How Important is Domain Authority in Back-Link Audit
-
First off I just want to say thanks Penguin! Now I get to start the joyous experience doing a back-link audit, and removing all the negative links. Also I now have to be on constant alert for Black SEO tactics targeted at my domain due to the cut throat business I am in. I think it can only be a matter of time before Google says all backlinks do not matter. Unfortunately, I need rank now!!
So I have a couple of questions:
First how important is domain rank in a back-link audit? Should I remove myself from indexes with low domain rank, and leave ones with high? Should I remove myself from as many indexes as possible? What about obvious paid blog posts that have high domain rank? Do you leave those? What is considered a low Domain Rank for back-links, under 35 - 40?
Second, what is a good success rate for a back link audit. How can you measure improvement, other than waiting for your PR or SERP to go up?
Third, in some situations it looks like back-links are legitimate, but they all point to my home page. Is it worth pursuing for example asking these people to link to the specific product they are referring to for example children picnic tables instead of just our home page?
And, lastly what legal rights do I have to get back-links removed? Is it only on sites that copy my content that I have copy written? Is it possible to prevent Google from counting these back-links through an .htaccess file?
Thanks in advance for all of the help. I hope to take what I learn and put it into a guide of some capacity as I am sure many people are going through this same situation at the moment.
-
First how important is domain rank in a back-link audit? Should I remove myself from indexes with low domain rank, and leave ones with high? Should I remove myself from as many indexes as possible? What about obvious paid blog posts that have high domain rank? Do you leave those? What is considered a low Domain Rank for back-links, under 35 - 40?
This is a pretty open-ended question. Instead of judging your back links by domain authority, ask yourself about the nature of the link and the quality of the site. You should consider removing links from "obvious paid blog posts" regardless of domain authority.
Domain authority should not be viewed/used in a vacuum. In fact, if you're going to limit yourself to one metric, I might suggest mozTrust (although I wouldn't recommend relying solely on that either).
_Second, what is a good success rate for a back link audit. How can you measure improvement, other than waiting for your PR or SERP to go up? _
I suppose success should be measured in your ability to achieve your desired result. If you're truly facing a penalty situation, you should spend some time doing research before you begin to arbitrarily remove links. You might start here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/whiteboard-on-googles-penguin-update
In many instances, a perceived penguin penalty wasn't actually a penguin penalty. If you truly are facing this type of penalty, you may need to clean up your profile and submit a reconsideration request. Again, before you start removing links and submitting reconsideration requests, read up on this subject.
_Third, in some situations it looks like back-links are legitimate, but they all point to my home page. Is it worth pursuing for example asking these people to link to the specific product they are referring to for example children picnic tables instead of just our home page? _
Yes.
And, lastly what legal rights do I have to get back-links removed?
This is not intended, and should not be construed as legal advice. That being said, in most cases, it's not an issue of rights as much as it is an issue of practicality. Depending on how you're links were acquired, and from where they were acquired, it might be difficult enough to get a hold of the site owner, let alone try to take some sort of legal action to have links removed.
Is it possible to prevent Google from counting these back-links through an .htaccess file?
Not that I'm aware.
Best of luck!
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
-
Link conundrum - losing nav/footer links in mobile view
Hi Moz folks! I'm currently moving a site from being hosted on www. and m. separately to a responsive single URL. The problem is, the desktop version currently has links to important landing pages in the footer (about 60) and that's not something we want to replicate on mobile (mainly because it will look pretty awful.) There is no navigation menu because the key to the homepage is to convert users to subscription so any distraction reduces conversion rate. The footer links will continue to exist on the desktop view but, since Google's mobile-first index, presumably we lose these important homepage links to our most important pages. So, my questions: Do you think there is any SEO value in the desktop footer links? Do you have any suggestions about how best to include these 60-odd links in a way that works for mobile? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d_foley0 -
Is there any ratio of dofollow and nofollow in back-links profile?
Hi, Is there any ratio between dofollow and nofollow back-links of a website? Do a website really need some nofollow back-links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Link Audit - Sponsor/Partners Images Links
Hi everyone, 1. I'm conducting a link audit and read that if you are a sponsor or partner of a company, links should be nofollowed. I always no follow them if they are money keywords, but branded I leave alone. is that a good strategy? Or do i nofollow my brand name as well? 2. What if I'm a sponsor and have my company logo on their website that links to my website? How would i know if that link should be nofollowed? a. Does it depend on the "alt" of the image? b. Does it depend on the landing page of the link of the image? c. Do i just no follow image links from sponsor pages and partner pages as a whole? Please keep in mind that I'm sponsoring websites that are relevant to my niche. PLEASE HELP!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Shawn1240 -
Site wide links - should they be nofollow or followed links
Hi We have a retail site and a blog that goes along with the site. The blog is very popular and the MD wanted a link from the blog back to the main retail site. However as this is a site wide link on the blog, am I right in thinking this really should be no follow link. The link is at the top of every page. Thanks in advance for any help
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday0 -
Are links that are disavowed with Google Webmaster Tools removed from the Google Webmaster Profile for the domain?
Hi, Two part question - First, are links that you disavow using google webmaster tools ever removed from the webmaster tools account profile ? Second, when you upload a file to disavow links they ask if you'd like to replace the previously uploaded file. Does that mean if you don't replace the file with a new file that contains the previously uploaded urls those urls are no longer considered disavowed? So, should we download the previous disavow file first then append the new disavow urls to the file before uploading or should we just upload a new file that contains only the new disavow urls? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bgs0 -
Do links to PDF's on my site pass "link juice"?
Hi, I have recently started a project on one of my sites, working with a branch of the U.S. government, where I will be hosting and publishing some of their PDF documents for free for people to use. The great SEO side of this is that they link to my site. The thing is, they are linking directly to the PDF files themselves, not the page with the link to the PDF files. So my question is, does that give me any SEO benefit? While the PDF is hosted on my site, there are no links in it that would allow a spider to start from the PDF and crawl the rest of my site. So do I get any benefit from these great links? If not, does anybody have any suggestions on how I could get credit for them. Keep in mind that editing the PDF's are not allowed by the government. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rayvensoft0 -
Where does link authority get passed to a stand alone landing page
Hi All, We are currently building a landing page that contains a bunch of funny top 10's, some that aren’t suitable for all customers, it can only be accessed from a PR source or recipient of one of our emails. The question I have is; where will the authority gained from people linking to this page go? Would it be passed to the home page, if there’s a link to it? Or would you recommend a way to control it? Any insight welcome. Cheers Neal
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Exclaimer-2868850