Leveraging "Powered by" and link spam
-
Hi all,
For reference: The SaaS guide to leveraging the "Powered By" tactic.
My product is an embeddable widget that customers place on their websites (see example referenced in link above). A lot of my customers have great domain authority (big brands, .gov's etc).
I would like to use a "Powered By" link on my widgets to create high quality backlinks.
My question is: if I have identical link text (on potentially hundreds) of widgets, will this look like link spam to Google?
If so, would setting the link text randomly on each widget to one of a few different phrases (to create some variation) avoid this?
Hope this makes sense, thanks in advance.
-
I'd defenitely recommend not to use keyword rich anchor text. Just use your brand name and diversify your link profile.
-
Dan,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question.
Your advice is sound. Matt certainly advises a nofollow however at the beginning he cautions against making widget links the primary source of link building in a strategy. At the end he says that links from widgets don't "carry the same weight" as links freely given.
As such, I wouldn't necessarily expect a blanket penalty for widget links. Rather than abandon widget links entirely I will instead apply a nofollow to all the links except a hand selected few on the very best domains (.govs and major brand / media sites).
Hopefully this approach will not raise any red flags (or black hats as the case may be).
Thanks again.
-
I would be very careful making embeddable widgets as an important facet of your link building campaign. This tactic used to work very well, but has been on Google's radar for some time now. In August of last year, Matt Cutts said the following: "I would recommend putting a nofollow, especially on widgets." The attached video of him discussing this may be helpful to you as you consider this tactic.
With regards to the anchor text, I would be VERY careful with it if you decide to proceed. I would personally recommend abandoning this tactic (unless there is a value outside of link building) and investing in high-quality content instead, but, if you do decide to proceed, I would build solely branded anchor text. This would be more defendable if a Google engineer ever flags the site. It won't look like you were trying to game the rankings on a keyword, but may still have a positive impact on the rankings. I would proceed with caution before doing that though.
Instead of putting the effort into a widget, I would put it into something that lives on your site (evergreen content) and provides a ton of value to end users. That will attract links and real users.
Hope this helps!
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
-
How should I deal with "duplicate" content in an Equipment Database?
The Moz Crawler is identifying hundreds of instances of duplicate content on my site in our equipment database. The database is similar in functionality to a site like autotrader.com. We post equipment with pictures and our customers can look at the equipment and make purchasing decisions. The problem is that, though each unit is unique, they often have similar or identical specs which is why moz (and presumably google/bing) are identifying the content as "duplicate". In many cases, the only difference between listings are the pictures and mileage- the specifications and year are the same. Ideally, we wouldn't want to exclude these pages from being indexed because they could have some long-tail search value. But, obviously, we don't want to hurt the overall SEO of the site. Any advice would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | DohenyDrones0 -
Our rankings for "Tree Service" dropped last month
Hi, we've had a page www.savatree.com/tree-service.html which was ranking top 1-12 on the google rankings but has complete dropped out. We don't have any duplicate errors from that page on here. Do you have any suggestions? We do rank highly on Bing and Yahoo (1-2 pages). We can't figure whats going on.
Technical SEO | | SavATree0 -
Linking to AND canonicalizing to a page?
I am using cross domain rel=canonical to a page that is very similar to mine. I feel the page adds value to my site so I want users to go to it, but I ultimately want them to go to the page I'm canonicalizing to. So I am linking to that page as well. Anyone foresee any issues with doing this? And/or have other suggestions? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | ThridHour0 -
Is it possible to export Inbound Links in a CSV file categorized by Linking Root Domains ?
Hi, I am performing an analysis of the total inbound links to my homepage and I would like to have the total amount of inbound links categorized by the Linking root domains. For example, the Open Site explorer does offer the feature to show you the Linking Root Domains to your page. Then when you click on the first Linking Root Domain, it also shows you the Top Linking Pages ( Which means all the pages that link to your page from this particular top level domain) Now I would like to export this data to a CSV file, but open site explorer only exports the total amount of top level linking domains. Does anyone has a solution to this problem ? Thank you very much for the help in advance!
