Developers and one that looks like this: Website Design New York. Credit links commonly appear site wide in the footer and if those links were pointing to me I'd want to make sure that they look as unlike spam as possible.
2. Don't expect them to count as much
Hard to isolate this amongst all the other changes, but we've seen drops on sites that might suggest this type of link now counts for less. Really hard to say that for certain based on our data, as there are other factors in play. However it makes sense.
Whether you keep them or not is up to you as it's really one of those borderline things. Hopefully the above will help you make an informed choice.
-
If these were my sites I would remove those links completely.
-
Sounds like you have a pretty good control on who those pages are linking to. Typically larger e-commerce stores won't add footer links to their service providers in the footers, and I know a lot of web design agencies that add the link into the template without even asking the client if it's OK or not.
Since an outbound link in the homepage would sap some of the link juice of the site, I would suggest putting it under the control of the e-commerce store owner, whether or not to include those footer links, and whether or to make them rel=nofollow.
-
If the links are to legitimate sites and the links offer value to your users, I would leave them as followed links. If you have a concern about the target site then you can change them to nofollow.
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
-
When conducting a link building strategy does it matter the country the link is from?
We are a UK business and if we have links mostly from US based blogs and websites does this penalise us. The links are from relevant websites and topics. Should we be focusing on .co.uk sites
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing1 -
If your website is mentioned on an external site does it matter the amount of people who click on the link to your site to improve your domain authority
I want to know about link building strategy and does it matter the amount of times someone clicks on link on to your site from the external site to affect your domain authority
Link Building | | SimplifyValetStorage0 -
Disavow links from legit sites but have spammy link profiles?
I'm currently doing a backlink audit for our site with a LOT of backlinks. Some of the linking sites are legitimate business websites in our industry who have linked to us for a totally legitimate reason (we have good content!). However, these businesses themselves have a spammy backlink profile—that is, the only sites linking to that site are obvious link farm sites. Here is an illustration: spammyseolinks.com; payforseo.xyz; blackhat.ru ==all link to==> legitbusiness.com ==links to==> mysite.com Should I disavow this backlink? I guess it's not really giving me much SEO worth since it surely been branded a spammy junk domain, but then again, it's a real website that we've earned a link from because we're doing stuff the right way. Is it hurting or helping me?
Link Building | | THandorf0 -
Internal Link Building and Link Juice Quality
Hi There! I manage the website for a law office that covers many geographical locations. For very specific niche content, we would prefer to create one piece of content and link to the various geographic locations where we would handle that topic instead of posting multiple variations of the same content for each specific geographical area. If we put a button on these pages that has links to each location, will that have the same "link juice" effect to the pages we're linking that linking directly in the text would? (example: the Where can we help you? button on this page : http://www.zdfirm.com/volkswagen-recall/) Thank you!
Link Building | | ZDAdmin0 -
External Followed Links
Hello all, I was wondering if anyone could help me. I have been inputting links for a few months on various different sites but it doesn't seem to be generating links on Open Site Explorer. Does anyone know a reason for this? Thanks in advance, Beth
Link Building | | cmuknbb0 -
Internal linking anchor text with automated ASP.NET link building
Hi Everyone I really need some help here, the problem I have must be one that many have. I have a simple e-commerce style website so 1 product page can in fact get 40-50 internal links to it. These links come from a mixture of: 1. The parent category pages that the product sits on (Rugged PDA) and in turn the 10 filter pages of this category page (Rugged PDA, ordered by battery size). 2. Alternative product list on other product pages, So many products link to each other as alternatives. From Google analytics we can see that visitors like to browse product to product seeing 5 alternatives on each page with titles like "Smaller", "more rugged" etc. 3. Manufactuer pages, so we have a link to each product from each manufacturer home page where we talk lots about each manufacture we resell. We also have links from images used in the website. So its a nice usable website but we're finding that Google is still telling us in Webmaster tools that it thinks some links are dubious and we're trying to find out why. We only now have 190 external links to the website, most are internal and from the website or our blog on a subdomain. The problem we think is that we generate the category and products pages all dynamically so the anchor text is looking the same. Will this potentially create issues for us? Dave
Link Building | | Raptor-crew0 -
I am getting links on people's wordpress blogs but are not showing up on the just discovered tool. Is it true that wordpress links are no-follow links that do give off any link-juice?
A blogger told me that "wordpress.com does not allow blogs to show advertisements or use links to sites that sell merchandise of any kind" is this true? Am i wasting my outreach time trying to get links from wordpress operated blogs?
Link Building | | odegi0 -
How might Google differentiate between an artificial link exchange and partners linking to each other?
Hi, All! Artificial link exchanges (contacting a vaguely connected site and requesting to exchange links to increase your PR) is, as far as I know, considered an outdated, not-so-smart technique, as Google might devalue them. Yet, for real business partners to exchange links seems to be an entirely accepted and encouraged technique. While that would be intuitive to a human who's viewing the pages. how might Google detect when two sites that link to each other are linking because they are trusted business associates (valuable) as opposed to when they are doing a link exchange (devalued)? Thanks! Aviva
Link Building | | debi_zyx0