Linking Out To External Sites
-
Hi, All
If I have created a (website, logo, email campaign) for a client and written an article about it with screen shots on my website and link to them with a (do-follow) link how does Google see the (do-follow) link?
Regards to the sites they have one link in the footer on the home page, which is a (do-follow) back to our site. Also, the websites are not in my Niche.
-
Hey Chris,
Don't get me wrong, I am with you in leaving behind the high risks, my frustration comes more from Google's SERP results and behavior on spam sites than what you say, but I dont think a footer link for a web design company produce any sort of threat or places a site on a "churn and burn" status or even high risk. Then again I bring MNS, quick cash in, affiliates and spam in mind when I see "churn and burn" so it might be me.
-
Yiannis, I agree with you that anchor text has a lot to do with tripping the filter and that some industries are cesspools of spam. But, as a replay to a new SEO practitioner's question, I'll stand by what what I said--it won't get anyone in trouble algorithmically. Yes, I know I sound like Jill Whalen (and Matt Cutts) but the longer I'm in this business, the less I have a problem with that and the more I'm willing to leave the higher risk stuff to those who still have a few sites they're willing to churn and burn.
-
Hi, Yiannis
The anchor text for linking out to the clients is either (visit brand name or visit the website here) . For linking back to my site it is (website by brand name).
-
Hi, Chris
What you said makes sense and if I am reading your post correctly I am better of making all the sites I build (no-follow) back to me because as you said it is a link I am in control of and if I had 100 sites that is 100 (do-follow) links, which if they gain trust and Authority, could make up a part of my link profile.
In theory is this manipulating the search result having links from my clients as a (do-follow), because I am gaining a (do-follow) link with the only purpose of helping my site and in my control?
Also I will make all my internal links (no-follow) to my clients.
-
Sorry to break the Matt Cutts buble here but while I agree with you Kered, this is more theory than practise...or to be precise, it leans more towards the exception than the rule.
For me it always depends on the keyword, the niche and which keywords you target. i have seen industry sectors (for example: "web design" related keyphrases) where indeed what you say is true and others (such as "pest control" related keyphrases) where black hat, 2003 SEO and corruption are present to such an extend it makes me sick. And I am not talking about sort term, unless sort term is 1 year and 7 months I am monitoring this industry and counting, on a sector where top 10 makes thousands of dollars per month.
I wouldn't nofollow any of the links or if I had to I would nofollow the link I send to the client web site. I would keep the footer link and bear in mind 2 things. 1) If you use anchor text you play with the keyword % ratio so be careful or put your brand name there 2) its a footer link, thus not much value.
but nofollow it? No i wouldnt.
-
Hi, Martijn
So I am better of making all links to my work (no-follow) from my website and just leave the link in the footer of the sites I build as a (do-follow) or (no-follow)?
-
Kered,
Just nofollow them and you'll be OK. Don't look at links that you control as an option to help you build your domain authority. Agencies, tend to lean heavily on the sorts of links your talking about because they're so easy to acquire over time. But let me tell you, I've seen hundreds of agencies briefly rise to the top of the search results on the strength of back links from clients, only to fall off the cliff once some threshold has been passed.
You're not going to get dinged for the kind of link you're talking about if it is a singular occurrence or if they make up a small percentage of your total link profile. The problem tends to be though, that one leads to two; two leads to four; four leads to eight and eventually they outweigh all your other links and then, boom, you take the fall.
-
It probably will be seen as a low quality link back to your site and to their site as it probably will be seen as reciprocal. Not sure for what kind of advice you are looking here.
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
-
Help finding someone to handle crashing site/site optimization.
I need someone who can handle website/WordPress issues as they come up.For example, my site has gone down 4 times tonight, and my host can't figure it out. They also keep recommending that I optimize my site, but I don't know how. I need a go-to web person for this sort of thing. Any recommendations?
On-Page Optimization | | cbrant7770 -
Nofollow on internal links
Hi, What do you all think about using nofollow on internal links? On pages that arent so important and use dofollow on important pages maybe for example from the sites menu.
