Do sitewide links from other sites hurt SEO?
-
A friend of mine has a pagerank 3 website that links to all my pages on my site on every page of his site. The anchor text of all these links are the title of each page that it links to. Does this hurt SEO? I can have him change to the links to whatever i want, so if it does hurt, what should i change the anchor text to if needed?
Thanks mozzers!
Ron
-
If it's a quality site, relevant to your niche and the links are useful for both sites users, everything should be fine, and both sites could benefit from the exchange.
If in doubt, you can always ask for an editorial link instead of site-wide links.
Check out this video for more info: Whiteboard Friday - Sitewide, Reciprocal, and Directory Links
-
yes, his site is related to mine. it's a music site and so is mine. His site links to about 8 pages on my site with all the links in about the middle of his pages and these links are on about 8 pages on his site. Not too crazy but i wasn't sure if there was something new in google's filters that might cause problems. Google is getting so picky these days
Knowing more about it, what do you think now? Should i leave them or have him change some of the links. I could use some brand anchors or just vary the anchor text a bit. -
I would definitely remove those links. They were unnaturally created. Although you are friends and you are not giving him anything in return (that you mentioned), do those links have any value for his visitors? I mean, when their users are on his site, are they likely to click on those links? If not, then not only those are useless backlinks for users but for SEO too.
-
It really depends on what kind of site your friend's site is? Is it relevant to your business niche? How many links does the site point out to? I think it looks a little unnatural for it to always link exactly to the page title. I prefer one link from one root domain and I try to aim for it not to be in the footer. Can't really say if its going to hurt your SEO effort - only trial and error will let you know
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
-
SEO Links in Footer?
Hi, One of my clients uses a pretty powerful SEO tool, won't mention the name. They now have a "link equity" tool, which they are using on a lot of their client's sites, which include tons of fortune 500 companies. It involves add footer links to your site that change based on the content of the page they are on. The machine learning tries to figure out the most related pages and links to them with the heading tag of that page as the anchor text. Initially this sounds very spammy to me. But then, it seems a lot like "related products" tools that many companies use. The goal for this tool is to build up internal linking, especially for deeper pages on their site. They have over 10,000 currently. What are everyone's thoughts on this strategy?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vetofunk2 -
Dodgy links across top ranking sites in a certain industry - Could this be negative link building?
Hi, I've noticed repeated low value / high spam backlinks directing to a site that I manage, and despite disavowing, new links showing similar anchor text keep appearing. See sample in the table below: <colgroup><col width="514"> <col width="407"> <col width="364"></colgroup>
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Alexanders
| biz.mfso.info/files/images/vertical-blinds-for-bifold-doors.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers vertical blinds for bifold doors |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/install-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers install vertical blinds |
| nmr.mfso.info/files/images/cutting-vertical-blinds.html | | Get free high quality HD wallpapers cutting vertical blinds |
| rre.uere.info/files/images/high-quality-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers high quality vertical blinds rre.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers high quality vertical blinds |
| dig.uere.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds dig.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| dig.uere.info/files/images/mould-on-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds dig.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers mould on vertical blinds |
| hja.uere.info/files/images/cost-vertical-blinds.html | HD wallpapers cost vertical blinds hja.uere.info | Get free high quality HD wallpapers cost vertical blinds | I also looked across 5 high ranking sites in the same industry and noticed they too have these 'dodgy' links in their backlink profiles. Could this be negative link building? If so, does anyone know a way to trace it or get it stop?0 -
Please Correct This on-site SEO strategy w/ respect to all the updates
