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.
Is it worth getting links from .blogspot.com and .wordpress.com?
-
Our niche ecommerce site has only one thing going for it: We have numerous opportunities on a weekly basis to get reviews from "mom bloggers". We need links - our domain authority is depressing. My concern is that these "mom bloggers" tend to have blogs that end with .blogspot.com or .wordpress.com. How do I screen for "reviewers" that are worth getting links from and how can I make the most of the community we have available to us?
-
100 High DA SEO Backlinks for Link Building.
I am providing daily 100 Manually link building White Hat SEO Package to boost ranking in Google, Yahoo, Bing, and alternative search engines. I will offer each daily new link building for you, all from distinctive domains and unrepeated. Your website can receive quality backlinks on each day.
-
"So what I'm taking away is that the Root Domain DA of 95 is meaningless in this case and that I should look at Page and Sub Domain metrics such as Moz Rank, Moz Trust and Linking Domains."
Exactly!
"Assuming the latter metrics are superior to our site can I expect these links to pass "juice" and boost our organic search traffic?"
Links pass "juice" regardless if the site that's linking to you has superior metrics or not. You shouldn't pass on sites just because their metrics are lower than yours (but I understand if you'd want to prioritize those blogs with higher metrics/social impact).
Regarding the visibility and organic SEO efforts, you should aim for blogs with a high number of subscribers/followers first, and worry about the metrics later (plus, these blogs are the ones with the highest metrics most of the time).
I would even rather have a nofollow link from an influential blogger in my niche than a dofollow link from someone who hasn't written in 6 months. Reason is that, beyond the visibility and direct traffic, the first link might also generate more links in the long run from the blogger's followers and community, which would boost your organic SEO even more than in the other case.
Hope this makes sense, and have a great weekend!
-
Yes, I would go for the link. Since this is a product review, getting a relevant anchor text link is totally appropriate, but be sure to mix things up when approaching other sites to avoid being hit by Penguin.
When evaluating a link, don't worry too much about domain authority. Having a high domain authority is nice, but just because you have high domain authority doesn't mean you'll rank for your desired keywords, and just because a site has a high domain authority doesn't mean the link is valuable.
Here are some of the factors Google looks at when determining the value of a link:
- PageRank (higher is better)
- Relevance of the site to your site (relevant sites are better)
- Relevance of the content on the page (relevant content is better)
- Total number of links on the page (fewer is better)
- Anchor text of the link (relevant is better)
If a site meets a number of the criteria above, it's generally a good site to get a link from.
-
Thanks for your response. But I don't think your answer applies to our situation. These are small-time, socially active bloggers who are big fans of the company, not "link networks" (as you referred).
-
Thank you sir.
Can I get your opinion? I'm looking at a blog hosted on blogspot that has PA of 34 MR 2.52 and MT of 4.83. Right in our niche and we can request any anchor text. This lady is a fan of the business.
Get the link, pass on the link or not sure based on the info provided - will this drive our organic search effort?
Much appreciate your insight.
-
Thank you! That's seem's like a great tool.
I understand the value of visibility and direct traffic; however, I'm really interested in how these bloggers might drive our organic SEO efforts. These are bloggers with small but devoted and socially active audiences.
So what I'm taking away is that the Root Domain DA of 95 is meaningless in this case and that I should look at Page and Sub Domain metrics such as Moz Rank, Moz Trust and Linking Domains. Assuming the latter metrics are superior to our site can I expect these links to pass "juice" and boost our organic search traffic?
Appreciate your insight.
-
The thing is Wilkerson, if the only thing the site has going for it is that it can get a mommy blogger network to link to it, then you're also saying that there's nothing worthwhile about the site, its products, or its content. Let me tell you, as soon as a whole bunch of links to your site from a bunch of profiles that are also creating links to a bunch of other sites who's only links are coming from the same mommy blogger network, you're going to be staring penguin square in the eyes. If you're thinking about jumping into a link wheel or link network, think long and hard. Ever wonder why all those "mommy bloggers" work off of free, expendable websites?
-
PageRank and mozRank are good metrics to look at when evaluating a blog.
I'm not sure how wide a net you want to cast with your contest, but I wouldn't be too quick to ignore links from even relatively low PR sites. As long as the site is in the same niche, getting links from a bunch of relevant sites (especially with good anchor text) can do more for your pages' rankings than just increasing your domain authority.
-
Hey Wilkerson,
Since these bloggers are hosted on blogspot/wordpress, you can't use the Moz DA metric to screen for quality blogs like you would a normal website.
Instead, try using the subdomain mozRank, mozTrust and Linking Root Domains (you can see them in the Mozbar popup under the Subdomain column). Check the image attached to see where these are.
Even better than using the above metrics, check how popular the blog is (this includes blog comments, twitter followers, etc)! Try to think more in terms of visibility and direct traffic and less in terms of how much will the actual link help you in the search results.
Hope this helps, cheers!
