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.
Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.
-
Hi,
I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website.I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice.
What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging?
Thanks,
Jim
-
I'm sure it would probably be valuable and pass on some SEO benefit but if it's likely that someone has purchased this domain purely for transferring the link equity of inbound links to your website, then there's always a chance that this is going to be picked up on.
A small chance, but a chance nonetheless.
-
Thanks John,
I don't think it will hurt us but it just seems greyhat bordering on blackhat to me - kinda manipulative. I'll definitely put broken link building on the to-do list.Jim.
-
Hi Sean, it's an old domain that used to be active - an artist's graduate portfolio site. We're an education based business....it's loosely relevant. The Royal College of Art links to it.
Thanks for your response.
-
+1 for broken link building!
-
Hey there -
Great question. If that's what's happening, then someone definitely bought the old domain with links to it and redirected it. I've also seen this done TO people in order to pass an algorithmic penalty onto a competitor. Nasty stuff.
That said, while this isn't strictly whitehat, it can be super effective to buy old dead domains with links and redirect them into your own site. It actually works very well for SEO purposes! But, it comes with its risks as you have to do a lot of due diligence on the domain you want to redirect as there could have been some dodgy things going on and you don't want to risk passing along a penalty to your own site.
That said, I wouldn't undo the redirect unless you think it's hurting you. Move on and focus on other things to build new links.
The better thing to do, IMO, is to find these dead sites and pull their backlink profiles, then go and do outreach offering your site as a replacement for that site that is now dead. It's called broken link building and it works really well!
Hope that helps.
John
-
Is the linking domain (not the link that links to that domain) relevant to your business?
i.e. is it an old domain that used to be active or is it just a dummy domain that was set up for the practice of link building?
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 Why Did My Site's DA Go Down After Adding New Links?
Hi Moz Community, I've noticed my website's DA https://clean4u.org fell from 12 to 11 after adding a few links. I thought these were quality links, so I'm puzzled about the drop. Has anyone experienced something similar or knows why this could happen? Any advice or insight would be great! Thanks!
Link Building | | Arek_W0 -
Block Links From Spam sites
can you block links from other websites?ie: links backlinking to your site, causing a high spam score.
Link Building | | Socialdom0 -
My site is linked from over 900 "The Globe"-domains - disavow or not?
Hi! As some of you may be familiar with, there is a giant spam-network with the same design and same page title on all domains: "The Globe - The world's most visited web pages". For example: theglobe.at
Link Building | | Sindre
theglobe.co.za
www.internet-search.us I've now discovered that over 900 of these spam-domains link to my site. My plan was of course to disavow them all, but Google is explicit on telling me to be careful. «Only disavow if you are certain that the links are damaging to your rankings». And to be honest, I'm not sure. Also: it seems drastic to disavow almost a thousand pages. I'm afraid to mess something up. What would you do?3 -
If My site has 20 DA will it be good to get backlinks from a very low DA 3 site for free
is there any side effects to get backlinks from a site which has low DA than you?
Link Building | | ShashankDubey10 -
Linking to root domain or index page
While link building, should I link to index page of my website i.e www.mydomainname.com/index.html or should I link to root domain i.e www.mydomainname,com Also I see duplicate title error for index page and root domain in error statistic. How can I get rid of this.
Link Building | | ArtiKalra0 -
Domain Authority and nofollow links?
Hello, I'm wondering, are 'nofollow' links from websites with high domain authority beneficial? Would they boost our own DA? In essence, I'm wondering if there is added value (other than visitors clicking the link) to being linked to by a 'nofollow' link. Thanks!
Link Building | | yacpro130 -
Building Links to Exact Match Domains
What are the pros and cons having exact match domain and how can you create a brand name and build backlinks? Say we have a domain personalizedbirthdaygifts.com We are quite stuck with what anchor text we need to use and how do we vary it? I've heard that we have to stay away from using commercial keywords as anchor text heavily. We have to also use our brand name. And here we get stuck as we don't have a brand name. In this case Our brand name should be personalized birthday gifts but this is also commercial keyword. I have seen before similar websites droped from ranking because they have commercial keywords in their domain and most of their backlink anchor texts are commercial. If I had a website called twentyfive.com selling birthday gifts it would be a lot easier. But when you have a website personalizedbirthdaygifts.com and trying to rank for personalized birthday gifts and birthday gifts it's tough. OR isn't it? I hope I explained it well and didn't confuse anybody... Thanks
Link Building | | Jvalops0 -
Internal Linking for Newspaper Websites
Now, there are a number of do's and dont's when it comes to internal linking, but do those rules apply to news websites that have to interlink relevant news stories, primarily based on their relevancy to the user and the value that they have to provide rather than keeping the idea of page rank sculpting in mind? What's your take on this?
Link Building | | RishadShaikh590