Minimum Link Qualifications
-
I'd like to get everyone's thoughts about the minimum quality/authority thresholds that you look for in link-building.
What is the minimum PA/mR/mT/DA/DmR/DmT that you like to see before investing time in acquiring a link?
At what point is the link not worth the effort (or, in the case of a directory listing, the cost) of acquiring it?
-
Thanks for the responses.
I know I could have gotten the link by now. It's not a question of time but of money, but let's not get too sidetracked by that.
I've paid for Yahoo, etc., directory listings and have seen some benefit, especially for new sites that I am trying to get on the map in terms of SEO.
We're getting hung up on a diversion (the fact that I'm paying for the directory listing). People pay to join BBB, Chamber of Commerce, Yahoo, Business.com, etc., because the sites are authoritative directory listings. Most of them wouldn't do it without the link because they know the link carries SEO value. I would submit this isn't the same thing as paying an Indian SEO for a link from his buddy's spammy site. If you disagree, fine. But maybe we could hold of the "don't by links" refrain for a little while. I know that some folks have been drinking the Google Kool-aid for so long that they can't think about this sort of thing logically. I'm not doing anything black hat here. So let's forget about the paid part. What I want to know is this: What is a worthwhile link? Assume it takes me 4 hours to get every single link and I don't pay a dime for any of them. What links are worth targeting and which aren't?
Thanks again for your thoughts. Any additional comments would be appreciated. I am new to the SEOmoz tools (still in the evaluation period) and am trying to find out if they will help me with link-building.
-
don’t buy links they don’t work long term.
Don’t bother about page rank and the stuff, in the time you are debating wether of not you could of got the link. every natural link is good, and you will surprised what links give you a boost.
-
If you're going to pay for it then treat it like a paid ad. Compare CPC (and conversions) for that listing (ad) over time, compared to other paid ads you could buy. If it's a low cost, high-performing ad then maybe it's worth it.
I have had many discussions with people who have paid to be in relevant sections of Yahoo!'s paid directory (for example) and almost all of them told me it's not worth it.
Now, if you have some niche directory with relevant traffic (and a lot of it), and if your competitors are all listed there already then it might be worth it.
But, personally, I'd rather save my moeny and let the organic (free) links/traffic build up over time. Buying link juice via paid links is not a good idea (IMHO). It is a recurring charge and just gets to be too expensive over time. Now, if you are getting profitable conversions from it then that's totally different. I'm just addressing the idea of buying link juice.
-
Thanks for the response, but how can you say you wouldn't do it without knowing the value it would pass to your site? I assume it's worth something to be listed in a high authority directory. My question is: Where is the cut off?
BTW, it's a paid directory, but it's not spammy (think BBB, Chamber of Commerce, etc.). It has value other than the link, but the link is what I am most interested in.
I don't put much stock in PR. I'm looking at the mozrank quality indicators.
-
Are you talking about a paid link in a niche directory, or a free link? Obviously if it's free (and not spammy) then just do it. It's worth it. If it's paid then I probably wouldn't do it.
Your biggest cost will be time, since you probably don't want to pay cash for any links. To be time efficient, you need to be really organized with a spreadsheet or 3rd party software and, yes, start by eliminating low-ranking pages. Go for the gold first. Work on those PR7 and higher sites. Then PR6, and so on down the line. Do everything that is relevant (and on-theme) that is PR5 or higher. Below that you can work on them as time allows.
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a site that is a year old, we have been building backlinks organically - probably around 50 or so - then almost overnight we had100s of spammy links. Screenshot here: https://ibb.co/cijiub My questions: Should I disavow these? What happens if I don't disavow these? Can I work out where they came from? If I disavow a few of them, is this a token offering to the Google Gods that will lower my risk of being penalised? Thank you. cijiub
Link Building | | Bee1591 -
Are links from charities really better than 'normal' links.
Hi Guys. Just wondering about this idea that links from Charities are particularly good. I've heard people say that links from .org sites are particularly strong. But anyone can get a .org domain, it's just that charities tend to use them more often. Right? I just don't get the logic. Can anyone give more detail about this? Is it a myth? Is there quality info on this topic I can check out? We're working with several charities at the moment, and they all seem happy to blog and link to us...so I just wanted to know a little more. Isaac.
Link Building | | isaac6630 -
Link Relevance vs Link Authority ?
Hi guys, I have a quick question regarding some low quality links my site is getting. From the information in Open Site Explorer, the website Im talking about has a page authority of 16 while the domain authority is 11\. These are very low quality scores in my oppinion and Im thinking of removing them with Google Disavow Tool. The thing is that, although the domain is low quality, the links have relevance as they're in the same business sector as us. More exactly, the name of the domain is taxisavona and the company I work for is also a taxi company. So, now I`m thinking, should I disavow the link because of it's low scores or should I leave it because it is relevant to our business ? Thank you in advance! Best regards, Tiberiu Iavorenciuc
Link Building | | Tiberiu0 -
Disavow and link analysis
I am trying to work up a list of Domains to disavow from old SEO black hat (long time ago) and I think some recent bad SEO against the site. I found a few good articles here and started the process. Very daunting even on a site that never had a lot of link work done on it. One particular issue has my attention and need advice on what to do with it. I find 100s of backlinks that all resolve to the same IP 72.215.225.9 . Has anyone else seen this one. These are sites such as mengems.com or http://www.downey-realestate.com . I am using NetPeak Checker to grab stats on the backlinks after gathering backlinks for 5 different sites. These site all seem to come from Majesticseo and sure enough if I ping any of them they return 72.215.225.9 on at first and then go not found. They return a 200 in NetPeak . I was hoping not open thousands of backlinks to see if they existing before I create my Disavow list. Couple of questions. 1. Any harm in putting these on the disavow if in fact they really don't exist anymore? Do the disavow police not like your list being longer than it needs to be ? I am leaning to just leaving all of them off my list. Seems I read something that says dont ask google to disavow something that no longer exists because they are not penalizing you for it. 2. If I start with the most egregious Bad and ex-black hat domains and submit them, wait 3 weeks and the Penguin hit rankings do not recover at all then how to add to the list. Do I leave all the original disavows on the list, add to it and resubmit ? 3. My first thought was to simple send a list of all domain that have no Google indexed pages regardless of return status code. Basicly saying please clean the slate of this crap.....thoughts on this? Thanks jw
Link Building | | freestone0 -
Linking to a pdf
Hi All I have a pdf that people can download from my site, what I want to know is that when people link to the pdf does the pdf share link power to pages linked to from within the pdf (like a html page would) or is the link power being waisted going to the pdf and should I somehow get the links to a normal page? The pdf is a free downloadable resource to people in the party planning industry and so gets linked to quite a bit by sites telling their readers to get the information we provide. Thanks for your thoughts Sean
Link Building | | SKE0 -
Does a hashtag link pass the same amount of link juice as a link without a hashtag?
Example 1: link to: http://www.domain.com/#something-inside-the-page Example 2: link to: http://www.domain.com/
Link Building | | adriandg0 -
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
How long does it take for crawlers to update links? As in number of back links
Link Building | | tom14cat140 -
What link would be better?
Okay, I found a niche blog that has a google PR6. They have a ton of dollow blogroll links, as well as a ton of internal links on homepage. Would I be better off getting the blogroll link? Getting a link in an existing post with a lower PR? Getting an advertiorial written with a link in it? I just don't know. It has a domain authority of 33 currently. It's not a cheap link for blogroll. The in-post, or advertorial isn't too bad, but not cheap either. Thanks in advance.
Link Building | | azguy0