Internal links, new pages & Domain Authority
-
I have two questions regarding Domain Authority:
1. Is it possible that a drop in Domain Authority may have been caused by adding a blog and blog posts? In other words, would adding pages/posts dilute the site's authority? And will it catch back up with itself or will that require inbound links to those new pages? (oops! that was 3 questions in one)
2. Would it be detrimental to have internal links coming from blog posts without authority to my Home page and could that have contributed to a drop in Domain Authority?
Thanks!
-
Thanks, Everyone!
I am basing the Domain Authority on the seoMoz number on my reports. It went from mid/high 40's to 39. Page Authority for Home is 49. MozRank is 4.32, MozTrust 4.60.
While not innovative or groundbreaking, our content is original and not duplicated, thin or syndicated at all. I have not checked bounce back rates on the blog pages.
The links to the Home page from the blog were not part of the navigation structure, but internal links from the content. I have now deleted the links I was concerned about. I think they were too keyword stuffy. I have never employed spam tactics but I do sometimes get a little carried away with on-page optimization for keywords.
We have never had a ton of traffic as we offer a primarily local service that doesn't bring a lot of frequent traffic. And then we lost traffic a few months ago due to losing position in the SERPS for our 2 main keywords, so we have very little traffic.
-
I agree with this response.
1. It's not diluting your page authority.
2. The links only hurt you if your blog is employing some spam tactics.
-
I don't believe adding a blog to a website would generally cause a drop in authority. But here are a few scenarios where I feel it could drop your authority.
- It could be negative if the content added to that blog section is duplicate content.
- It could be negative if the content is too thin in that blog section.
- It could be negative if the bounce back rate is too high in the blog section.
- It could be negative if the blog is overly syndicated to other low quality blogs.
So unless you fall into one of those, then I don't think your drop in authority is likely related to you adding a blog. Now if you lost rank, then perhaps google is trying to determine between pages that are too similar which one should rank.
To your 2nd question, internal links to your homepage will most likely not hurt you especially if they are part of the navigation structure. It is natural for a page to link back to the home page in the navigation. But links to your home page within the blog content that are keyword stuffed could hurt you, these links are not natural.
Have you lost a significant amount of traffic? What exactly do you consider a loss of authority?
-
Adding pages / posts should not dilute your site's authority. Is the new content you added unique/original or is it copy/pasted from another source?
I would recommend interlinking the blog posts to certain key pages on your site where possible and within reason.
There are changes being made to search engine algorithms every day, it's sometimes had to say if a drop or rise can be attributed to something you did or something the search engine did.
Scott
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
-
WordPress Category page title h1 or h2
Hi friends, I know this is a minor technical change, but we are in an extremely competitive market and I don't want to have any points against us. On our WordPress Category pages i.e. http://www.domain.com/category/�tegory-title%/ I looked at the code behind the the Title of the category page, which is "Browsing: %Category Title%" The code is an h2. I look at the posts in the category archive below, and those are also h2's. The theme preview is here and you can click on Entertainment - Reviews to see exactly what I'm referring to - http://themeforest.net/item/smartmag-responsive-retina-wordpress-magazine/full_screen_preview/6652608 I changed the code for the "Browsing: %Category Title%" to h1, which I believe is more consistent and standard formatting. 1. Is this a correct technical on-page optimization? 2. Would it be beneficial to remove "Browsing"?
Web Design | | JustinMurray0 -
2 or more wordpress installs on 1 domain
Hi ....I need to know if anyone has any concerns of running 2 or more WordPress installs on one domain and if so what would the concerns be. The situation is that we have a static html site that has a WordPress blog....and it is installed in example.com/blog/ . We will upgrade the static site to WordPress and this WordPress install will be in example.com/monkeys/ and then we will point its address to the root and make all other needed changes when ready to go live...but the install will stay in its own directory. So bottom-line is we have one domain with two WordPress installs that are each installed in their own sub directory and run from their own independent databases. There are quite a number of reasons for us to want to do this but I wont get into that......I just want to know if anyone has any concerns with this setup? The research we have done says its OK as well as our hosting provider....but before we get cracking we thought maybe one more "educated" input would make us feel more comfortable. Thanks
Web Design | | nomad-2023230 -
Best Practice For Website Redesign & Migration
Hi, I'm looking to redesign my current live website to a new Wordpress site using "Studiopress Enterprise Theme". I'm new to Wordpress and therefore will be embarking on lots of testing & development.
