GWT shows 38 external links from 8 domains to this PDF - But it shows no links and no authority in OSE
-
Hi All,
I found one other discussion about the subject of PDFs and passing of PageRank here: http://moz.com/community/q/will-a-pdf-pass-pagerank But this thread didn't answer my question so am posting it here.
This PDF: http://www.ccisolutions.com/jsp/pdf/YAM-EMX_SERIES.PDF is reported by GWT to have 38 links coming from 8 unique domains. I checked the domains and some of them are high-quality relevant sites. Here's the list:
Domains and Number of Links
prodiscjockeyequipment.com 9
decaturilmetalbuildings.com 9
timberlinesteelbuildings.com 6
jaymixer.com 4
panelsteelbuilding.com 4
steelbuildingsguide.net 3
freedocumentsearch.com 2
freedocument.net 1However, when I plug the URL for this PDF into OSE, it reports no links and a Page Authority if only "1". This is not a new page. This is a really old page.
In addition to that, when I check the PageRank of this URL, the PageRank is "nil" - not even "0" - I'm currently working on adding links back to our main site from within our PDFs, but I'm not sure how worthwhile this is if the PDFs aren't being allocated any authority from the pages already linking to them. Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Thanks all!
-
Hi Dana,
I'm inclined to think that this is a problem with how the tools process links to and from PDFs rather than the passing of PageRank through PDFs itself as well, although I am not sure. I would certainly not say no to a link to or from a great PDF if that was the only option, although I have also actively encouraged clients to re-publish their quality content housed in PDF format as HTML and redirect the PDF file to the new source. We're just a lot more sure about how authority passes through HTML files.
-
Very interesting Travis. I hadn't even thought to take a look at some competitor's pdfs to see what they are looking like in some of the same tools. Yes, this is something we need to keep testing to see if we can figure out if going through the trouble of inserting links back to our domain is a worthwhile project.
-
That's interesting, but how are the buildings sites relevant? None of them seem to get much traffic over the last couple of years either. The free docs sites appear to have an appreciable amount of estimated traffic, but what of the next Panda update?
Now, for the thought. I checked Sony.com for PDF files via operator. The tenth result was this. It had a Moz PA of 35. The rest were 1s. I couldn't get any backlink information from Majestic or Ahrefs. So, it appears all of our tools are dreadfully broken in this scenario. The best thing to do is more testing.
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
-
Spam Score 8/17 with no inbound links. Any hints ?
Hi everyone, One of my client's website has a 8/17 Spam Score. (Domain Authority 18) Thing is, he has 0 inbound links (using Open site explorer) but he has 5 referring domains (when using Majestic). No error messages whatsoever in his Search Console. My questions are : what could explain that 8 Spam Score ? what can I do to lower that spam score (except disavow links in GWT) ? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | julienraby0 -
Can I redirect a link even if the link is still on the site
Hi Folks, I've got a client who has a duplicate content because they actually create duplicate content and store the same piece of content in 2 different places. When they generate this duplicate content, it creates a 2nd link on the site going to the duplicate content. Now they want the 2nd link to always redirect to the first link, but for architecture reasons, they can't remove the 2nd link from the site navigation. We can't use rel-canonical because they don't want visitors going to that 2nd page. Here is my question: Are there any adverse SEO implications to maintaining a link on a site that always redirects to a different page? I've already gone down the road of "don't deliberately create duplicate content" with the client. They've heard me, but won't change. So, what are your thoughts? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Rock330 -
Strange problem with basic html anchor tag linking to my domain
I have some old valuable followed links from high ranking domains and I noticed from moz reports they are reporting 404.Visually they looked fne but when I clicked on those they indeed were generating 404. When I researched further they are defined as My domain.com Notice there is extra space between "/" and the closing quote. It turns out it is sending "www.mydomain.com/ " to browsers. Any ideas How to solve this? If I should put a perm redirect in apache, how do I deal with these "%C2%A0" characters. It seems the issue is happening at more than one remote domain.
Technical SEO | | Maayboli0 -
Ignore these external links reported in GWT?
Taking a long, Ace-Ventura-like breath here. This question is loaded. Here we go: No manual actions reported against my client's site in GWT HOWEVER, a link: operator search for external links to my client's website shows NO links in results. That seems like a very bad omen to me. OSE shows 13 linking domains, but not the one that's listed in the next bullet point. Issue: In Google Webmaster Tools, I noticed 1,000+ external links to my client's website all coming from riddim-donmagazine.com (there are a small handful of other domains listed, but this one stuck out for the large quantity of links coming from this domain) Those external links all point to two URLs on my client's website. I have no knowledge of any campaigns run by client that would use this other domain (or any schemes for that matter) It appears that this website riddim-donmagazine.com has been suspended by hostgator All of the links were first discovered last year (dates vary but basically August through December 2013) There have not been any newly discovered links from this website reported by GWT since those 2013 dates All of the external links are /? based. Example: http://riddim-donmagazine.com/?author=1&paged=31 If I run that link in preceding bullet point through http://www.webconfs.com/http-header-check.php, or any others from riddim-donmagazine.com those external links return 302 status. My best guess is at one time the client was running an advertising program and this website may have been on that network. One of the external links points to an ad page on the client's website.
Technical SEO | | EEE3
(web.archive.org confirms this is a WordPress site and that it's coverage of Bronx news could trigger an ad for my client or make it related to my client's website when it comes to demographics.) Believe me, this externally linked domain is only a small problem in comparison with the rest of my client's issues (mainly they've changed domains, then they changed website vendors, etc., etc.), but I did want to ask about that one externally linked domain. Whew.Thanks in advance for insights/thoughts/advice!0 -
Country Specific Domain
Guyz, we are new startups and have one very simple question regarding domain name. Should we use example.com or example.com.au ? Our Goal initially would be to target customer from Australia and gradually go global. So if we opt for .com.au we may have an edge in terms of local SEO in the beginning but lose out in the long run. What is the best way to tackle this? Thanks
Technical SEO | | WayneRooney0 -
Blog.domain.co.uk or domain.co.uk/blog
Hi Guys, I'm just wondering which offers more SEO value and which is easier to set up out of: blog.domain.co.uk domain.co.uk/blog Thanks, Dan
Technical SEO | | Sparkstone0 -
301 from old domain to new domain
Hi, I need to create a 301 redirect for all internal pages located on organic7thheaven.com to the homepage of our new site at http://www.7thheavennaturals.com/ Currently internal pages of the old site such as the following are returning a page not found www.organic7thheaven.com/products/deepcleansing/miraclemud.asp Can anyone help me in setting up a .htaccess file for this problem please? Thanks
Technical SEO | | MJMarketing0 -
Lots of Domains Going Nowhere - Point to a Real Domain?
I have hundreds of domains that I have purchased over the years that arent going anywhere except GoDaddy's Cash Parking system, which returns very little revenue, if at all. I wonder if it would make more sense to just point these domains to actually e-commerce sites that I own. If so, how best to take these domains and point them so that SEO credit is given properly. Most of these available domains dont have anything to do with the e-commerce stores. So not sure it would help. Furthermore, if I were to purchase new domains that were more relevant to the keywords to our e-commerce sites, how best to set them up so we can generate traffic on them and point them over to the actual domains? Many thanks.
Technical SEO | | findachristianjob0