Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How important is the originating country of backlinks?
-
How important is it that you gain backlinks from websites in the same country you're targeting?
Scenario: You have a website targeting users in Japan. How important is it that backlinks to your website are from Japanese websites? Do you need a majority of links from Japanese websites to rank well, or will you do OK with 25% Japanese links and 75% links from other countries?
According to Majestic, sites for popular Japanese brands like tsutaya.co.jp and seiyu.co.jp get more links from US sites than from Japanese sites.
-
I agree with Tom. Backlinks can be from anywhere as long as they don't appear to be blatant spam. I tend to agree that a backlink serves a greater purpose than just link juice and may actually send relevant traffic and business to your company. I would try to target as many local links as possible, but branching out to a global mindset won't hurt at all.
-
It's by no means essential.
I've worked on a number of international sites and you quickly realise that while a website is setup with a geographical TLD and is fully served for that language's audience, the server is located in the US - where so much hosting is. Regardless, this has not stopped the site's ability to rank.
Similarly, evidence of links from a different country working can unfortunately be found in places like SAPE - the russian link network. I've seen countless of websites rank #1, #2 with links from these websites in Russia, Uzbekistan and so on - Google wouldn't be targeting these links if they didn't work.
However, my mindset has always been to acquire links from places that are going to send the most targeted and relevant traffic to your site. In the scenario you've given, this would most likely mean trying to earn as many Japanese backlinks as possible. Links from other places may increase organic visibility, but more often than not referring traffic from links you've earned can be far more qualified and convert more often - so I would aim to get them via links from the country.
Just my £0.02
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
-
Are backlinks from the Episode Description field on Spotify "follow" or "no follow"?
Are backlinks from the Episode Description field on Spotify "follow" or "no follow"?!
Link Building | | FLLocal0 -
Why are there less backlink domains in Moz vs. Semrush?
For our domain studyville.com, Semrush is reporting 46 linking domains, and Moz is reporting 7. Does anyone know where there is such a large discrepancy?
Link Building | | shelbythomas0 -
Best Name for Business and Backlinks / SEO
Sorry if this is a basic question I should know the answer for. We have just acquired the .org for a moderately well searched keyword set. Our objective is to fight for rank specifically on this one set of two keywords. We want make sure our site is setup and business named optimally for this. Here is my question. What is the best business name for SEO and keyword rich backlinks, or anything else I'm not thinking of? KEYWORDS: Blue Widget DOMAIN: BlueWidget.org BUSINESS NAME OPTIONS: A) simply BlueWidget.org. We like this but do we lose some benefit of "Blue Widget" with a space on backlinks? **B) Blue Widget Foundation. Is this better because people will reference us by the keywords with a space "The Blue Widget Foundation", instead of "from the people at BLUEWIDGET.org"? ** Am I missing anything important here in the name? We just want to start everything off on the right foot. Thank you Moz. Just joined and my first post.
Link Building | | RetBit0 -
Best Backlink checker - OSE or Hrefs?
Hi Guys I am looking for a new back link tool but i'm not sure which one to go for. Should I continue using Open Site Explorer or should I go for something else like Ahrefs.com or something else?
Link Building | | AndersDK0 -
Web Designers and SEOs using backlinks from client sites
What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites. For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website. My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised. That's what I believe! However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly. Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it? Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course). The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this. If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.
Link Building | | littlesthobo0 -
Frustrated with spammy backlinks from competitors
I've only been doing SEO for my company for the last month and I've made some headway but what is really frustrating me right now is a couple of competitors that have OBVIOUS spammy links ranking in the number 1,2,3 stops all over the board for the keywords i'm going for. One competitor in particular has anchor text links EVERYWHERE that make absolutely no sense...junk like... "I have never been more saddened by anything in my life than when my grandfather got cancer. I told my uncle he needed to buy some auto insurance. I really like pork." I mean, these links are the pages with the most page authority and page rank out of all of the ones they have...and I'd venture to say that almost all of their backlinks are like this...well, half of them are just random links with good anchor text on the sidebar of a bazillion spam websites (diapers, toys, fake blogs, etc.)...while i have about 3k links and most of my top competitors have about 5k links...these guys have over 33k. Worse yet, when I look at something like Alexa rank, they have pretty high overall traffic rank but it shows traffic rank in MX (mexico) instead of the US...these guys only sell in the US! I mean, they're black hat if I've ever seen such a thing and they rank superbly on all keywords. What can I do to compete with this junk?
Link Building | | jgower0 -
What are "naked backlinks"?
Hello SEOmozers! I have a question for you all. What are "naked backlinks"? Can you also give an example? Thank you! woo aka STPseo
Link Building | | STPseo0