Question Regarding Inbound Links
-
Hi,
I have someone who asked me for some advice on his website and I want to make sure I don't give him the wrong advice.
Basically he runs a mortgage company and is linked to from a popular estate agent. Now he has over 11,000 links coming from this agent because his link appears on each listing. Someone said that the link should be made nofollow which i understand, but it has been like this for over a year and he is ranking highly for a search term that he cannot afford to lose. Should he just leave it as is or should he change it from dofollow to nofollow.
Looking at open site explorer it says he only has 25 inbound links but lists the thousands, but If i remember rightly it only counts links from the same domain once.
Hopefully someone can help me with this as I want to make sure what I tell his is correct.
Thanks
Paul
-
You're very welcome Paul! It's a very important question and had we not seen Penguin, my answer may have been different. It just shows how much that update changed the SEO landscape.
-
Thanks so much for the advice, that is really helpful and makes a lot of sense.
Thanks
-
Personally, I would nofollow.
It's just being proactive - there's a pretty good chance with that amount of links (all the same anchor text as well, I presume? Could be a problem even if branded) that he may get flagged by Google for a penguin penalty. If it was this and only this that trigged the penalty, then it might be a quick and easy fix - but you cannot be sure.
What you can be sure of is that if you make these nofollow, you're much more unlikely to get pinged by the Penguin. So, in a choice of nofollowing now and maybe taking a slight rankings hit, or riding it out and maybe getting pinged in the future and getting a big rankings hit for an indeterminable amount of time, I'd go with the option that I could control.
There could be a compromise - if he can get the links on each listing removed, but can be listed a single time on the homepage as a partner, or on a partners page, if done in a natural way then this could still pass on the majority (if not all) of the link strength, while being a lot more safer in Google's eyes.
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
-
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Link Building | | Stongex0 -
Links
Hi, im wondering if links that is not exact anchor links gives any boost for rankings? Example if lets say somebody links to my site http://domain.com/category/article with anchor: domainname or url link.
Link Building | | Rob_I0 -
A website with a spam score of 5 is back linking to me. How important is to get that link removed?
There is a website that OSE has identified with a spam score of 5, it back links to me with a very specific key word. How important is it to have them remove those links?
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
What is the process of link earning to avoid link building?
Hi All, I want process to earning links for new SEO 2014. Can anybody explain? Thanks, Akhilesh
Link Building | | dotlineseo0 -
Link removel
When removing links should I be worried about bad links from websites that have already been deindexd from Google or should I think that since it is not in these index any more it cant do harm?
Link Building | | Joseph-Green-SEO0 -
Link in the footer
we have a sponsored link in the footer of a website, and since that footer is displayed on each page of that site, it shows that we have thousands of links coming from that site. my question is : does Google consider this as spamming? and does it help us , harm us, or has no effect?
Link Building | | puremobile0 -
Sidebar Links
If I have x number of posts with sidebar having popular posts. Will each post acts as a link to popular posts? or will be penalized for site wide links? Thanks, Venkee
Link Building | | Venkee0