How valuable or not is javascript linkback from a competitor?
-
A sector competitor has decided to link to me using the method[](javascript:OpenLink('http://www.example.com'))
[It's a contextually rich page and the link is in the body surrounded by relevant text although not so high in the code](javascript:OpenLink('http://www.example.com'))
[Moz Metrics of the page/domain linking to me are:
PA 30 mR 2.67 mT4.61
21 links from 9 root domains
Root Domain DA 88 DmR 6.77 DmT 6.68 2.6m links from 24k domainsIs the method of linking to me strictly from an SEO perspective:
A. Positive
B. Neutral
C. NegativeThanks!](javascript:OpenLink('http://www.example.com'))
-
Contrary to Theo I'd say: A. Positive
Pretty sure Google has been following js open links for many years now. I'd be reasonably confident of saying even if you did something tricky like href="javascript:CleverFunction('http://example.com')" and CleverFunction was designed to add nofollow/ open in new window, that Google would still be able to follow it from the url within the href.
You could quite easily set up a test for a page that only has a link like this pointing to it and see if it gets indexed.
The only thing I might not be totally sure of is if it passes juice, but I think as of mid 2009 it does (as I'm sure Google no longer endorsed js links as a method for preserving link juice).
-
B. Neutral
Pretty much the answer I've landed on by excluding the other two. Because this link is Javascript based and the engines are to my knowledge not following these kind of links (please correct me if I'm wrong), it won't give you any positive value. Giving that you're not doing anything illegal or bad, I don't see how this could affect your website's SEO negatively either. Thus, I would say that B best describes the value of this link from an SEO perspective.
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 our competitor with lower DR and PA outranks us in Google?
Hi everyone, I really don't understand why our competitor with lower DR and PA outranks us in Google.lv (Google Latvia). Below is a screenshot showing that our company takes #2 for the following keyword "gāzes baloni" in Google. Our DR is 24 and our PA is: 26, whereas our competitors DR is 23 and their PA is 19. The content on our page is much better too - we have clear Title, description, Q&A section etc, whereas our competitor has very limited content, just photos of the product and titles. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance. PYNPLNw i1lp4QI NriO6O4
Technical SEO | | Intergaz0 -
I am Using Wix website creator. Will google be able to read the javascript?
I tried using some of the moz tools like the "on page grader" and it was not able to read any of the writing on my webpage because wix uses javascript. Will this impact my rankings on google compared to my competitors? The New Wix websites allow you to build a website in HTML. Should I switch to this? Thanks, Jonathan
Technical SEO | | H1_Marketing_Solutions0 -
Just saw a competitor jump in rank by double digits, questioning my url structure choice now.
Currently I have for our big keyword oursite.com/big-keyword/ and clicking on a material type will be oursite.com/big-keyword/material-type/ Our competition has **theirsite.com/big-keyword/ **and when you click on their material type **theirsite.com/material-type-big-keyword/ ** The also have 20 some pages, while we have around 652 as a eCommerce site as well, not sure why they jumped so high in rankings, while their backlink structure is so small still and they have a DA half of ours. I'm in the middle of a site redesign and very close to restructuring the urls the way they have it, since it really seems to have worked well. How do you feel about that?
Technical SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Javascript is redirecting search bots to mobile
Here is the javascript I am using to send users to the mobile version of my website: This is causing major issues in Bing and Yahoo as the mobile website is the only thing ranking. I'd love any help dissecting this issue. Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | ShawnW0 -
Can I use high ranking sites to push my competitors out of the first page of search results?
I'm looking at a bunch of long tail low traffic keywords that aren't difficult to rank for. As I was idly doing a boring task my mind wandered and I thought.... Why don't I ask lots of questions about these keywords on sites such as Moz, Quora, Reddit etc where the high DA will get them to rank for the search term? The results on a SEO site or Q&A site won't be relevant and so I'd starve my competitors of some of their leads. Of course I'm not sure the effort would be worth it but would it work? (and no, none of my long tail keywords are included in this post)
Technical SEO | | Zippy-Bungle3 -
Competitors Dodgy Link Profile - How to handle?
Hi All, One of my competitors doesn't seem to mind collecting links with no relevance and over optimisation of anchor text also leaves me scratching my head as to ho wit's possible for them to still get the rankings they do. My question is how do I handle them from a competitive point of view? Do I pay for a batch of poor links to topple this competitor? Or do I bide my time? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Mulith0 -
Optimizing a website which uses JavaScript and jQuery
Just a quick question (or 2) If I have divs which are hidden on my page, but are displayed when a user clicks on a p tag and the hidden div is displayed using jquery a user clicks on an a tag and the hidden div is displayed using jquery with the href being cancelled in both examples, will the hidden content be optimized, or will the fact it is initially hidden make it harder to optimize? Thanks for any answers!
Technical SEO | | PhatJP0 -
Buying a SERPs competitor domain / site
For a specific term, we have the potential opportunity to purchase the domain (complete with site) that sits just above us in the Google search results... The domain has reasonable page authority of 49, domain authority of 38 with 168 linking root domains - 311 total links... Would the most beneficial use of the domain be to retain the site content as is and incorporate a few relevant links back to our site or... 301 the entire domain?
Technical SEO | | digitalarts1