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
-
Is it Okay to Nofollow all External Links
So, we all "nofollow" most of the external links or all external links to hold back the page rank. Is it correct? As per Google, only non-trusty and paid links must be nofollow. Is it all same about external links and nofollow now?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Dealing with links to your domain that the previous owner set up
Hey everyone, I rebranded my company at the end of last year from a name that was fairly unique but sounded like I cleaned headstones instead of building websites. I opted for a name that I liked, it reflected my heritage - however it also seems to be quite common. Anyway, I registered the domain name as it was available as the previous owner's company had been wound up. It's only been in the last week or two where I've managed to have a website on that domain and I've been tracking it's progress through Moz, Google & Bing Webmaster tools. Both the webmaster tools are reporting back that my site triggers 404 errors for some specific links. However, I don't have or have never used those links before. I think the previous owner might have created the links before he went bust. My question is in two parts. The first part is how do I find out what websites are linking to me with these broken URL's, and the second is will these 404'ing links affect my SEO? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mickburkesnr0 -
How does Google determine if a link is paid or not?
We are currently doing some outreach to bloggers to review our products and provide us with backlinks (preferably followed). The bloggers get to keep the products (usually about $30 worth). According to Google's link schemes, this is a no-no. But my question is, how would Google ever know if the blogger was paid or given freebies for their content? This is the "best" article I could find related to the subject: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2332787/Matt-Cutts-Shares-4-Ways-Google-Evaluates-Paid-Links The article tells us what qualifies as a paid link, but it doesn't tell us how Google identifies if links were paid or not. It also says that "loans" or okay, but "gifts" are not. How would Google know the difference? For all Google knows (maybe everything?), the blogger returned the products to us after reviewing them. Does anyone have any ideas on this? Maybe Google watches over terms like, "this is a sponsored post" or "materials provided by 'x'". Even so, I hope that wouldn't be enough to warrant a penalty.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jampaper0 -
Are link directories still effective? is there a risk?
We've contracted a traditional SEO firm, mostly for link building. As part of their plan they want to submit our site to a large list of link directories, and we're not sure if that's a good option. As far as we know, those directories have been ineffective for a long time now, and we're wondering if there is the chance of getting penalized by google. When I asked the agency their opinion about that, they gave me the following answer - Updated and optimized by us - We are partnered with these sites and control quality of these sites. Unique Class C IP address - Links from unique Referring Class C IP plays a very important role in SEO. Powered by high PR backlinks Domain Authority (DA) Score of over 20 These directories are well categorized. So they actually control those directories themselves, which we think is even worse. I'm wondering what does the Moz community think about link directory submission - is there still something to be gained there, is there any risk involved, etc. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | binpress0 -
Should I Do a Social Bookmarking Campaign and a Tier 2 Linking?
I don't see anything bad in manually creating links on different (about 50) social bookmarking services. Is this method labeled as White Hat? I was wondering if it would be fine to create Tier 2 linking (probably blog comments) for indexing of the social bookmarking links? Please share your thoughts on the topic.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zorsto0 -
Off-page SEO and link building
Hi everyone! I work for a marketing company; for one of our clients' sites, we are working with an independent SEO consultant for on-page help (it's a large site) as well as off-page SEO. Following a meeting with the consultant, I had a few red flags with his off-page practices – however, I'm not sure if I'm just inexperienced and this is just "how it works" or if we should shy away from these methods. He plans to: guest blog do press release marketing comment on blogs He does not plan to consult with us in advance regarding the content that is produced, or where it is posted. In addition, he doesn't plan on producing a report of what was posted where. When I asked about these things, he told me they haven't encountered any problems before. I'm not saying it was spam-my, but I'm more not sure if these methods are leaning in the direction of "growing out of date," or the direction of "black-hat, run away, dude." Any thoughts on this would be crazy appreciated! Thanks, Casey
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CaseyDaline0 -
Deny visitors by referrer in .htaccess to clean up spammy links?
I want to lead off by saying that I do not recommend trying this. My gut tells me that this is a bad idea, but I want to start a conversation about why. Since penguin a few weeks ago, one of the most common topics of conversation in almost every SEO/Webmaster forum is "how to remove spammy links". As Ryan Kent pointed out, it is almost impossible to remove all of these links, as these webmasters and previous link builders rarely respond. This is particularly concerning given that he also points out that Google is very adamant that ALL of these links are removed. After a handful of sleepless nights and some research, I found out that you can block traffic from specific referring sites using your.htaccess file. My thinking is that by blocking traffic from the domains with the spammy links, you could prevent Google from crawling from those sites to yours, thus indicating that you do not want to take credit for the link. I think there are two parts to the conversation... Would this work? Google would still see the link on the offending domain, but by blocking that domain are you preventing any strength or penalty associated with that domain from impacting your site? If for whatever reason this would nto work, would a tweak in the algorithm by Google to allow this practice be beneficial to both Google and the SEO community? This would certainly save those of us tasked with cleaning up previous work by shoddy link builders a lot of time and allow us to focus on what Google wants in creating high quality sites. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | highlyrelevant0
