Do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases?
-
do links from unrelated sites dilute your rankings for your key phrases? i've always heard don't get links from unrelated sites but if that mattered, then how would sites with totally diverse pages such as newspaper sites, sears, and other catalogue sites rank for these diverse subjects on their site? How does Facebook rank when it gets 100,000 links a day from sites that have nothing to do with a social media site? I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on this. Also, Do links from unrelated sites give less push than related links?
Take care,
Ron -
Thanks so much Ross!
-
IT won't hurt your site and will probably pass back some benefit but just how irrelevant is it? Back in the days of the Google wonder wheel, I was amazed to see how Google deemed certain topics semantically related.
The best thing to do is look at the domain authority in open site explorer. If it is above 30 you are probably on to a winner. If you were to write an article for SEO Moz that detailed how to do SEO as a musician, that would be a great link and a great article. IF you wrote an article for SEO Moz that explained tri tone substitution or chord progressions, that would be a bad article and a poorer quality link.
If the site is more than a year old i wouldn't be scared of throwing some less relevant links at it, as long as you don't nail the same anchor text and don't leave any footprints.
Hope that helps. .
-
Hey Ron,
That's a great idea. Google won't think you site is an employment site but it will think the page is related to employment in some way.
If you have a link that directs back to your brand promo page this will help it rank for the terms you want.
To make sure the promo page is coming up for the right terms, link to internally with the keyword (or a variation of) that you want to rank for. Also remember to make sure the keyword is in your meta title.
Another thing you might want to look into is getting a gig at the local student unions and making sure they link out to your band page with the official student union site. These types of links would also be valuable long term.
Hope that helps,
Ross.
-
For a good laugh, take a look at what Google's captioning system thinks Ross is saying. I don't think it handles non-American accents as well.
Ross, for the people who cannot view YouTube videos or have audio at their workplace, could you include at least a brief summary in your answer in this forum? Thanks so much!
-
One more question on relevance, is guest blogging for links worth the effort if it's an irrelevant blog but your post is very relevant to your site?
Will the promised "do follow" link you can earn from SEOMOZ hurt your rankings for your key phrases if your site is not an SEO site?
-
Hi Ross! I'm honored that you made a video response for my questions, thanks so much for the extra effort! You said i really needed to be more specific, so here's what actually coined my questions. I have a rock band site that i'm promoting and to get some high authority links, i was planning on creating a page that had lots of employment resources for music students and then email the music colleges in my state this information to get them to link to this employment resource page from their employment resources page and then funnel the page rank to my bands promo pages. Is this a good idea or will Google now think that my band site is an employment site? Thanks in advance for your input!
Take care,
Ron
-
Hey Ron,
Hope you are doing well. I put together a video answering you question for you
Hope you find it helpful.
Thanks,
Ross
-
Interesting question but got some easy answer for this!
Yes, links from unrelated sites are going to impact negatively on your website and possibility you will witness a dip in rankings from your desired key phrases. The reason why websites like newspapers and social media platforms like facebook are ranking when they are getting links from all Tom, Dick and harry websites is because news papers and social media platforms are talking various different topics… news paper in a day talks about international news, business news, talibans, and Hollywood movie reviews… similar is the case with social media so it’s possible for them to link from every different website.
Plus, Links when build have patterns that Google can track, there is a huge difference in pattern between building links and getting links naturally… Google possibility can track this and then analyze things accordingly.
Also, Google have 200+ signals that Google keep in mind when ranking websites against keyphrases so you never know if links are the real problems why you are witnessing a dip in rankings from your desired key phrases.
-
Its not about related or unrelated sites but its about Is it natural ? For example, Suppose I have seo case study of my website and I write blogpost in seomoz in which I mention out URL my website which is natural.
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
-
Why different pages rank in different countries?
Hi all, I have been investigating on why our log-in page is ranking for primary keyword, but not our homepage. I can see now homepage is ranking from our second important country. I wonder why and what causes to rank different pages in different countries for same keyword. Again the statistics does not vary much between these countries. Thnaks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Recommended action for site hit by penguin ?