Technical SEO | | Feweb0 -
Outbound Links
I have a page on upstrap-pro.com that provides weights of cameras and lenses. The user/buyer of my on-slip camera straps needs to know the weight his camera and lens to determine the proper pad size... large to small. We have put together a long list of the most popular customer cameras. The way it was done (by my daughter) was to also provide a via a link to dpreview.com which is an excellent site for camera information including specifications etc. My personal feeling about this is mixed. I can do it by having it open dpreview.com in a new tab but then the user/customer could still get distracted and go down the rabbit hole. On the other hand dpreview is such a good site that if they are new to photography and don't know about it, they should. I don't get a dime from dpreview. If fact I doubt they would ever link back to me because they do not write about camera straps. I hear mixed things about outbound links. In this file there are quite a few outbound links to dpreview to keep it consistent. I could do a nofollow on all of them but I read that this is the easy way out. Google is jump ball and I have no clue what Cutts and his merry men are going to decide is cool or not cool. I'd like some thoughts or options... Thanks... A small part of the file below. Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM Wideangle prime lens Canon EF 22.8 oz 645 g Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L USM
Technical SEO | | Asteg0 -
Internal Links
In OSE, it is reporting that i don't have any internal links to my homepage. In the header on every page is my logo in the top left hand corner which links back to my homepage. Shouldn't this mean then that every page should link to the home page? Similarly, internal pages which link from my main nav aren't showing up as having any internal links in OSE. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Will I still get Duplicate Meta Data Errors with the correct use of the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags?
Hi Guys, One of our sites has an extensive number category page lsitings, so we implemented the rel="next" and rel="prev" tags for these pages (as suggested by Google below), However, we still see duplicate meta data errors in SEOMoz crawl reports and also in Google webmaster tools. Does the SEOMoz crawl tool test for the correct use of rel="next" and "prev" tags and not list meta data errors, if the tags are correctly implemented? Or, is it necessary to still use unique meta titles and meta descriptions on every page, even though we are using the rel="next" and "prev" tags, as recommended by Google? Thanks, George Implementing rel=”next” and rel=”prev” If you prefer option 3 (above) for your site, let’s get started! Let’s say you have content paginated into the URLs: http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1
Technical SEO | | gkgrant
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3
http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4 On the first page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=1, you’d include in the section: On the second page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2: On the third page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=3: And on the last page, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=4: A few points to mention: The first page only contains rel=”next” and no rel=”prev” markup. Pages two to the second-to-last page should be doubly-linked with both rel=”next” and rel=”prev” markup. The last page only contains markup for rel=”prev”, not rel=”next”. rel=”next” and rel=”prev” values can be either relative or absolute URLs (as allowed by the tag). And, if you include a <base> link in your document, relative paths will resolve according to the base URL. rel=”next” and rel=”prev” only need to be declared within the section, not within the document . We allow rel=”previous” as a syntactic variant of rel=”prev” links. rel="next" and rel="previous" on the one hand and rel="canonical" on the other constitute independent concepts. Both declarations can be included in the same page. For example, http://www.example.com/article?story=abc&page=2&sessionid=123 may contain: rel=”prev” and rel=”next” act as hints to Google, not absolute directives. When implemented incorrectly, such as omitting an expected rel="prev" or rel="next" designation in the series, we'll continue to index the page(s), and rely on our own heuristics to understand your content.0 -
On page audit throws a rel="canonical" curve ball :-(
Good Morning from -3 Degrees C, still no paths gritted wetherby UK 😞 Following an on page audit one recommendation instructs me to ad:
Technical SEO | | Nightwing
http://www.barrettsteel.com/" /> on the home page of barrett steel. I'm confused, i thought i only had to add this to duplications
the home page which to my knowledge dont exist. So my question is please: "Why shoul i ad this snippet of code on the home page of http://www.barrettsteel.com http://www.barrettsteel.com/" /> Any insights welcome 🙂0