Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How does Google know if a backlink is good or not?
-
Hi,
What does Google look at when assessing a backlink?
How important is it to get a backlink from a website with relevant content?
Ex:
1. Domain/Page Auth 80, website is not relevant. Does not use any of the words in your target term in any area of the website.
2. Domain/Page Auth 40, website is relevant. Uses the words in your target term multiple times across website.
Which website example would benefit your SERP's more if you gained a backlink? (and if you can say, how much more would it benefit - low, medium, high).
-
Based on my conversations with Google, relevance is absolutely something to think about - if your site is all about oranges and you get links from sites/even blogs that are all about cars, it's flag because it can look spammy.
Unless it's an outlier and is just one (or two) random links from sites that aren't related in content to yours, you risk harming yourself by connecting your site with unrelated content.
-
Thanks for reply Greg.
Glade you mentioned Guest blogging because that's what im talking about really.
Yeah I spoke to Ann Smarty from My Blog Guest and she agreed, DA over relevance (to a certain extent).
What happens though if you guest post 5 articles to say DA60 blogs where your in travel and the blogs are in SEO?
I would have thought 5 guest posts on DA40 blogs where your in travel and so are the blogs your posting on would have worked a lot better.
It's a tough one for me.
-
Relevance is important, but then so is the domain authority and trust.
A link from a news website for example. Its unrelated, but can provide a powerful boost for your websites "trust"
Your main objective in my opinion should be to get links on relevant websites, however you can mix the two by getting links from high authority, unrelated websites as well. There are a few guest bloggers on SEOMOZ who link to their companies websites totally unrelated to SEO,
lets say you already had a mix of relevant as well as unrelated high authority links and you had to choose between DA80 (unrelated) and DA40 (related)
I would go with the most powerful site, DA80
Greg
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
-
Can you index a Google doc?
We have updated and added completely new content to our state pages. Our old state content is sitting in a our Google drive. Can I make these public to get them indexed and provide a link back to our state pages? In theory it sounds like a great link building strategy... TIA!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE1 -
Does google ignore ? in url?
Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC0 -
Backlinks from old domain
Hi, We have gone through a change of company brand name including a new domain name.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Agguk
We followed google recommendations at: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/83106?hl=en and it seems to have worked really well, the new domain has replaced the old in the google search results. My question: Still most of our backlinks, both anchor text and links use the old brand name and domain and it´s a slow process trying to update all references. Although they get redirected fine to the new domain (also following google recommendations), I wonder if the current scenario is doing any harm, SEO wise (other than the missed visual exposure of the new brand name) ? ...since the old brand name is not present at the new site I´m thinking of including "New brand name - previously old brand name" somewhere just to provide some sort of connection to all old backlinks, would that be unnecessary? I should mention that the old brand name actually includes our most important keyword but the new brand name does not. Thanks!0 -
How to rank my website in Google UK?
Hi guys, I own a London based rubbish removal company, but don't have enough jobs. I know for sure that some of my competitors get most of their jobs trough Google searches. I also have a website, but don't receive calls from it at all. Can you please tell me how to rank my website on keywords like: "rubbish removal london", "waste clearance london", "junk collection london" and other similar keywords? I know that for person like me (without much experience in online marketing) will be difficult task to optimize the website, but at least - I need some advices from where to start. I'm also thinking to hire an SEO but not sure where to find a trusted company. Most importantly I have no idea how much should pay to expect good results? What is too much and what is too low? I will appreciate all advices.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gorubbishgo0 -
How to find all indexed pages in Google?
Hi, We have an ecommerce site with around 4000 real pages. But our index count is at 47,000 pages in Google Webmaster Tools. How can I get a list of all pages indexed of our domain? trying to locate the duplicate content. Doing a "site:www.mydomain.com" only returns up to 676 results... Any ideas? Thanks, Ben
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Can Google read my backlink in Javascript??
Hi SeoMoz community! I have a software product, which our clients implement onto their websites. It is like a pop up box. I know that backlinks are very important for SEO ranking, and I really want to give our clients 2 options of product: 1. you can get the free/cheaper option if you use the code which has a keyworded backlink to our site on it 2. you can pay small fee if you don't want to use the version with a link to our site on it Now, the problem is that the product is written entirely in Javascript, and I don't think that Google crawls this, do they? Is there a way around this? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qdigi0 -
I have a .com site but I am only ranking good on google for Canada and not the USA.
We are located in Canada but sell our products world wide. We are ranking ok on google.ca but are not in the top 50 on google.com. Is it due to my ip address? Is there any tips that you can give me to help up my rating for google.com. Any info you can provide me with will be amazing. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drewzal0 -
Check Google ban on domainname
Hello all, If I wanted to know if a domainname has a google ban on it would the following be a good idea to test it. Place an article on the domain page with unique content and then link to the page so its gets indexed and then link to the article from a well indexed page. If it doesn't get indexed there might be a ban on the page, if it does get indexed there is no ban on the page... Or are there other points I should keep in mind while doing this. All help is very welcome. Cheers, Arnout
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hellemans0