Worth changing existing link profile to make it more natural?
-
Hi Guys,
I am picking up responbility for the SEO work for a company and I need some advice please.
The current link stratgy involves a lot of single backlinks from the home page of variious sites. There is also a very big proprtion of the anchor text which is for the exact keyword and also finally there is very little deep linking.
The result of this strategy is some 1st page ranking, but it has required a lot more links than some of the competitors with more natural link structure,
Question is this.... is it worth contacting the webmasters of the existing links and asking then to move some of the links onto subpages and ammending the link tex to be move natural.
Or alternaitvely, I could concenrate on adding some new article links, with a variety of keywords, which would be subdomain links.
The problem with the 2nd approuch is that I can't easily add enough article links to balance out fully the effect of thecurrent problem. However, I'm nto sure if changing the position and the anchor text of the current linking could affect the current main site ranking...
Can you see my problem? Any advice would be gratefully received.
Cheers, Ed.
-
1. If you do want to re-balance, switch the links to use some obscure long-tail anchor text and see if you move up for that term. This is an easy way to find out if they are actually passing juice. Drop the ones that aren't.
2. Build out and balance your link profile. If you can't beat your competitors with less than 20% exact anchor text, then you need to increase your overall link profile.
-
Fair enough, I do appreciate your thoughts
-
I think you are digging in po.
-
Hi,
I understand the point you are making but, in fact, the current links do have a lot of value, even though they may a number of paid links. The reason I say this is the sites ranks on google 1st page for a number of competitive search terms.
This is why I am thinking of an approuch which tries to consolidate the value from those links rather than writing them off. I'm thinking if I can balance out the existing links with other deeper links etc, I might be able to secure more value from them.
If I can, it would be a good basis for gaining value from the new links I hope to obtain in the future.
Has anyone had this situation and tried a similar approach?
Cheers, Ed.
-
...the question is what is the best course of action to try to retain as much value as possible from the existing links.
To me, those links would not have any value. I would not feel better about them if they were moved from the homepage to a deeper page on the same site.
I know that you are not asking what to do for new links... but if this site was mine I would forget about the current links and look to what can be done in the future.
-
I think that some of the links will have been devalued which is why more backlinks have been required than for some of the competitors. The question though isn't what do for new links; the question is what is the best course of action to try to retain as much value as possible from the existing links. I can look to adjust the position and type of the existing links to be more natural looking, or I can try to balance up the linking appearance with something like more deep link articles etc.
Any suggestions gratefully received
Ed.
-
It sounds like a lot of the existing links are not natural and probably paid. My bet is that they have been devalued. If this was my site we would stop "building links" and start "earning" them.
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
-
Regret changing the URL structure, Would it be appropriate to change it back?
Hi Moz Community, We changed the URL structure 6 months ago for our new site, and we experienced a ranking drop since then. From my understanding, changing URL structure and using 301 redirects will lose link juice, more or less. We think the ranking drop is because of the loss of link juice, assuming other factors remain constant. Here are my questions: How do those link juice losses have an impact on our ranking? Would changing URL structure back to original version regain the lost link juice, with all the redirects done properly? Would it take a lot of efforts? Is it recommended to change it back? Thank you so much in advance. Any thoughts and opinions are appreciated! Best, Raymond
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | raymondlii0 -
Linking from purchased businesses to my own
Hi All, An SEO and Google guidelines question. We've recently purchased several local businesses that have websites. Legally, we've put a disclaimer saying we've purchased those businesses, the question is whether we should link from those sites to our main site. Will this bring a manual action from Google? It's legitimate that we'd like the visitors from those websites come to our main site because those business no longer named the way they were. So, is it OK to link from these sites to ours? Will this violate Google's guidelines regarding backlinking? Should we even link and if so add the rel:nofollow tag? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OrendaLtd2 -
Link building
