External linking on a company blog
-
This has been bothering me for a long time.
Our company has a sub-domain blog that gets a respectable amount of traffic but not a lot of SER. Most of our traffic comes from social shares (although we do rank really high for a few key searches).
The blog manager is convinced that providing external links to additional resources or source material "dilutes the SEO juice" for the blog. URLs are provided, but they aren't linked.
Attempts to sway her to the idea that external links are actually Good Things have been stonewalled.
Tell me I'm right and why.
-
That's the root site - yeah - we've been disavowing a LOT of links lately.
-
I know it's quite off topic but just had a look at your site on Open Site Explorer. You have a load of anchor text to your site for the words "Viagra" and "<a class="clickable title link-pivot" title="See top linking pages that use this anchor text" data-text="penis" data-id="9619270841">penis". You might want to look into that! (The bad links that is)</a>
Assuming your site is www.amsvans.com?
-
Matt Cutts has an answer for that question.
-
It would be interesting to know whether making the external link a No Follow makes a difference or not.
In the users eyes it makes no difference if it is No Follow, whereas in Googles eyes they treat the the link in a different way, but do they treat the gesture in the same way!?
-
It sounds like your blog manager assumes the search engine algorithms have no intelligence behind them...like it's all a matter of gaming or following a prescription. Whether you're trying to preserve link equity or not, you have to consider what the end user experience is... just as Google and other search engines say they're trying to do.
As the bot crawls your page, it recognizes a URL (whether it's a link or not). Then, it asks itself, "Is it easier for the reader to copypasta a URL or to simply click on link?" The answer is always click, which is one check against you in the multitude of things search engine bots look at on your site.
Changing this one thing probably won't affect your rankings much, but it's lots and lots of little things like this that sometimes make the difference.
TL;DR. Tell your blog manager to stop making the reader experience worse.
-
Firstly I have no proof of whether or not it is good for rankings so you may want to stop reading now.
Having said that... My personal view has always been that if the link is going off to somewhere that adds extra value to what you are blogging about then it is worth linking to.
I wouldn't just put a link to the homepage of a industry relevant website for no reason.
Wouldn't the internet be an awful place if posts didn't link off to other insightful or funny points of views or videos.
If I was Google I would want to promote sharing of useful information so I think there would be a little algorithmic boost for sharing other sites.
Google says design your website for users, so I think it makes perfect sense. Why would you be punished for supplying good information?
....And for some further insightful reading see this link I just discovered!: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/5-reasons-you-should-link-out-to-others-from-your-website
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
-
Internal links: How do I find keywords that are not linked to a URL?
Hi Moz members I'd really like to place an internal link of every instance of an important keyword phrase "cycling caps" or "cycling cap" to my eComm category page
Link Building | | andystorey
https://www.prendas.co.uk/collections/headwear/cotton-caps I feel this would not only help my customers browsing my store, but I believe it will help from an SEO perspective. How can I search my site using Moz, Screaming Frog, Google etc to find every time cycling cap(s) is used but is not linked to the above URL? I can then apply the same for cycling jerseys, socks, etc Andy0 -
Spam links - what would you do?
Hello, A few months back our website was hacked which we noticed quickly and got fixed. However, there still is a lot of dodgy backlinks, linking to the spam pages. They come up in Webmaster Tools, Moz and SEM rush. According to the Moz Spam tool, a few of them have been given 7 flags which Moz suggests gives a 30% chance of being penalised by Google. The website has great rankings (position 1-3 in most targeted keywords) so I am scared of doing something that will harm the rankings, however I also aware that Google may do an update which could take these spam links into account. I have no experience of using the disavow tool but from reading up about it, it should only be used as a last resort. So my question is - what would you do?
Link Building | | N2Digital0 -
What is the process of link earning to avoid link building?
Hi All, I want process to earning links for new SEO 2014. Can anybody explain? Thanks, Akhilesh
Link Building | | dotlineseo0 -
Best Blog Post Length to get Links
Okay, kind of silly question but i am looking for some help interpreting an analysis done by John Doherty almost a year ago: http://moz.com/blog/what-kind-of-content-gets-links-in-2012 In the document he mentions the correlation that longer posts on average receive more links but the graphs were really hard to interpret (for me). Based on the data what is the correct size we should shoot for (most graphs were missing labels). Any one have any insight? Should i shoot for 300 words per post, higher, etc? Thanks! Kyle
Link Building | | kchandler0 -
When you are manually posting to blogs, how closely related does the content of the blog have to be to the website?
For instance, if the website is for a hotel, would it be acceptable to post on travel blogs?
Link Building | | msmdz0 -
Is guest posting going the way of paid blog links?
As the Penguin update continues to change the way sites do SEO, many have moved towards guest posting as a "white hat" means of getting links from legitimate related sites. Now, admittedly, the content that is being posted via guest blogging seems to be much higher than the crap that was being posted on article directories and such. You also don't get the duplicate content like you did with the spun articles and mass submissions. But, guest blogging is becoming as ubiquitous as the paid blog links (i.e payperpost, etc.). I for one, have used guest posting, although I am not 100% sold on the results. It seems that with the increase of guest blog networks, these links are becoming as easy to get as the article directory links. Doesn't that lessen the SEO value of the links? And here the question that is always pestering: If you have quality content, why would you ever place it on someone else's site? This is the meat of the discussion: Shouldn't guest blogging be limited to unique opportunities (i.e a VERY established guest blogger in your niche)? Or is it okay to post content on as many related legitimate blogs as you can? Thoughts...ideas....
Link Building | | inhouseseo0 -
Advetorial links
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.
Link Building | | Shivvyt0 -
Do image links with no alt tags pass link value?
"... an image link with no alt tag is useless to search engines..." according to a Nov 2007 seomoz blog post. Is this still the case in 2011? I ask because I'm about to obtain a banner link on a high-traffic site (chiefly for the clickthrough value) but I notice the site uses neither "title" nor "alt" tags.
Link Building | | Jeepster0