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
-
"gimme links" = easy to fill out profile/personal reputation links that offer a do-follow anchor text flexible link
I'm doing some SEO for small niche service sites...and aside from niche directories and some light article marketing and local search directories (yelp, etc) there really isn't a budget for content generation. I really only have a budget for profile/submission links. What are some sites where you can quite easily fill out a personal profile with an anchor text variable link that may not be THAT juicy but will stick (i.e. not a spam/fake profile type of link, but something like Linkedin). I'll start with giving away 1 www.istockphoto.com Any others that aren't obvious?
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Are you careful about linking back to sites that link to you?
Suppose that a trusted website added you to their recommended links page. Do you worry that linking back to them from a page on your site will diminish the value of the original link?
Link Building | | Charlessipe0 -
LINK BUILDING - Does it really matter if the link is not relevant?
Hi guys, I have just done a lot of link buillding and I thought I am just going to link build and I am not going to go after RELVANT links. I have property/real esate website and I have been any kind of link builidng and I have noteced some good increases in rankings.. So my questions is; Does it really matter if the link is relvant to property or real estate if I have got ranking increases? Or will it later harm my site?? Thanks Gareth
Link Building | | GAZ091 -
Looking at Page Authority of a link to our website... what Page Authority number should we use in deciding the link is junk?
What are the Page Authority ranges? 1. Excellent link 2. Moderate 3. Total junk link Of course you look at the anchor text you can use, how many links are on the site, how often it is cached. Thoughts?
Link Building | | RezStream80 -
Posting "similar" blog posts to multiple blog sites seems "shady", does it work?
I've read a lot of info here in the Q & A tonight and there was a thread that stated it's potentially a good thing to post content on multiple blog platforms such as: blogger.com posterous.com wordpress.com tumblr.com I've also been trying to figure out how to deal with my blog as a subfolder instead of a subdomain. That research in Q & A clearly indicates that Google treats subdomains basically like separate websites and links from my blog to my main website will not be as valuable if i stay the course with my blog on a subdomain short term. Given that, if the 4 blogging tools above all require the use of a subdomain, then how am I actually taking advantage of the seo value of blogger,posterous, tumblr? In my case my domains would be: steripen.blogger.com posterous.tumbler.com steripen.wordpress.com steripen.tumblr.com Just not adding up to being viable given what I read states these would be treated as new websites, not to mention I worry these posts, even slightly differentiated, would be suspect. Who am I truly benefitting by doing this? Users?
Link Building | | Timmmmy0 -
Do links to blog.domainname.com help the www.domainname.com subdomain?
Hi, Do links to pages within the blog.domainname.com subdomain help the rankings of pages within the main www.domainname.com subdomain? (where "domainname" is the same of course). Thanks.
Link Building | | geoffh0