ok mozers i have a few questions. I am starting a new seo campaign and i want to target traffic for "how to make money on autopilot" Question 1. when it comes to link building i have seen some articles saying that i should not send all of my links to my landing page at once but to send links to my backlinks then index then using tiered link building. Is this a must or not? will i get penalized if i build 20 targeted links to my landing page in 1 day, lets say 20, pr7-9 domains? or should i tier it out and link maybe 5 pr9 domains to my landing page, then link 10 pr5 domains to each of those 5 pr9 domains and maybe link 20-pr1 domains to each of those tiered 2 pr5 domains? eq: Tier 1 = 5 PR-9 Tier 2 = 50 PR-5 Tier 3 = 1,000 PR-1 Question 2. Is their a certain amount of backlinks i need to use in order to out do my competitor? or does it just matter on the metrics of my backlinks? and when it comes to indexing these links do i need to index just the 5 pr9 links? or do i need to index all of them? or should i just index the landing page through google webmasters tools and hope it indexes all connecting pages? will doing any of these get my landing page indexed faster in order to rank faster? Question 3. Types of link building. Ok i am targeting guest blogs, wordpress sites, etc to put a link on. Should i focus on smm 'social media marketing' as well? or can i just focus on the traditional seo tactics first? Question 4. Keyword research. ok so my blog post is 'how to make money on autpilot' and from my keyword suggestion tools it picked up a list of keywords suggestions to target. Competition ranges from low to high, search volume ranges from 10 to 1900 visitors per month, after organizing the most relevant keywords to add to my campaign should i target each of the these keywords by creating a link building campaign for each one and target it to my landing page or use it as my 2nd or 3rd tier? those are the questions i really have for now. Here is my blog post http://www.vemomedia.com/how-to-make-money-on-autopilot/ Please feel me in on what i am needing to do in order to get some ranking and on how to run a link building campaign the correct way. Thanx in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | djgbshows1 -
Domain remains the same IP address is changing on same server only last 3 digits changing. Will this effect rankings
Dear All, We have taken and a product called webacelator from our hosting UKfast and our ip address is changing. UKFasts asked to point DNS to different IP in order to route the traffic through webacelator, which will enhance browsing speed. I am concerned, will this change effect our rankings. Your responses highly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tigersohelll0 -
301 from a defunct site due to great link profile
Hi there Would really appreciate your help in dealing with the following scenario: My client is an authority brand in their sector. They were bought end 2011, and a new website was launched under the new owner's brand. For whatever reason no 301 redirects were put in place from the old site to the new site. I am now auditing the new site and the traffic is pitifully low, way lower than they used to enjoy on the old site. The old site is defunct and Google is no longer indexing it. However OSE shows that the link profile of the old site was very good with thousands of good quality links, whilst it is non-existent for the new site. I am thinking that even though Google does not index the old site, we should try and get access and put 301s in place on the old pages to help transfer across all the link juice to boost the new site. Do you agree or am I missing something here? Will page rank be transferred across even though the old site is dead? What else could we do? Would change of domain in WMT help? Although how would that work for a defunct site? We should probably 301 anyway as it would be good to ensure that folk following all those links can find my client's new site, but it would be great if page rank flowed too! All ideas appreciated! Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chammy
Wendy0 -
How to promote some links on google
Hi our site is http://www.mycarhelpline.com If people search on our site in Google by typing - Mycarhelpline they see links - why mycarhelpline, contact us and about us how can we put some other key pages by replacing above pages
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Modi0 -
Too many links on home page?
I run a forum that currently has 351 links on its home page (and p.1, 2 etc.) due to all the tags that appear under feed items. Is it a viable solution to get this number down to simply nofollow all of these tag links? How else can I get this number of links down recorded by Google down, or is it not something I should be especially worried about?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | staingurus0 -
Competitors and Directory Links
Hi guys, wanted to get some input and thoughts here. I'm analyzing many competitor links for a specific client (even other clients actually as well) and come across a pretty heavy directory backlink profiles. has anyone here had success with directory listings? Seem many of the competitors backlinks are coming from directories. What say you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PaulDylan1