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 does Google know if a backlink is good or not?
-
Hi,
What does Google look at when assessing a backlink?
How important is it to get a backlink from a website with relevant content?
Ex:
1. Domain/Page Auth 80, website is not relevant. Does not use any of the words in your target term in any area of the website.
2. Domain/Page Auth 40, website is relevant. Uses the words in your target term multiple times across website.
Which website example would benefit your SERP's more if you gained a backlink? (and if you can say, how much more would it benefit - low, medium, high).
-
Based on my conversations with Google, relevance is absolutely something to think about - if your site is all about oranges and you get links from sites/even blogs that are all about cars, it's flag because it can look spammy.
Unless it's an outlier and is just one (or two) random links from sites that aren't related in content to yours, you risk harming yourself by connecting your site with unrelated content.
-
Thanks for reply Greg.
Glade you mentioned Guest blogging because that's what im talking about really.
Yeah I spoke to Ann Smarty from My Blog Guest and she agreed, DA over relevance (to a certain extent).
What happens though if you guest post 5 articles to say DA60 blogs where your in travel and the blogs are in SEO?
I would have thought 5 guest posts on DA40 blogs where your in travel and so are the blogs your posting on would have worked a lot better.
It's a tough one for me.
-
Relevance is important, but then so is the domain authority and trust.
A link from a news website for example. Its unrelated, but can provide a powerful boost for your websites "trust"
Your main objective in my opinion should be to get links on relevant websites, however you can mix the two by getting links from high authority, unrelated websites as well. There are a few guest bloggers on SEOMOZ who link to their companies websites totally unrelated to SEO,
lets say you already had a mix of relevant as well as unrelated high authority links and you had to choose between DA80 (unrelated) and DA40 (related)
I would go with the most powerful site, DA80
Greg
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 possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using Google Search Console?
We have a client that will not grant us access to their Google Search Console (don't ask us why). Is there anyway possible to submit a XML sitemap to Google without using GSC? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB0 -
Google Penalty Checker Tool
What is the best tool to check for the google penalty, What penalty hit the website. ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Michael.Leonard0 -
Bit.ly backlinks
Hi all, what experience do you have with Bit.ly links? Can I use it for backlinking management?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormar3 -
Geo-Redirect: good idea or not?
Hi Mozzers, The background: I have this very corporate .com domain which is used worldwide. Next to that, we have another .com domain which is specifically created for the US visitors. Within the organic rankings, we notice that our corporate domain is ranking much better in the US. Many visitors are arriving on this domain. As it is a corporate domain being used worldwide, they get lost. My questions: I know there are ways to redirect by location. Would it be smart to automatically redirect US visitors for the corporate domain to the commercial US-specific domain? Is it possible to only redirect US visitors and leave the website as it is for visitors from other countries. Won't this harm the corporate website (organically) worldwide? If this would be a good idea, any recommended plugins or concrete procedures? Thank you so much for helping me out!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Sander0 -
Are backlinks the most important factor in SEO?
I have had an agency state that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO". That is how they are justifying their strategy of approaching bloggers. I believe there are a lot more factors than that including Target Market definition, Keyword identification an build content based on these factors. What's everyone's thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndySalmons0 -
How to NOT appear in Google results in other countries?
I have ecommerce sites the only serve US and Canada. Is there a way to prevent a site from appearing in the Google results in foreign countries? The reason I ask is that we also have a lot of informational pages that folks in other countries are visiting, then leaving right after reading. This is making our overall Bounce Rate very high (64%). When we segment the GA data to look at just our US visitors, then the Bounce Rate drops a lot. (to 48%) Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GregB1230 -
Can Google read my backlink in Javascript??
Hi SeoMoz community! I have a software product, which our clients implement onto their websites. It is like a pop up box. I know that backlinks are very important for SEO ranking, and I really want to give our clients 2 options of product: 1. you can get the free/cheaper option if you use the code which has a keyworded backlink to our site on it 2. you can pay small fee if you don't want to use the version with a link to our site on it Now, the problem is that the product is written entirely in Javascript, and I don't think that Google crawls this, do they? Is there a way around this? Thanks for your help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qdigi0
