If our link profile is too "blog link" heavy, will that be all that bad?
-
We own a site that lends itself extremely well to getting boat loads of links, only down side is that those on the boat are all bloggers.
We are selling a product that retails for $6.89 per unit. They are for women. Our target market is any woman/girl who is between 14 and 50. Even better, our cost per unit is only about $0.40. So what we've been doing is sending them out by the hundreds to legit fashion blogs all the way down to blogspot mommy bloggers and the reviews have poured in, literally all of them positive.
Moral of the story, we have a good product, and no shortage of bloggers that would be willing to write us up a legit, human written (by a red-blooded American none-the-less) on almost exclusively legit blogs. We're not trying to manipulate what they say, how they link to us, what anchor text they use or anything. We're just sending them product, asking that they do a review and give us a link and that's it.
Our worry is that given the nature of the site and the product offering, it's going to be easy to get these legit blog links, but more difficult to get links that "aren't on blogs".
Is this going to hurt us, or will Big Google be kind and realize this isn't shady manipulation. It's legit part of our ongoing effort to get the word out.
Further evidence that our campaign isn't to manipulate (although we all know we're in it for the links) is that so far 75% of our sales have been driven by these reviews. A few of the bigger sites that have done reviews have each directly resulted in 10+ sales from that single review.
So what are all ya'll's thoughts? I suspect we'll be OK, but wanted some others to provide their views.
-
Good stuff--sounds like you're on the right track then, all around.
-
As I said, we're only approaching, legit blogs, mommy or otherwise. So that isn't a worry. I was just worried that the bulk of our links are going to end up being blog reviews. And I'm also not worried about the passing of strength in theory, because in the end it's really more of an "ad campaign" than anything else.
I'd say around 1/3 of the reviews done so far just happen to be blogspot blogs, but that's just because they were quicker to respond. When the dust settles, 70% will be from unique domains, while about 30% will in fact be blogspot blogs. But that's the nature of the beast. Mommies love free blogs.
-
While it doesn't matter whether the linking sites are blogs, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of:
- if tons of them are at the same root domain (e.g. *.blogspot.com), you're not getting as much link power as if they're from different root domains
- some mommy bloggers can be really, really spammy....if you're getting lots of links from sites where the blogger is clearly getting paid to write "fluff" articles to link to car insurance, viagra, online poker, mortgage refy, replica watches, etc., you may end up with a suspicious-looking link profile and that could result in a manual penalty
-
So it turns out, we aren't in fact "requesting" the link. At the bottom of the email we put a "relevant" links section that includes a link to our home page, our "product application" page which shows them how to apply the product, as well as links to the product page of the items we sent them. We make no mention of "requesting" the link formally, so sounds like we're all good. And thus far 100% of those that have actually done the reviews have provided links and I've been surprised at the anchor text some of them have used. It has worked out very well so far for us, and the industry is very competitive.
Thanks for the 2nd thoughts. It's what I thought myself but it's always nice to get confirmation from others.
-
Oh you'll be fine. Google isn't necessarily going to differentiate a blog page versus just a web page. To the Google bots they see an HTML page and that's it that's all. If the sites themselves are relevant, the anchor text isn't all the same keyword, and the links aren't appearing 1,000 at a time you will be just fine.
Basically if your links come naturally then you're good. And this is a pretty natural way of gaining them. Some will say that sending out free product in hopes of a link is potentially against webmaster guidelines but I disagree with that. The fact of the matter is you are gaining sales from these reviews and that's all that really matters. So good job! Sounds like you're kickin butt, keep it up!
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
-
What is the feeliing of "Here's where our site can help" text links used for conversions?
If you have an ecommerce site that is using editorial content on topics related to the site's business model to build organic traffic and draw visitors who might be interested in using the site's services eventually, what is the SEO (page ranking) impact -- as well as the impact on the visitors' perceptions about the reliability of the information on the site -- of using phrases like "Here is where [our site] can help you." in nearly every article. Note: the "our site" text would be linked in each case as a conversion point to one of the site's services pages to get visitors to move from content pages on a site to the sales pages on the site. Will this have an impact on page rankings? Does it dilute the page's relevance to search engines? Will the content look less authoritative because of the prevalence of these types of links? What about the same conversion links without the "we can help" text - i.e., more natural-sounding links that stem from the flow of the article but can lead interested visitors deeper into the ecommerce section of the site?
Algorithm Updates | | Will-McDermott0 -
What happens if we remove all the links to internal pages from our homepage?
Hi Moz community, We wanna give a try by removing all the links from homepage to internal pages and keep just a free trial button. Will this impact our SEO anyway? We have nearly 15 important internal pages at 2nd and 3rd hierarchy level. They may drop in rankings but we want to risk for few days to understand how it works. Your opinion please! Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Website's server IP address is redirected to blog by mistake; does Google responds?
Hi all, Our website's server IP address is set to be redirected to our blog by mistake and it stayed same for months. Is there any way Google recognises it and how it responds if so? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Do the external links at footer menu take away PR or Linkjuice?
Hi all, We have some external links on our footer menu. I'm just trying to figure out whether these take away pagerank. What if they are follow or nofollow? How fair to have DMCA badge with link at footer? Will this hurts? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Canonical from NOINDEX,FOLLOW pages - Bad idea?
Hi, We have an extensive online shop in Magento - to ensure that some of the pages with query strings are not indexed, we implemented a conditional NOINDEX,FOLLOW so that it will stop indexing any pages that have querystrings on it - We do need to use Canonical also - for other reasons - so my question is: If you have a page that is NOINDEX,FOLLOW and it has a rel canonical pointing to original, would it transfer that NOINDEX,FOLLOW to the main original page causing it problems? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | bjs20100 -
Does having a few URLs pointing to another url via 301 "create" duplicate content?
Hello! I have a few URLs all related to the same business sector. Can I point them all at my home domain or should I point them to different relevant content within it? Ioan
Algorithm Updates | | IoanSaid1 -
Google is really NOT SAYING IN "HOW SEARCH WORKS” ?
Hi All SEOmoz members and team, As I was reading this, is it true that Google does this . Simply, I don't think so, I haven't experienced any of such what is being talked [http://www.fairsearch.org/search-manipulation/what-google-isnt-saying-in-how-search-works/ C](http://www.fairsearch.org/search-manipulation/what-google-isnt-saying-in-how-search-works/ "http://www.fairsearch.org/search-manipulation/what-google-isnt-saying-in-how-search-works/")ome on, let us discuss the real thing about Google. Teginder Ravi
Algorithm Updates | | Futura0 -
How to Link a Network of Sites w/o Penguin Penalties (header links)
I work for a network of sites that offer up country exclusive content. The content for the US will be different than Canada, Australia, Uk, etc.… but with the same subjects. Now to make navigation easy we have included in the header of every page a drop down that has links to the other countries, like what most of you do with facebook/twitter buttons. Now every page on every site has the same link, with the same anchor text. Example: Penguins in Canada Penguins in Australia Penguins in the USA Because every page of every site has the same links (it's in the header) the "links containing this anchor text" ratio is through the roof in Open Site Explorer. Do you think this would be a reason for penguin penalization? If you think this would hurt you, what would you suggest? no follow links? Remove the links entirely and create a single page of links? other suggestions?
Algorithm Updates | | BeTheBoss0