Is widgetbait no longer valid at all according to the new quality guidelines?
-
Google recently updated their quality guidelines. I found this example of something that was against the guidelines very interesting:
"Links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites, for example:
Visitors to this page: 1,472
car insurance"So, what do you think? Are the links against the guidelines? Or the fact that the link is using an anchor texted keyword?
I personally don't see the problem with producing a great widget and putting a link on the bottom saying, "Provided by example.com", but then again it's sort of a self made link. On the other hand it's not completely self made because a webmaster has to like the widget enough to embed it.
Thoughts?
-
How likely is it that someone who runs a spammy site will freely link to your site? Even if one or two site owners take such an action, it is unlikely to spread.
It is good that you are improving your awareness related to links to your site. If you are a legitimate site owner earning natural links, you have nothing to fear from Penguin or Google.
-
Ryan - Thanks for the quick reply. Soooo, I am overly concerned about strangers who own "spammy" sites taking the widget and putting it site wide on their spammy mortgage sites ? After what some of the developers went through, I'm concerned about Penguin or its future mutations.
-
I don't feel you need to go to this extreme. The concern Google has is whether links are being authentically offered, or whether the target site owner is manipulating the process.
If a webmaster decides on their own to add your widget to their site, and they freely add anchor text of their choosing, then if it had an appropriate reason for being added site wide, it would not be a concern. For example, if you created a mortgage calculator widget which displayed on every page of a real estate site which showed a listing to a home, that should be fine. Even if the site operator placed a link such as "Mortgage calculator by abc.com" that should be absolutely fine as well. There is no manipulation from the target site.
-
Marie & All - Excellent Discussion. I've been very concerned about site wide use of widgets and inbound links from penalized sites. I've been considering developing widgets and licensing them out to particular sites with the restrictions that : the widget appear only on one page (such as a blog post). Since the underlying data would require periodic updates, I could build in an "out of date" statement in case someone hijacks it to a spammy site or an authorized user doesn't listen and installs it site wide. I view this implementation of widgets as more analogous to guest blogging than developer's site wide footer links. Providing people I've had contact with a plug in for their specific locales should result in links without much asking. So long as the anchor text is selected by the site owners (who are even encouraged to use the URL if they ask), I view this as less risky than the web developer's site wide footer links. Am I still missing something important / risky? Thoughts ?
-
There's a lot of gray area in the widget scene.
Not all of the widget links will be considered bad - it's all about relevancy and noise.
If the site is about cars, and the widget is a car insurance comparison calculator, a link forced in the widget will likely still carry value (or at least, not bring negative value) if it's a 'car insurance' link and leading to a trusted source.
If the site is about cars and the widget is about car insurance but the link is a graphic design link, it's going to get scrapped.
-
EXACTLY!
And as an extra measure, your widget will need updates, right? Whenever someone installs your widget or it updates, your software should capture the URL of the hosting site. That enables you to view the widget on the site and examine the provided link.
If someone is using your widget but did not provide a link, you can politely make a second request to the site owner.
-
Oh...I like that idea. So, produce the widget, make it available to webmasters and then say, "If you like this widget please consider linking to our site." That way the text of those linking is likely to be slightly different (i.e. some may say, "Via example.com" and others may say "Thanks to example.com for this tool" etc.
-
You used the perfect example Simon. One of the first things SEOs recognized after Penguin is many sites were affected for having the site wide footer link from the web designer / seo.
Once again, editorial links are desired. You are welcome to add other links with the "nofollow" attribute as you deem fit.
-
It is uses 'powered by example.com', although actual URL is extremely natural, if your anchor text is not proportionate and lets say sitewide widget links are 80-95% of your links, Google will penalize you.
Problem with widgets are they are sitewide, so lots of time it will create LOTS and LOTS of links.
Refer to: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update
-
I agree with eyepaq. You can still create the great widgets and ASK for a link from those who use your widget. You can even track those who use your widget and reach out and contact those who do not provide a link and make a personal link request.
-
I agree, this is probably the best option to get referral.
As in generating link juice, it is probably not a good idea. If a bulk of your links are from these links, it is highly possible that you will get penalized.
