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 to improve PA of Shortened URLs
-
Why some of shortened urls like bitly/owly/googl has PA>40? I tried everything to improve PA of my shortened urls like facebook shares, retweets and backlinks to them but still i have PA-1.
Checkout this URL: https://moz.com/blog/state-of-links in MOZ OSE and you will many 301 links from shortners
I asked many seo experts about this but no one answered this question so today subscribed MOZ pro for the solution. Please give me the answer. -
I'd highly doubt it. You're spending energy getting a redirect linked-to and indexed, rather than the URL you actually want to rank. Point those links and that effort to the page itself and you'll get a far better return.
-
I got it. One more confusion i have that building and indexing url shortner links are really helpful for high rankings?
-
This is what I was trying to say. Thanks, Rand
-
The shortened URLs will pass any link equity they have to their target, but using a shortener to link to has no added benefit, and the 301 redirect will actually cost you some PageRank leakage according to Google.
-
Either we haven't crawled any links that point to #2, or the links we've seen to it don't pass any link equity (e.g. they're nofollowed or on pages with meta robots=nofollow, etc).
-
Thanks David for the answer. I think they will pass authority because of high domain authority as i read some blog post that url shortner link passes juice.
-
Hi Monu,
It's most likely because Moz hasn't crawled your shortened URLs before - anything that Moz hasn't crawled will report as PA 1.
But don't be too concerned about PA and how long it takes Moz to crawl your links!
And don't think that going through a URL shortener is going to "boost" the link value because it's reported as a higher DA/PA link - it doesn't quite work like that
Cheers,
David
-
Hi Rand, Thank you so much for coming here to answer my question here.
Here is 2 URLs
1. http://bit.ly/2bmUXGy (Da-96, PA-46)
2. http://bit.ly/2pVVQKz (Da-96, PA-1)
Why this happens ?
-
Hi Monu - shortened URLs generally aren't going to accrue much PA (or much link equity), because many (most) folks who link to them won't link to the shortener but to the URL it resolves to.
I'd also say that there's almost no circumstance I can imagine where it's actually useful or desirable to have a high PA score (or high ranking ability) for the shortened URL. You want the URL that actually resolves -- the one Google will show in its listings -- to get all the links. Shorteners could go out of business or stop redirecting properly or change from 301s to something else to track clicks, and then you'd lose that link equity to the final target. Thus, always better to have it go to the resolved URL.
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
-
What to do with internal spam url's google indexed?
I am in SEO for years but never met this problem. I have client who's web page was hacked and there was posted many, hundreds of links, These links has been indexed by google. Actually these links are not in comments but normal external urls's. See picture. What is the best way to remove them? use google disavow tool or just redirect them to some page? The web page is new, but ranks good on google and has domain authority 24. I think that these spam url's improved rankings too 🙂 What would be the best strategy to solve this. Thanks. k9Bviox
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AndrisZigurs0 -
Do we lose Backlinks and Domain Authority of URL when we change domain Name?
Have 1 performing domain (Monthly - 4M visitor ) now we want to change domain name ( Brand name like SEOMOZ to Moz ). I have general knowledge about domain changing prevention tips like 301 redirection and other thing. My concern is about backlinks and DA. How can I prevent any lose from SEO Point of view. (backlink lose) Do I need to change all backlink form source or redirection is enough to get all reference traffic from that backlinks?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HuptechWebseo0 -
URL Masking or Cloaking?
Hi Guy's, On our webshop we link from our menu to categories were we want to rank on in Google. Because the menu is sitewide i guess Google finds the categories in the menu important and meaby let them score better (onside links) The problem that i'm facing with is that we make difference in Gender. In the menu we have: Man and Woman. Links from the menu go to: /categorie?gender=1/ and /category?gender=2/. But we don't want to score on gender but on the default URL. For example: Focus keyword = Shoes Menu Man link: /shoes?gender=1 Menu Woman link: /shoes?gender=2 But we only want to rank on /shoes/. But that URL is not placed in the menu. Every URL with: "?" has a follow noindex. So i was thinking to make a link in the menu, on man and woman: /shoes/, but on mouse down (program it that way) ?=gender. Is this cloaking for Google? What we also could do is make a canonical to the /shoes/ page. But i don't know if we get intern linking value on ?gender pages that have a canonical. Hope it makes senses 🙂 Advises are also welcome, such as: Place al the default URL's in the footer.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Happy-SEO0 -
Vanity URLs Canonicalization
Hi, So right now my vanity URLs have a lot more links than my regular homepage. They 301 redirect to the homepage but I'm thinking of canonicalizing the homepage, as well as the mobile page, to the vanity URL. Currently some of my sites have a vanity URL in a SERP and some do not. This is my way of nudging google to list them all as vanity but thought I would get everyone's opinion first. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | mattdinbrooklyn1 -
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Duplicate keywords in URL?
Is there such a thing as keyword stuffing URLs? Such as a domain name of turtlesforsale.com having a directory called turtles-for-sale that houses all the pages on the site. Every page would start out with turtlesforsale.com/turtles-for-sale/. Good or bad idea? The owner is hoping to capitalize on the keywords of turtles for sale being in the URL twice and ranking better for that reason.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CFSSEO0 -
Unique page URLs and SEO titles
www.heartwavemedia.com / Wordpress / All in One SEO pack I understand Google values unique titles and content but I'm unclear as to the difference between changing the page url slug and the seo title. For example: I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About I've noticed some of my competitors using url structures more like "www.competitor.com/san-francisco-video-production-about" Would it be wise to follow their lead? Will my landing page rank higher if each subsequent page uses similar keyword packed, long tail url? Or is that considered black hat? If advisable, would a url structure that includes "san-francisco-video-production-_____" be seen as being to similar even if it varies by one word at the end? Furthermore, will I be penalized for using similar SEO descriptions ie. "San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Portfolio" and San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Contact" or is the difference of one word "portfolio" and "contact" sufficient to read as unique? Finally...am I making any sense? Any and all thoughts appreciated...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | keeot0 -
DropBox.com High PA & DA?
"What’s up with these dl.dropbox.com High PA & DA links?" You know, It's frustrating to spend almost an entire day getting a few great link backs... then to find out your competitor has hundreds of cheap & easy link backs for the keyword you are going for with greater Authority [according to SEOmoz's OSE]. So I ran a search on one of our top competitors in Open Site Explorer to gather an idea of where the heck they are getting all of their links. Please feel free to copy my actions so you can see what I see. Run a search in OSE for www[dot]webstaurantstore[dot]com. Click on the ‘Anchor Text’ Tab. Click on the first Anchor Text Term, which should be ‘restaurant supplies’ :: Then it will expand, click on the ‘View more links and details in the inbound links section.’ As you scroll down the list you will notice that they have a bunch of linking pages from dl.dropbox.com, all of them are .pdb files, for their targeted Anchor Text, restaurant supplies. Q: So my question is can someone please elaborate on what .pdb files are and how they are getting this to work for them so well? Also you will notice, on the expanded Anchor Text Page, that their 6<sup>th</sup> most powerful link for this phrase (restaurant supplies) seems to be linked straight from a porn site, I thought Google does not rank adult sites like this? Q: For future reference, does anyone know legitimate websites to maybe file an SEO manipulation complaint? Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Burkett.com0