Backlink Questions
-
Hey Mozzers,
I have spent some time researching proper backlink analysis, and then I have been going through some of the steps. Here are a few questions that I have had in the process.
- Why would backlink tools like OSE and Ahrefs return different results for (say): "www.domain.com" vs "domain.com"?
- I noticed that competitors have almost 6x the backlinks as I do, but when I look at where those links are coming from, they are coming from old sites with moderate DA (under 10-30), but many are not current. I also noticed that many of these sites have links placed site-wide so that there are maybe 6+ referring pages per domain. So I guess my question is, how powerful are these links? Am I better off building relationships with bloggers, even though they only offer one link per page? Ultimately it will take me a long time to build the same quantity of links, but it seems like many of these competitors' links are old fashioned, but still moderately effective.
Any help is appreciated, you guys have always been so helpful!
-
The quantity of links isn't as important as the quality of those links. If there are several links to and from low quality websites it is only a matter of time before your competitors get smacked with an algo update. Sure, blog back links take time to build, but they also appear natural, and more importantly, related to the content on your site. That means that theoretically they are good for searchers. This is the best strategy.
Link building should really consist of high authority directory listings, competitive link analysis, branded comment backlinks, social bookmarking, and guest blogging. You should never allow more than 10% of your existing link profile to be added at a time. Doing any more than 10% looks unnatural, and unnatural link building is not the way to go. Buying links is kind of an SEO death wish.
-
Hi,
Regarding the number of links - domain.com and www.domain.com are two separate URLs and hence treated separately. So its a possibility that some domains will link to domain.com and some domains will link to www.domain.com and accordingly the numbers reported will vary.
Regarding acquisition of links - Based on the evolution of links over the past 5 years and Google's stand on acquisition of links, I would strongly suggest that you don't focus on building links artificially. Instead, I would suggest that you focus on the following -
Generation of content that results in a lot of coverage - Surveys, useful information to users/consumers , interactive content are some of the elements of the website that can help generate a lot of natural buzz. IMO, citations and natural references across the web are the future (if not the present already) and keyword based linking should be a complete NO NO.
Focus on consumers - The moment we focus on consumers and come up with innovative techniques for more customer acquisition, more the word of mouth awareness and more the possibility of mentions across the web (social media channels, online press etc)
As far as competitors are concerned, even if say they are using non white hat techniques, its only a matter of time before search engines penalize them.
Regards,
Sajeet
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
-
Unsolved I have a "click rate juice" question would like to know.
Hello I have a "click rate juice" question would like to know. For example. I created a noindex site for a few days event purposes. Using a random domain like this: event.example.com. Expecting 5000+ clicks per day. Is it possible to gain some traffic juice from this event website domain "example.com" to my other main site "main.com" but without exposing its URL. Thought about using 301 redirecting "example.com" to "main.com". But it will reveal the example-b.com to the general public if someone visits the domain "example.com". Also thought about using a canonical URL, but it would not be working because the event site is noindex. or it would not matter at all 🤔 Wondering if there is a thing like this to gain some traffic juice for another domain? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Blueli0 -
HTTPS 301 Redirect Question
Hi, I've just migrated our previous site (siteA) to our new url (siteB) and I've setup 301 redirects from the old url (siteA) to the new (siteB). However, the old url operated on https and users who try to go to the old url with https (https://siteA.com) receive a message that the server cannot be reached, while the users who go to http://siteA.com are redirected to siteB. Is there a way to 301 redirect https traffic? Also, from an SEO perspective if the site and all the references on Google search are https://siteA.com does a 301 redirect of http pass the domain authority, etc. or is https required? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | opstart0 -
Newly Acquired Website--Questions on Changing Permalink Structure
I just acquired a new website. The domain is about 7 years old with around 1000 indexed pages in google. Decent domain authority at 34, PR 4, a lot of inbound links. The thing that's driving me crazy is the permalink structure--set up as month/post name in wordpress http://xxxxxxx.com/2015/01/sample-post/ Based on my experience and I could be wrong, but I would think that the structure would be more effective with just post name and no date. Am I absolutely insane at this point to try and change it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tryfantasy0 -
I should keep looking at the IP address location on my backlink prospects?
Hello Everyone, I'm doing a backlink research and we are considering how to define a strategy. My website is located in Spain and I am focusing on ranking my website on Google.es for public coming from Spain. The thing is that until now I used to look carefully at the IP address of my backlink prospects, to check if the website was really hosted in Spain. I know Matt Cutts used to say very long ago that hosting location of a website was important. But taking into account that nowadays with cloud servers, CDNs, AnyCast and such technologies it's no longer possible to accurately identify the location of a website, specially if the CDN of the websites uses AnyCast, so that an IP address can be used by different machines in different locations. Do you guys think I should keep looking at the IP address location on my backlink prospects?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | C.A0 -
I have a question regarding parking good value domain.
I have a question regarding parking good value domain. A client has a great website 'A' with page rank of 5 and a lot of traffic. They want to change the URL and redesign the site. So they have parked the domain 'A' and will later redirect it to the new domain, this will be in a month time. My questions is, by parking the old domain 'A' would they have lost its SEO value or will it be given to the new URL once they place a 301 redirect on it. Also, would it not have been better not to park domain 'A', keep it live and just redirect it once new domain goes live, notifying Google in Webmaster tools?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OrangeGuys0 -
Anchor text questions - What are your thoughts?
Hi, I want to talk about anchor text and the effect it has on search engines (Good & Bad). Here is a fictitious example we can talk about: www.supercoolrunningsneakers.com Title Tag: Running Sneakers - The Super Trendy Running Trainers Keywords targeted: Running Sneakers, Running Trainers How would you vary your anchor text to target these terms? If you had 50 unique articles to play with how would you vary the anchor text using the articles? Would you push 25 articles at 'Running Sneakers' and the other 25 at 'Running Trainers' or would you link some articles using the domain name anchor text? Q: I'm guessing running 50 articles using anchor text 'Running Sneakers' would benefit the SERP's moe for that term then mixing it up with say 'Running Sneakers', 'Running Trainers' & 'Domain Name Links'. Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | activitysuper0 -
Retargeting questions
The question is in reference to SEOmoz post - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/retargeting-basics-what-it-is-how-to-use-it 1. What is the size of a retargeting pixel and who places it on the site ? Is it the retargeting company ? Can we place it ourselves ? Does a code have to be added to the site ? 2. In the post mentioned above, the author talks about "burn pixel" "If a person in your audience converts then a "burn pixel" will fire" What do you mean by burn pixel ? How do we come to know that a burn pixel has fired ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoug_20050 -
Rel="prev" and view all question
Okay, I've read the posts by Google about the new prev, next tags and the suggestion for using a view all option. I've also read the posts here on SEOMoz on the topic but none of them quite address what we have. First, Some of our main categories are very large (over 6000 pieces of jewelry) so a view all option would take forever to load be completely useless to a visitor. Second, our category home pages provide (here's an example😞 A description of the category with links to important sections and articles A row of new items A dozen of the popular items from the category. Links to related articles if applicable. So we have a real category home page with content instead of just categories that start immediately with pages of product. Should we set the canonical url for all of the browse pages to the main category page, create a view all page or just use the next and previous rel tags with the category home pages as the first in the series?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanTheScot0