Is it possible to create "hidden" backlinks?
-
Don't miss interpret this... I DON'T mean hidden backlinks that you would stick on a page using html/css.
What I am trying to figure out is if it's possible to create backlinks from sites that aren't visible by crawlers or SEO tools like Moz?... Does that make sense?
Another words, let's say I place a visible/genuine/follow backlink to any external website from my blog. Is there a way to keep crawlers like Moz or other SEO tools from "seeing it"?
-
My understanding is you want Google to see it but not Moz or other SEO crawlers, is that right?
I can't speak for all other crawlers, but you could accomplish this via robots.txt, although I really wouldn't recommend it because SEO crawlers use so many different user agents, you would have to exclude so many of them you might exclude important crawlers such as Bing or Google Mobile (for example).
The idea would be to allow Googlebot and other crawlers to your site, but exclude everything else. Again, I don't recommend this because it's an overly-complex solution with a high degree of error possible.
You could also do some fancy magic by detecting user-agents, but that's even more dangerous, so I'm not even going to go there
-
You can have the link as a "do follow" but no bot will notice it anyway.
-
Thank you for your response, but the link would "have to be" a follow. I guess this isn't possible. Thank you!
-
Hi,
I don't see the reason but if there is one and you need that done - there is a way.
You just create a small box iframe. Within this iframe you have an html independent page that will be a noindex, no follow and you can place the link / links there.
Those will be visibile / accessibile by the user - it looks part of the page but on view source you won't be able to find those links and since the separate HTML is not indexable / crawlable those links are not visibile for any bot.
Hope it helps - that is if I understood the question right
Cheers.
-
OHHH!! I am Sorry! I meant Not Possible.
How is it Possible that Google crawlers Crawl it and ahrefs one Don't ?
Thanks
-
So wait, are you saying that it is possible? so you could allow Google to crawl the links but not other crawlers like Moz, and other SEO tools?...
-
Hey, Whats the Point in hiding the backlinks from these crawlers ? May be you don't want to give your backlinks data to your Competitors! that's Smart Actually
Secondly, I think Its Not Possible because You Need/Want Google Crawlers to Follow them So other 3rd party crawlers will excess them.
May be Im wrong!
Thanks
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
-
Competitor Ranks Top Keywords Without Backlinks
One of my competitors is ranking very well for many different competitive keywords (1k+ searches per month). I'm trying to figure out how in the world he is ranking so well. I've signed up for MozPro and looked at his back-links. He has 1 branded site-wide back-link from a decent blog. He also has 1 contextual back-link from a decent blog. Other than these 2 back-links, the rest are garbage links unlikely to even count for anything (he has maybe 12 of these low quality back-links). My website on the other hand has more than 15 back-links from different (high quality) websites and does not rank anywhere near this competitor. This leads me to believe that either MozPro back-link reporting is inadequate or there is foul-play on the part of my competitor. As far as on-page SEO is considered, his website is far inferior. Therefore, I highly doubt this would play a role. What are some reasonable approaches I can take to better understand the cause of this discrepancy. Clearly the back-link reporting has not revealed any answers.
Competitive Research | | poke10 -
Why would a newly created site, have ranked ahead of our site for keyword that we are optimized for?
This newly created site has a DA of 1 and PA of 1, no backlinks, no optimized urls, the keyword they ranked better than us on was listed a total of 6 times on the homepage. Our PA is 29 and DA is 18 for the page that ranks for this keyword. They really copied a few elements of our site but made sure to change a few things, but also list at the bottom of their site 5 keywords that are crucial to our niche industry but they're all linking to the same page. Any ideas? It's an SEO guy running the site, we've watched them toy with adwords trying to be number 1, but not liking the price, so they are here and there with it. Mainly I don't see why they'd rank better for this keyword, we our site have prolly 500% more content that's both of quality and relevance to our customers, in the form of Pdfs, infographics, help sections, and video. Very baffled here, any advice would rock!
Competitive Research | | Deacyde1 -
Possible google sandbox issue? Organically ranking page 1 for our number 1 keyword, but page 5 sometimes 6 on google?
What are some things I can look into to figure out why google is ranking us on page 5 sometimes page 6, with some slight rank boosts to rank 36 from 48 but then falls right back. While Yahoo and Bing rank us page 1 consistently, without these big drops back. I use google search ( webmaster tools ) daily, fix 404s and make sure to fetch new content I create. Our site is within the Sandbox issue time frame, google 1st indexed the site about a year and a half ago, the site has been through various SEO service checks, and has had those issues fixed ( some bigcommerce won't allow, such as full sitewide ssl and a few other small factors ) but all the big stuff was handled or will be 100% handled after this redesign is complete. But just still seems we're stuck in the google hole again. We do use adwords, but no clear signs as to why we'd suffer such hardships with google ranking, only thing we don't have optimized in terms of on page optimization from moz is keyword in url, of which will be changing within the next month or two, as we're rolling our a new redesign with SEO 100% at the forefront, nice url paths, with keywords in their url, much more responsive site that uses less resources. But before we release this redesign, I'd like to find out what toe we stubbed of google's to give us such a ranking blackeye... We don't have that many backlinks, and I know these are a huge factor, however, building quality backlinks it's harder than walking on water at time and on the same level as spinning hay into gold. Any ideas community...
Competitive Research | | Deacyde0 -
How can you rank nr 1 for high competitive keyword with low DA and only 1 backlink?
Hi! Was wondering if anyone can explain this a bit clearer...
Competitive Research | | AleksanderOlsen
Image attatched... How is it possible to rank on Google Norway for spot nr.1 (page in English language) and spot nr.2 (page in Norwegian language) , when all you competitors have higher PA, DA and a lot more backlinks and better on-page optimization according to MOZ? Is there something I´m misunderstanding?
Just when I thought SEO started to make sense 😞 7sXH00d0 -
Effort for "moderate competition" keywords
I'm rather new to this, and while I'm getting some sense of everything I'm trying to figure out what kind of scope of work lays ahead of me. The keywords I'm looking to rank for are "moderate difficulty" -- somewhere between the 45%-55% "difficulty scale" on seomoz's keyword difficulty report. Assuming I have a number of "A-grade" (according to SEOmoz's reports) optimized pages for these keywords, how many links of a given quality level should I be looking at building up? I mean, of course, the more the better, but if I'm gunning for high DA/PA pages, am I looking at dozens here or hundreds of such links? I can imagine that any answer isn't going to come with much specificity, but if there was just an "idea" of the scale of backlinking involved here, that'd be great!
Competitive Research | | yoni450 -
Is it possible to bulk Check CMS
Hi Mozzers, Any of you know a way to bulk check which CMS a list of sites run on? Let's say I'd like to develop a plugin for a CMS (e.g. Wordpress or vBulletin). But that'd only make sense if some of the sites in the niche use this platform. And I'd like to avoid checking them manually with WASP. Thanks! Thomas
Competitive Research | | ThomasHgenhaven0 -
What precisely is "partial match" anchor text?
This page says "...'partial match' means that at least one word from the query matches the anchor text.". Does this mean that at least one word from the query matches at least one word from the anchor text, or that at least one word from the query matches the entire anchor text?
Competitive Research | | TheEspresseo0 -
Why do some websites that have hardly any backlinks, poorly optimised get placed above sites that are doing all they can with SEO?
For example take these two websites. www.rfasecurity.co.uk is a site that Iam working on and have had some success with yet snifferdogs.org.uk seems to be poorly optimised with little backlinks and still gets place higher. is it due to the key word in the domian name? The key search word is sniffer dogs New at this so any help would be appreciated regards Dave
Competitive Research | | ThePod0