On-Page Optimization | | Rob-0 -
Links in my website are indexed as separate pages
Hi All, We have pages which has names of people which we have created a Alink when clicked it goes to the related persons name. Now Google has indexed it as a seperate page example www.xyz.com/person/name www.xyz.com/person/name?alinks Now the same page is seen in google 2 times. How can i handle this please
On-Page Optimization | | jomin740 -
Question Regarding Site Structure
I have a quick question regarding site structure that I hope some of you guys could share your opinion on. I watched a white board friday from Rand a little while back where he explains that you need to try and make the site structure as flat as possible. He was saying try having no more that 3 links from the home page to get to the desired location. My question is this. I am looking at a site that has a pretty complex structure that I am trying to clear up as much as possible without making any of there rankings suffer. So they have www.domian.com/general-category/district/town/ and sometimes www.domian.com/general-category/district/town/item-specifics Now i know it is not good as it is, but they are dubious about changing too much as they have some serious traffic coming to the site. But, my question is that all the pages can be found from the home page through the menus/sub-menus. But do these count as a direct link from the home page. Also a problem is that because of this mozbot has detected that there are too many links from the home page and suggested that it should be below 200. But should I make these menu links no index or no follow. Obviously, by doing this, if the link does count as direct from the home page it wont after doing this. Thanks Jenson
On-Page Optimization | | jensonseo0 -
Which pages on my site should I back link to
The majority of the back links I have been creating link directly to our home page and to the store page. Is this the best approach or should I be trying to spread the links throughout our site to include product categories and subcategories etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Hardley0 -
Directory site with an URL structure dilemma
Hello, We run a site, which lists local businesses and tag them by their nature of business (similar to Yelp). Our problem is, that our category and sub-category(i.e.: www.example.com/budapest/restaurant or www.example.com/budapest/cars/spare-parts) pages are extremely weak, and get almost no traffic, but most of the traffic (95+ percent) goes for the actual business pages. While this might be a completely normal thing, I still would like to strengthen our category (listing) pages as well, as these should be the ones targeted by some of general keywords, like ‘restaurant’ or ‘restaurant+budapest’. One of the issues I have identified as a possible problem, that we do not have a clear hierarchy within the site, so while the main category pages are linked from the homepage (and the sub-categories from here), there is no bottom-up linking from the business pages back to the category pages, as the business page URLs look like this: www.example.com/business/onyx-restaurant-budapest. I think, that the good site- and url structure for the above would be like this: www.example.com/budapest/restaurant/hungarian/onyx-restaurant. My only issue is, perhaps not with the restaurants but with others, that some of the businesses have multiple tags, so they can be tagged i.e. as car saloon, auto repair and spare parts at the same time. Sometimes, they even have 5+ tags on them. My idea is, that I will try to identify a primary tag for all the businesses (we maintain 99 percent of them right now), and the rest of their tags would be secondary ones. I would then use canonicalization and mark the page with the primary tag in the url as the preferred one for that specific content. With this scenario, I might have several URLs with the same content (complete duplicates), but they would point to one page only as the preferred one, while our visitors could still reach the businesses in any preferred ways, so either by looking for car saloons, auto-repair or spare parts. This way, we could also have breadcrumbs on all the pages, which now we miss completely. Can this be a feasible scenario? Might it have a side-effect? Any hints on how to do it a better way? Many thanks, Andras
On-Page Optimization | | Dilbak0 -
What are the best eCommerce sites from an SEO perspective?
We're working hard on improving our website right now, and would love to get the community's examples of the best eCommerce sites out there, from an SEO and a general customer-centric design perspective...
On-Page Optimization | | reddogmusic0 -
Articles on our own site?
Hi Guy's Is it better to have articles on our own website under a news section, with keyword phrases that point to relevant pages or is it better to post them on our blog (that is seperate, we use blogger) and point them to relevant pages on our site? or maybe a bit of both? Thanks Daniel
On-Page Optimization | | LushDuck0