Web Design | | Mark_Ch
I do not want to hurt my current live website whilst testing the new Wordpress site. However, it would be nice to bring the test site into the current live environment without changing untold urls, etc. Question
What is the best practice to setup this new Wordpress environment for my domain: www.sampledomain.co.uk How would you restrict Google, Bing, etc from indexing, etc. whilst testing in the live environment. What other consideration should I be aware of Thanks Mark0 -
Simple Wordpress Question regarding Footer Link
I have a client with a site that has the company that built their website's link in the footer. How can I remove this? I am pretty proficient with Wordpress but I am drawing a blank. The site is www.northatlantacleaning.com Thanks and I do extend the courtesy of awarding 'Best Answer' and thumbs up etc to good responses.
Web Design | | Atlanta-SMO0 -
Yes or No for Ampersand "&" in SEO URLs
Hi Mozzers I would like to know how crawlers see the ampersand (& or &) in your URLs and if Google frown upon this or not? As far as I know they purely recognise this as "and" is this correct and is there any best practice for implementing this, as I know a lot of people complained before about & in links and that it is better to use it as &, but this is not on links, this is on URLs. Reason for this is that we looking to move onto an ASP.Net MVC framework (any suggestions for a different framework are welcome, we still just planning out future development) and in order to make use of the filter options we have on our site we need a parameter to indicate the difference on a routing level (routing sends to controller, controller sends to model, model sends to controller and controller sends to view < this is pattern of a request that comes in on the framework we will be using). I already have -'s and /'s in the URLs (which is for my SEO structuring) so these syntax can't be used for identifying filters the user clicks or uses to define their search as it will create a complete mess in the system. Now we looking at & to say; OK, when a user lands on /accommodation and they selects De Kelders (which is a destination in our area) the page will be /accommodation/de-kelders on this page they can define their search further to say they are looking for 5 star accommodation and it should be close to the beach, this is where the routing needs some guidance and we looking to have it as follow: /accommodation/de-kelders/5-star&close-to-the-beach. Now, does the "&" get identified by search engines on a URL level as "and" and does this cause any issues with crawling or indexation or would it be best to look at another solution? Thanks, Chris Captivate
Web Design | | DROIDSTERS0 -
Footer Links For Web Design Agencies - Bad?
So today Google have updated their Webmaster Guidelines and they have drawn particular attention to their update relating to Link Schemes. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356 Unless you have had your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears since February then most people are aware of the types of link schemes that the updated is refering to but there is one area that isn't so black and white for me. "Here are a few common examples of unnatural links that violate our guidelines: Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites" We are a design agency and we design and build lots of websites for our clients. It is pretty standard practice for agencies to add a credit to the footer of websites and we pick up a lot of work from people that see a site that they like and click through the footer link to our site. Our footer credit is standard on all of the websites that we create:- Website by Teapot Creative Only the 'Teapot Creative' part of the credit is anchor text so we are only linking using our brand name with no intention of manipulating search results. Is this going to hurt us? or will the fact that we are only linking using our branded term and without any SEO intent keep us in the clear? Thanks.
Web Design | | AdeLewis
Ade.0 -
One big page vs. multi-step pages
Hi mozers! Brand new to SEO and LOVING it! Having several key questions that I don't see answered yet, but I'll start with one we've been very curious about. Consider this guide we have for Forming a Delaware Corp.
Web Design | | Mase
https://www.upcounsel.com/Free-Legal/Guide/17/Form-A-Delaware-Corporation This is our overview page, giving you a breakdown of what this process involves. We love this page, but (Question1:) does it lack better real "content" rather than lots of links to the guide process itself? Then, you can start to walk through the guide beginning with step one, where each step has crowd sourced answers to it. But as you see, the step pages are all very similar, except for the answers and step info. (Question 2) Would it be better to put all our answers into the one overview page and skip having separate pages for each step? We like the process and simplicity of seeing one step at a time, but then these pages don't seem to have enough unique content on them. Related, at what point (if any) is a page too big with too much content and considered bad for SEO? We're recovering from a big hit from Google, and slowly recovering by nailing down various SEO mistakes. We DO have great, unique and valueable content - now we just need it to rank!0 -
How much content is too much? Best Pages For Content?
To my understanding content has a lot to do with organic rankings if written correctly. My question is, how much content is too much and what pages are best to place content. Our company sells very costly products. Our customers call to purchase, we do not have an eCommerce site. Write now we have on average 350 words per page. We have about 200+ pages. Each page is written for that general category and each product has its own unique content. It seems to me that the pages with less content, tend to rank a bit better. As we are in the process of redoing our website, is there any recommendations on writing content, or adjusting the amount of text. I am thinking a lot of our text is informative only to a certain extent. Would writing content just for the main category page be better, and then on the actual product page, have only about 250 words as a description? Are there any other recommendations for SEO that are fairly new? Besides the Title, Description, Heading Tags, Image Alts, URLS etc.
Web Design | | hfranz0