Hello, I believe my on-site SEO process that I used to use a couple of years ago is not working well anymore for a couple of my sites, including this one. I'll tell you the old strategy as well as my new strategy and I'm wondering if you can give me pointers that will help us rank where we should rank with our PA and DA instead of getting moved down because of what could be our old on-site SEO. OLD ON-SITE SEO STRATEGY: Title tags usually match the page, but title tags occasionally on this site don't match the pages exactly. There's not many of them, but they do still exist in a couple of places. Title tags are either 1. A phrase describing the page 2. Keywords 1, Keyword 2 3. Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 4. Keywords 1, Keyword 2, branding The keywords are in the h1 and h2 of each main page, at the very top of the page. The h1 and h2 do not exactly copy the title tag, but are a longer phrase with the keywords appearing in their exact word order or in word variations. See this page for an example. Keywords occur 3-4 times in the body of the main pages (the pages with a menu link). Right now some of the pages have the exact phrases 3 or 4 times and no variation. meta description tags have exact keyword phrases once per keyword. Meta description tag are a short paragraph describing the page. No meta keyword tags, but a couple haven't been deleted yet. FUTURE ON-SITE SEO STRATEGY: I'm going to change all of the page titles to make sure they match the content they're on exactly. If the title is a phrase describing a page, I'm going to make sure a variation of that phrase occurs at least three times in the content, and once in the meta description tag. Title tags will be either a. Short phrase exactly matching page b. Keyword 1, Keyword 2 | branding c. Keyword 1 | branding 2. I'm thinking about taking out the H1 and H2 and replacing them with one tag that is a phrase describing the page that I'll sometimes put the keyword phrase in, only a variation in it and not the exact keyword phrase - unless it just makes total sense to use the keyword phrase exactly. **I'm thinking of only using the keyword phrase in it's exact words once on the page unless it occurs more naturally, and to include the keyword phrase in word variations two more times. So once (in non-exact word order) in the at the top, once (exact word order) in the text, and two more times (varied word orders) somewhere in the text. All this will be different if the keywords show up naturally in the text. **3. I'll delete all meta keyword tags, and still use exact keyword phrases in meta description tag, though I'll change the meta description tags to always very closely match what the page is about. Do you think my new strategy will make a difference? Your thoughts on any of this?****
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Has my site been penalized by google
Hi all I have noticed a sudden drop in rankings for most of my keywords on kerryblu ,co,uk and was thinking the site may have been manually penalized by google. I have not received any notification of this in webmaster tools but can't think of any other reason for the loss of rankings. I have searched the web for info on this but can't find a definite answer. Is there any way of knowing for sure. At the time of the crash the only real change I made was adding google adsense to my blog. Could this be responsible. Thanks for looking.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Dill0 -
Suggestion for Link Directory Script?
I own a subscription to PHP Link Directory but was wondering if anyone could suggest an alternative link directory script/software/service to PHPLD. Thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | fergusonconsulting0 -
Reciprocal Links NoFollow
I am working on the SEO for a company that sells commercial construction materials and I am noticing that the vast majority of the older, authoritative construction related sites and directories require a reciprocal link to be linked to from their site. 1. If I create a reciprocating link, but nofollow/noindex that page, is that seen as blackhat? Will I see any benefit from this over a link passing page rank? 2. Will these reciprocating links hurt me, or are they worth the risk within a young portfolio? I am seeing well ranked sites listed such as justblinds.com, this would imply they reciprocated a link as well?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GoogleMcDougald0 -
Auto-link inside your own site to the same domain is white-hat?
Hi, I am using a plugin in wordpress that make auto link for some certain keywords in my site suppose: My site is example.com My important keyword is: sample and across the domain example.com through out the content if there is the word: sample it is linked automatically to example.com I like your opinion about this practice, if it may carry any kind of punishment by SEs? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Pooria0 -
Ditching of spammy links - will it be of benefit?
Hi there. We have recently taken over the SEO for a five-star hotel who rank very well already for a lot of their main terms, largely down to the fact they have decent off-site strength (as yet very little on-page optimisation has been done, so they aren't appearing for some quite key terms). This off-page strength includes around 2000 links, giving the home page an authority of 63 in the OSE tool. However, upon looking at the links to check they were pointing to the most relevant page etc, I notice they have A LOT of spammy links, pointing to their site with anchor text like 'cheap cialis' or 'buy valium'. Clearly these aren't the kinds of links that should be pointing to a five-star hotel, but should I expect to see much of a drop by attempting to remove these links? We obviously want to clean their link portfolio up, but I'm not sure they would be too happy if all their top rankings disappeared - even if only temporarily, and even if done with the best intentions. I ask as none of the other sites we handle SEO for have had such a proliferation of these links, so I've not seen the ramifications in full. Any help would be much appreciated, along with advice on the best way to remove these links.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | themegroup0