Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    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. Technical SEO
    4. What is link Schemes?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    What is link Schemes?

    Technical SEO
    4
    4
    2812
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • KLLC
      KLLC last edited by

      Hello Friends,

      Today I am reading about link schemes on http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 there are a several ways how to avoid Google penalties and also talk about the low quality links. But I can't understand about  "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links" Is there he talked about low page rank, Alexa or something else?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • DoRM
        DoRM last edited by

        Besides just avoiding low quality links the best thing to do is only do things you would normally to increase brand awareness.  Only go for quality links that will drive traffic to your site.  They will also help increase your rankings,   Link bait is also a great way to get people to link to your site and share your content too.   Have you looked into doing some Press Releases if you have news worthy things to talk about or quality guest blogging? They are all good ways that will not get you penalized by google.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • SanketPatel
          SanketPatel last edited by

          I am totally agree with Alan.. In addition of Alan i would like to share my thoughts on "Low-quality directory or bookmark site links".  Before the google updates the directory works so most of SEO Companies built lots of categorywise & General Directory & Bookmarking sites so now in market there are lots of directory sites which are not good, in some cases it hurts also. Here is a good post on Analysis of 2,678 Directories Shows 20% Penalized/Banned by Google. Also most of directory site gives nofollow links & also directory dont gives much value in SEO. But yes we can do directory submission on such sites who have good PR & DA like yahoo directory, dmoz, etc. Same with Social Bookmarking.

          Here is a good list of Directory & Bookmarking Sites : http://www.seomoz.org/directories. I hope this list would help you.

          Hope i answered your question and if you need more help then let me know.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • AlanBleiweiss
            AlanBleiweiss last edited by

            Link schemes come in many forms these days.  Low quality directories are directories that are really just out there for people to get links for SEO value, and not really to offer high quality directory value.  Same with "bookmarking" sites.  Either they're really popular (like Reddit / StumbleUpon) or they're obviously just fake sites built for people to fake off-site SEO authority.

            Link schemes can also include other scenarios.  Like getting links from a lot of very low quality sites - or even sites that have built some authority over time but are really just there for offering SEO links within crappy content.  Or where the content on those sites is so diverse as to cause the site to not have a cohesive topical focus.

            And then there's "link wheels" - where one site links to another, and that other site links to a 3rd site, and that's the majority of links at least two of those sites have.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • 1 / 1
            • First post
              Last post

            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!

            • 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.

            • See all categories

            Related Questions

            • Corbec888

              Is link equity passed through redirect chains?

              Hi there, When redirects are passed through multiple stages e.g. https://www.google.com 301 to http://www.bing.com 301 to http://www.yahoo.com Does http://www.yahoo.com still retain all link equity from the original referring domain, and is there a limit to the redirect chain before Google starts to not pass through link equity? Cheers

              Technical SEO | | Corbec888
              1
            • UnbounceVan

              How can I stop a tracking link from being indexed while still passing link equity?

              I have a marketing campaign landing page and it uses a tracking URL to track clicks. The tracking links look something like this: http://this-is-the-origin-url.com/clkn/http/destination-url.com/ The problem is that Google is indexing these links as pages in the SERPs. Of course when they get indexed and then clicked, they show a 400 error because the /clkn/ link doesn't represent an actual page with content on it. The tracking link is set up to instantly 301 redirect to http://destination-url.com. Right now my dev team has blocked these links from crawlers by adding   Disallow: /clkn/   in the robots.txt file, however, this blocks the flow of link equity to the destination page. How can I stop these links from being indexed without blocking the flow of link equity to the destination URL?

              Technical SEO | | UnbounceVan
              0
            • shawnbeaird

              301 Redirect for multiple links

              I just relaunched my website and changed a permalink structure for several pages where only a subdirectory name changed. What 301 Redirect code do I use to redirect the following? I have dozens of these where I need to change just the directory name from "urban-living" to "urban", and want it to catch the following all in one redirect command. Here is an example of the structure that needs to change. Old 
              domain.com/urban-living (single page w/ content)
              domain.com/urban-living/tempe (single page w/ content)
              domain.com/urban-living/tempe/the-vale (single page w/ content) New 
              domain.com/urban 
              domain.com/urban/tempe 
              domain.com/urban/tempe/the-vale

              Technical SEO | | shawnbeaird
              0
            • wplodge

              How to set up internal linking with subcategories?

              I'm building a new website and am setting up internal link structure with subcategories and hoping to do so with best Seo practices in mind.  When linking to a subcategory's main page, would I make the internal link  www.xxx.com/fishing/ or www.xxx.com/fishing/index.html or does it matter?  I'm just trying to avoid duplicate content I guess, if Google saw each page as a separate page.  Any other cautions when using subdirectories in my navigation?

              Technical SEO | | wplodge
              0
            • cbarron

              Direct link vs 302 redirect

              So we have recently relaunched a site that we manage. As part of this we have changed the domain. The webdesign agency that built the new site have implemented a direct link from the old domain to the new domain. What is best practice a direct link or a 302 redirect? Thanks

              Technical SEO | | cbarron
              0
            • shawn81

              Should 301-ed links be removed from sitemap?

              In an effort to do some housekeeping on our site we are wanting to change the URL format for a couple thousand links on our site. Those links will all been 301 redirected to corresponding links in the new URL format. For example, old URL format: /tag/flowers as well as search/flowerswill be 301-ed to, new URL format: /content/flowers**Question:**Since the old links also exist in our sitemap, should we add the new links to our sitemap in addition to the old links, or replace the old links with new ones in our sitemap? Just want to make sure we don’t lose the ranking we currently have for the old links.Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

              Technical SEO | | shawn81
              1
            • JorgeUmana

              Is there a suggested limit to the amount of links on a sitemap?

              Currently, I have an error on my moz dashboard indicating there are too many links on one of my pages.  That page is the sitemap.  It was my understanding all internal pages should be linked to the sitemap. Can any mozzers help clarify the best practice here? Thanks, Clayton

              Technical SEO | | JorgeUmana
              0
            • jwdesign

              Is link cloaking bad?

              I have a couple of affiliate gaming sites and have been cloaking the links, the reason I do this is to stop have so many external links on my sites. In the robot.txt I tell the bots not to index my cloaked links. Is this bad, or doesnt it really matter? Thanks for your help.

              Technical SEO | | jwdesign
              0

            Get started with Moz Pro!

            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

            Start my free trial
            Products
            • Moz Pro
            • Moz Local
            • Moz API
            • Moz Data
            • STAT
            • Product Updates
            Moz Solutions
            • SMB Solutions
            • Agency Solutions
            • Enterprise Solutions
            • Digital Marketers
            Free SEO Tools
            • Domain Authority Checker
            • Link Explorer
            • Keyword Explorer
            • Competitive Research
            • Brand Authority Checker
            • Local Citation Checker
            • MozBar Extension
            • MozCast
            Resources
            • Blog
            • SEO Learning Center
            • Help Hub
            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
            • How-to Guides
            • Moz Academy
            • API Docs
            About Moz
            • About
            • Team
            • Careers
            • Contact
            Why Moz
            • Case Studies
            • Testimonials
            Get Involved
            • Become an Affiliate
            • MozCon
            • Webinars
            • Practical Marketer Series
            • MozPod
            Connect with us

            Contact the Help team

            Join our newsletter
            Moz logo
            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
            • Accessibility
            • Terms of Use
            • Privacy

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