How important is the originating country of backlinks?
-
How important is it that you gain backlinks from websites in the same country you're targeting?
Scenario: You have a website targeting users in Japan. How important is it that backlinks to your website are from Japanese websites? Do you need a majority of links from Japanese websites to rank well, or will you do OK with 25% Japanese links and 75% links from other countries?
According to Majestic, sites for popular Japanese brands like tsutaya.co.jp and seiyu.co.jp get more links from US sites than from Japanese sites.
-
I agree with Tom. Backlinks can be from anywhere as long as they don't appear to be blatant spam. I tend to agree that a backlink serves a greater purpose than just link juice and may actually send relevant traffic and business to your company. I would try to target as many local links as possible, but branching out to a global mindset won't hurt at all.
-
It's by no means essential.
I've worked on a number of international sites and you quickly realise that while a website is setup with a geographical TLD and is fully served for that language's audience, the server is located in the US - where so much hosting is. Regardless, this has not stopped the site's ability to rank.
Similarly, evidence of links from a different country working can unfortunately be found in places like SAPE - the russian link network. I've seen countless of websites rank #1, #2 with links from these websites in Russia, Uzbekistan and so on - Google wouldn't be targeting these links if they didn't work.
However, my mindset has always been to acquire links from places that are going to send the most targeted and relevant traffic to your site. In the scenario you've given, this would most likely mean trying to earn as many Japanese backlinks as possible. Links from other places may increase organic visibility, but more often than not referring traffic from links you've earned can be far more qualified and convert more often - so I would aim to get them via links from the country.
Just my £0.02
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
-
Website Getting Huge no. of backlink?
Hey support teams suddenly, my website Portable Power Station getting a Huge no of backlinks with same domain, but i did not created, is it look spamming or not, What is impact on ranking in Google SERP, does it increase my website Spam Score?
Link Building | | ali-ahmed20 -
Give a Solution my DA is not increasing and not index my backlinks in MOZ??
DA of my website online is no longer increasing. It seems like Moz is not indexing my backlinks. Multiple backlinks of my website online BasketballShoes are now not indexing in Moz that is why DA is not increasing.
Link Building | | fbowable
Backlinks of my site have indexed in both Ahref and semrush each now not showing in Moz. DR has elevated to 51 however DA is still 7. If all and sundry have the solution please let me know.0 -
Is there such a thing as buying white hat backlinks? (example)
Hi, would you guys recommend using a backlink service like this? https://www.peopleperhour.com/hourlie/gain-30-links-from-30-top-newspaper-sites-in-the-uk/396519Or is this the kind of thing that leads to being penalised?Over the years, I've always been told this is black hat and dodgy. Is that always the case?
Link Building | | landport0 -
Get backlinks to Http or Https?
Hello, My website using SSL . My root domain : example.com is permanent 301 redirect to https://example.com via .htaaccess Question : 1 - If i want get backlinks from other websites is backlinks should point my https domain or non https domain. Is there any difference for ranking? 2 - if someone give backlinks to my non https domain Is there any value for https for ranking? 3 - Before i begin use SSL , backlinks in the past which i get for ** Http**, Is there a value for https ? Thank you, Sorry for bad English
Link Building | | livecam0 -
Should I worry about backlinks like this?
So I am going through my backlink profile and of course those random backlinks popup from spammy type sites like this which are useless. Should I worry about links that come from sites like these? http://ppfinder.com/camy/shelvy
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Backlinks from the Same Domain (But Different Pages)
Wayyy back when (in the days of yore) Mr Cutts spelled out in a video that page rank is distributed equally between the external links on the page. If there are two links on a page, each gets passed 50% of the available page rank etc. (Perhaps an oversimplification but bear with me). As a result of this, the company I worked for at the time (this was the dark ages when sidebar homepage links were in vogue) decreed that we would only ever approach a site about a link for a client once, as additional links had little extra SEO Value. Now you could argue that if there are 5 external links, each acquiring 20% of the power, and your site has 2 of those, you are getting 40% of the power, but lets forget the basic math for a minute. I have scoured the web and Mr Cutts' videos and I cannot find the answer to my question: If my site (Site A) has a backlink from SiteB Page 1, and a backlink from SiteB page 2 - does this count as two separate links in the eyes of Google? If the SAME site links out to my site, linking to different pages in different posts, does this give me more SEO benefit? Thanks for your time!
Link Building | | Turkey0 -
Gaining a backlink from Webopedia?
We have a client that wants to gain a back link from Webopedia. We have found a very relevent definition entry and there is an additional resources section that contains links to their competitors. Webopedia is owned/operated by Quinn St. and I have reached out to them to see if this is a posibility, but haven't heard back. Any experience in trying to acquire a link from this property? Thanks!
Link Building | | austinvoice0 -
Is the frontpage/deeplinking ratio of backlinks an important ranking factor?
Hi, i am asking me since a while, if the relation of the amount of frontpage backlinks divided through the amount of deeplinks pointing to a domain is an important ranking factor? In this area, i am not so much looking in the total numbers of backlinks, but more at the number of linking root domains. Do you have explore the ratio of frontpage/deeplinking as ranking factor reqarding the 100% of external backlinks? So for example, what do you consider better, asuming all root linking domains in theory are equal, for the SERP of the main keyword for which the frontpage is running on Google. Case A Frontpage = 80 Linking Domains
Link Building | | Braumueller
Subpages = 20 Linking Domains 80 / 20 = 4 / 1 (4 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages) Case B Frontpage = 90 Linking Domains
Subpages = 10 Linking Domains 90 / 10 = 9 / 1 (9 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages) Case C Frontpage = 95 Linking Domains
Subpages = 5 Linking Domains 95 / 5 = 19 / 1 (19 times more frontpage linking domains than deep linking domains to subpages) Greetings from Hamburg,
http://www.suchmaschinen-experte.de0