Geographical Relevance of Back links - Important for SEO?
-
If I have an AU domain, will Google give more weight to back links from other AU domains in the Australian search results, or will quality links from anywhere in the world count much the same?
Intuitively, you would think that AU links would be more relevant for an AU site in the Australian SERPS and Google would therefore give these more weight, but are there any good articles/research/anecdotal accounts to show this?
Thanks!
-
Local links are a lot better then international. Lower quality local links can bring you higher position then other ones. We experienced that with our 10 websites.
-
Take it this way. You have a great website and you are targeting Australian audience. In that case, it is quote natural that your link profile should reflect that. Now, it will not be convincing to a human quality rater or to search engine algo if it finds that most of your links are coming from for say – Middle East or from Russia and they look unnatural. However, do not panic if you are getting links naturally from other English speaking countries, it is quote natural and will help your website gain global exposure.
The point is if you are building links via participating in communities, guest blog outreach, you need to make sure that you are focusing on your code audience i.e. Australian. Once you have a strong hold there, you can expand your presence in some other countries. There is no such problem with that.
-
Hey Tracy- I would say yes it absolutely carrys more weight to get links that are relavent to the country you are marketing for. Look at it this way, if you were marketing insurance for Australia but you only had .fr links do you think it would help or hurt you? As you said, intuitively, it makes sense. With all recent algorithm updates centered at improving relavency and trusted sources, I think you should follow your intuition here. I'm not saying just .com links don't carry weight but I think you will find .au link will be better for your strategy, especially if you are appealing to local customers instead of selling worldwide. Hope that helps, good luck! Mike
-
Normally that's true. Back links from local sites with .au top level domain is better. But in many cases still if you get a high quality say .co.uk link, it can still work pretty well.
Though Link from a site with another language other than English doesn't make much sense and Google see it as fishy/spam in many cases.
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
-
Back links do I need my keyword in them to rank? If so creative way to accomplish this?
The first question is pretty self explanatory. If I do need my keyword I'm trying to rank for in my link example: Looking for a cool skateboard (cool skateboard) is my keyword. Can anyone on here help me come up with some creative ways for me to get folks to post backlinks to my site with that key word in it? Unfortunately my sites url does not have the keyword in my domain.
Link Building | | mr_w0 -
Links from my Own Blog to my Own Website and Link Scheme
Hi There, I use my own blog to give advices and offer information related to my business service. Of course in terms of SEO my blog is useful not only to expand my brand presence but also to acquire long-tail traffic. I use to insert a maximum of one link with a relative matching anchor text in every article of my blog pointing to my own webpage. Said that, the questions are as follows: Am I involuntarily participating in a Link Scheme with my blog? And If so, how many links can I send to my own webpage ? Shall I limit the number of links to a minimum? Thanks a lot for your advices.
Link Building | | Midleton0 -
Can high SERPS and/or social signals minimize Google penalties and a back linking removal question
As I am continually sizing up my competition in the SERPS I have scanned their sites with a fine tooth and comb. I have found that these sites practice in the very things that I have practiced in the past and have removed thinking that may be some of the reasons I was hit with Penguin. Some of these factors are: Link Scheme with sites they own (C Blocks) Content for Search Engines (Keyword rich text) Exact anchor text in back linking profile Yet even though my competition practices in these methods (One site even places exact anchor text in the footer and header of every page for one of their other forum site) they seem to have not even been touched with any of the recent updates. In fact it seems their ranking have increased. In scanning these sites the only major difference that I have been able to see between them and I is that their SERPS are higher than mine and they have way more social signals than me. One site has about 73k facebook likes where I only have about 300. My question is Can Google ignore penalties for sites that have higher SERPS and /or social signals that would effect another site that had lower ones? My other question is related to back links My main site has links from another site I built a long time ago (Pre SEO and not knowing what I was doing) somewhere in the 73k range. Obviously a HUGE signal to Google that this might be spam and I am aware. I have removed the links from that site but unfortunately the average crawl rate per day is very low so it is taking a very long time for Google to find those pages and re-crawl them to find the links gone. Since that site I have than has those links pointing to my main site has very low traffic I am totally willing to kill that entire site with a 404. Can this help speed up the removal of those links from that site? I figure since the site no longer exists all links from that site will be removed almost immediately from my main site. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
1and1 - Ever had any problems? Link Analysis / SEO
Hi there guys, I have a website (www.advanced-incarcamerasystems.com) that I built quickly using the 1and1 service in the UK. I have been an SEOmozzer since about the beginning of June/July time and still not seeing any link info. It also seems to be struggling in terms of SEO. 1and1 have their own built in tools such as modifying certain SEO parts of a website but it really doesn't seem to do much. Our main site (www.advanced-incar.co.uk) has gone from strength to strength since using SEOmoz so im at a bit of a loss. Any help / advice anybody can throw my way would be great! Tim
Link Building | | timborrill0 -
Penalized by SEO Link Wheelers Backlinks
Just over a year ago, I've bought 4 link building packages from SEO Link Wheelers. From what I see now, most of their website network has been penalized / banned and now it's hurting my websites. I've tried to contact them but they won't reply. I'd be willing to pay to have them remove the links but they simply won't answer. And I haven't been rude or impolite at all in my communications with them. I've tried calling them to but to no avail. I know where most of the bad links are, thanks to linkresearchtools.com Now I gotta get rid of that crap. Any suggestions?
Link Building | | sbrault740 -
EBay listing links SEO value?
Hi guys, Our website has an eBay widget which lots of eBay users put on their listings. We are thinking of using that as a way to get links from eBay listings. However, since most eBay listings will disappear after 90 days, is this worth doing and also will Google count those links? Many thanks David
Link Building | | sssrpm0 -
What are the new ways of Link Building which will get quality links?
Hi We are doing following kinds of Link Building: 1. Article marketing 2. Directory Submission 3. Guest Blogging 4. Press Release submission 5. Infographics (Viral Marketing) I know blog commenting and links from discussion forums are considered as greyhat / blackhat by google. So I want suggestions on some other ethical(Whitehat SEO) ways of Link Building to get quality Links. Also suggest me some Free article submission sites which give " dofollow-links" Thank You
Link Building | | Virrtuo0 -
Outsourcing Linkbuilding - Est. Time For Acct Creations & Link Backs From Acct Creation
Concerned about being ripped off... when maybe it takes only 1 hour but they charge instead 5 or 10 😞 Any seo benefits link building wise when creating these accounts do we get a backlink when creating an account and any value from these profile links at all or little ? ATTN: NEED APPROXIMATE TIME HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE FOR EACH IF DONE MANUAL 36 top article directories - 79 web 2.0 sites 34 video sharing sites 50 social bookmark sites 10 top social networking sites 12 rss aggregator sites The question is how do I know that they are not using software like senuke automate the creation of accounts and can this be checked I am afraid of footprints left behind if they use software to create these accounts . Isnare creates accounts for article directories except for a few they say to do on own or they do it manual is this dangerous them using software to do this
Link Building | | helpwanted0