What is more advisable, though there surely could be debate on this? Back in '07 till sometime around a year ago it seems our site got hit by google's updates, no manual action though, and have seen in past few months disavowed what we could find as well as deleted a lot of links. We are also working on getting word out on the brand as well and trying to get on some business websites to have articles and offer some discounts. Our keyword rankings seem stuck in limbo the past year or so though. Some main keywords for example seem stuck around page 8 when they used to be on page 1. Question is, can what seems to be a penguin update be recovered from? Is Google likely to refresh the algorithm? Also could starting a new site be more worth the investment - starting fresh with natural links, etc And if googles system could pick up that the site is run from same ip, etc. would they care? Also the keyword competition one of Moz's tools said around 46% if that makes a difference for one of the main keywords. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | xelaetaks0 -
Ranking factors
I found this page: http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors Is there any new page with more up to date data ? Thank you i.
Algorithm Updates | | iivgi0 -
How to optimise a news site? - tomorrows chip paper terms
Are there any specific tips to how to gain traffic from very short lived search terms? If the site you are SEO/SEMing want to go for search related to things like the latest celebrity breakup, or a fashion event that lasts less than a week The onsite stuff seems pretty good as SEO onsite tools generally give it an A grade Is it just a case of doing the same stuff as normal, but faster? 😉
Algorithm Updates | | Fammy0 -
Too Many Non-Niche-Specific Links?
Something just occurred to me today. I work in-house for an embroidered patch company, but I respond to a lot of HARO queries about Marketing, SEO, SEM, Web Design, ect. So, we have a lot of links from these types of sites. Additionally, I have done guest blogs on these topics because those are what I'm knowledgeable about. We also have links from customers' personal blogs or websites stating they got their patches from us and are happy, blah, blah, blah. On top of that, we hired someone who ended up getting tons of .edu links by spamming blogs. Oy. I'd estimate only about 10% of our links come from embroidery, sewing, screen printing, promotional products, etc types of sites. I guess it's not really known or documented how much weight Google places on niche-specific links--we just assume that it matters, and I'm sure it does. Our rankings are fine now, but I'm looking for some opinions from other SEOs about how much they think this will matter in the future or how much it matters now. Could this hurt us in the future? .
Algorithm Updates | | UnderRugSwept0 -
How vital is it for a site to have a mobile site for mobile SEO?
With the exponential growth in mobile device sales and usage and an expected 980% growth in advertising next year for/on mobile devices, we at http://www.mobilewebsitegurus.com decided that it was time to help companies create great looking mobile websites that are user friendly and SEO friendly at affordable rates with tons of features built in from the start. However, when selling our design, how important is it to have a GOOD mobile site compared to a big one to rank on mobile devices? We head that Google was thinking of only showing mobile sites on mobile devices. NOT TRUE. Then we read/heard that the rankings were MUCH BETTER if you had a mobile site, but after a lot of research we found that too NOT to be true. On most sites there were NO difference. So what is the TRUTH about this and is it maybe just that it will happen, just has not happened yet - the different rankings for mobile and regular sites on mobile devices that is? ANY insight in this would be great not only for us but for the entire SEO community 🙂 Thanks. ALSO, add "Mobile SEO" to the boxes below of "Topics" since mobile SEO will grow in importance.
Algorithm Updates | | yvonneq0 -
Ranking well for main key terms but site traffic has dropped sharply?
Hello All, Just a quick question. Since the penguin update our site www.caravanguard.co.uk has seen some pretty fluctuating movement in Google, many of our key terms dropped over night, but over the last few weeks they have slowly started to move back up the rankings. The bizarre thing is despite the recover in rankings our unique traffic has taken a fairly large whack in numbers. Seasonality? Weather? ( it's been nice in the UK for a change) I can only assume the longer tail terms are taking more time to recover. I have tried to look into our back link profile and have noticed a little too much in terms concise keyword targeting, How do you go about changing these terms and removing the really bad links (struggling to identify the worst cases) on totally irrelevant sites or poor directories. Put in place before I started here 🐵 Any help truly appreciated. Regards Tim
Algorithm Updates | | TimHolmes0 -
Bounce rate and rankings
I have believed for years that a high bounce rate (from search) could lower your rankings over time. Makes sense; if users bounce right back to search after looking at your page Google should think that page wasn't very useful and will push your down the SERPs. But, how do they determine this? If a user comes back after 30 seconds that's a bounce? Or is my premise incorrect and Google does not take bounce into account? Erin
Algorithm Updates | | ErinTM0