If you can get sites to put the widget on a dedicated page, that would be good...but most widgets probably don't have that option.
-
I'm interested to know more now. The thing is though, if the person did embed this widget to their site, it is not fair that the creator of the widget can let people know that he created it? Just as with a web design company putting "Designed by X" on the bottom of the website?
Or do I have the wrong end of the stick on this one?
-
But you can still develop and use them - it can still bring a lot of referral traffic if the item is really good.
-
Thanks Marcus. I see your points.
It's getting so hard to get good links these days!
-
I think subconsciously this is what I feared.
Darn. I have so many ideas for widgetbait.
-
Widgets are still fine as long as you put a nofollow on the link
You still can get referral traffic from it but the idea, and that is more then ok in my opinion, is that there is no longer room for link building using widgets.
-
It is not an editorial link, it is a hijacked link, so it won't count and is a bad strategy. Sure, you may want some credit for the plugin or some such but any credit links should be nofollow.
Likewise, from a smart linking perspective, you have no idea what kind of sites will use your widget. Porn sites, low quality scraper sites etc so you may end up driving lots of links from undesirable sites so again, if you want credit then drop that link in but make sure is is nofollow.
This is no different to what happened to WPMU - they had sites that had pirated their wordpress themes and then they got smacked due to the inbound anchor text from a myriad of external sites. They were lucky that one huge WordPressMU network was under their control but often, you may not be so lucky if you are a small developer.
The golden rule is does the person that owns the site like your site enough to grant a link to you or your content and if so, then that counts. Anything else you do to stealth a link on the site should not count.
Now, if only it worked as well they would like!
-
There are few definites in SEO but, in my experience, there is absolutely no question on this topic. Google is exceptionally clear and I agree with their reasonings. It comes down to the basic definition of a link.
A link is supposed to be an independent vote for the target web page / site. When the link text is forced, it is a clear violation of Google's Guidelines and a manipulative link.
I personally don't see the problem with producing a great widget and putting a link on the bottom saying, "Provided by example.com", but then again it's sort of a self made link. On the other hand it's not completely self made because a webmaster has to like the widget enough to embed it.
The webmaster may have liked the widget enough to embed it, but they did not choose to place the link or the text. Consider the following example:
You would like to have a widget on your travel site which allows a visitor to enter in a location and then you provide the currency exchange rate, weather, time, news, etc. for that location. You find the best widget on the internet and place it on your site. The widget has a link at the bottom "provided by badcompany.com". You do not know that company. You are not endorsing that company. You have not necessarily made a purchase from that company nor are aware of their products or services. All you know is you like the widget, period.
Even if there was a text box option for the widget to place a link back to the company page, it would STILL be a definite violation of Google's Guidelines. The text must be naturally provided by the linking site.
-
the repetitive anchor text along with the fact that it is usually a sidewide thing, means that anchor text keyword phrase will get suppressed eventually if the widget is used a lot because Google will see them as not being natural.
-
I'd imagine it was more from an anchor text point of view. If you are using branded terms such as powered by example.com I don't think it would penalise you, ok you might not get anything from it or not as lot but it should be fine.
It's kind of the same deal with web design companies who use links on client's websites to say they designed / built it. They might not bring you a huge amount of link juice but they don't seem to have any negative effects.
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
-
Is new domian redirection to old domain make risk for my site ?
i have site with Da about 30 and i have many project on it if i register a domain for each project and after that redirect to my site is that bad for my site and my site seo ? for ex: my project is : mysite.com/helloword i register helloworld.com or domain like that helllo-world.com and redirctet to mysite.com/helloworld
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MidnightShop791 -
Spam signals from old company site are hurting new company site, but we can't undo the redirect.
My client was forced to change its domain name last year (long story). We were largely able to regain our organic rankings via 301-redirects. Recently, the rankings for the new domain have begun to plummet. Nothing specific took place that could have caused any ranking declines on the new site. However, when we analyze links to the OLD site, we are seeing a lot of link spam being built to that old domain over recent weeks and months. We have no idea where these are coming from but they appear to be negatively impacting our new site. We cannot dismantle the redirects as the old site has hundreds, if not thousands, of quality links pointing to it, and many customers are accustomed to going to that home page. So those redirects need to stay in place. We have already disavowed all the spam we have found on the old Search Console. We are continuing to do so as we find new spam links. But what are we supposed to do about this spam negatively impacting our new site? FYI we have not received any messages in the search console.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | FPD_NYC1 -
Redirect from old domain to a new domain
Hi, assuming i have an old domain that i would like to redirect it to the new domain because the old domain contain good links on it and been ranking for its keywords. Would it be a wise choice? and can i redirect my sub domain into my new one too? for example website1.com/life > website2.com/life and how do i do so? can i do that by hosting the old domain in my new domain hosting and do all those redirect include sub domain redirect?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Whay are low-quality exact match domains still ranking well for our biggest term?
There are a number of low-quality “exact-match” domains that are ranking well for the term “locum tenens”. I don’t want to specifically mention any sites, but there are some with poor content and very few quality backlinks that are on page one. The only reason I can see for them ranking so well is the fact that “locum” and/or “tenens” are in the URL. It’s very frustrating because we have worked hard to do all the right things (regular blogging, high-quality content, quality backlinks, etc.) to build our domain authority and page authority so they are better than these sites, yet they still out-rank us. Our site is www.bartonassociates.com. Could it have something to do with the term “locum tenens”, which is a latin phrase? Is it possible that because it is a latin term that it somehow slipped through the cracks and avoided the update that was supposed to eliminate this? If so, what can we do to get some justice?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ba_seomoz0 -
Is there any value in "starting from scratch" on a new domain?
Hi, Our ecommerce store - we have had some duplicate content issues and they have been corrected, but of course, Google takes time to pick up on these. Our link profile is very poor, so we wont lose a lot by going to a new domain in that sense. My question is, in what instances is it worthwhile starting under a new domain? And in which not? Presumably you can also 301 the whole site - when is it worth doing this or not? Thanks, Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
New sub-domain launches thousands of local pages - is it hurting the main domain?
Would greatly appreciate some opinions on this scenario. Domain cruising along for years, top 1-3 rankings for nearly all top non-branded terms and a stronghold for branded searches. Sitelinks prominently shown with branded searches and always ranked #1 for most variations of brand name. Then, sub-domain launches that was over 80,000 local pages - these pages are 90-95% similar with only city and/or state changing to make them appear like unique local pages. Not an uncommon technique but worrisome in a post Panda/Penguin world. These pages are surprisingly NOT captured as duplicate content by the SEOMoz crawler in my campaigns. Additionally about that same time a very aggressive, almost entirely branded paid search campaign was launched that took 20% of the clicks previously going to the main domain in organic to ppc. My concern is this, shortly after this launch of over 80k "local" pages on the sub-domain and the cannibalization of organic clicks through ppc we saw the consistency of sitelinks 6 packs drop to 3 sitelinks if showing at all, including some sub-domains in sitelinks (including the newly launched one) that had never been there before. There's not a clear answer here I'm sure but what are the experts thoughts on this - did a massive launch of highly duplicate pages coupled with a significant decrease in organic CTR for branded terms harm the authority of the main domain (which is only a few dozen pages) causing less sitelinks and less strength as a domain or is all this a coincidence? Or caused by something else we aren't seeing? Thanks for thoughts!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | VMLYRDiscoverability0 -
Low Quality Highly Relevant backlinks, should we get them?
I see a lot of opportunity to get lower quality, but highly relevant backlinks, should we try to get these? I'll give you an example, lets say we have an asphalt paving company ( not a lot of authority blogs out there, that we can find yet) We found this one http://www.wolfpaving.com/blog/ - DA of 27 and PA 29 should we go after links like this. I would actually like to know about sites with less authority than this one, I would probably go for this one without question. So Should we go after worse DA and PA but still legitimate looking sites and highly relevant?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RonMedlin0 -
Does your website get downgraded if you link to a lower quality site?
My site has a pr of 4. My friends site has a pr of 2 but I think that he is doing some black hat seo techniques. I wanted to know whether the search engines would ding me for linking to (i.e., validating) a lower quality site.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jamesjd70