Relevancy of backlinks for scholarship resource
-
Hello,
We want to build a niche scholarship tool for our Ecommerce site. It will sort through relevant scholarships for a certain demographic, say, Hispanic engineering students for example.
My question is:
If the tool's focus is Hispanic engineering scholarships, and we sell supplies that are in the same general category as products that engineers use, will the backlinks we gain from people linking to our tool be relevant.
The main reason I ask is that I think most backlinks will be from Hispanic sites, and I don't know if there will be enough relevance to make the links help.
What are your thoughts on this?
-
Hi BobGW,
I actually have experience in doing exactly this for one of my sites. I created a free academic archive - in the same niche as my site - as link bait. My results were mixed.I got quite a few new links coming back to the resource, and still do. The problem has been so far that the links are generally from low DA pages like blogs. There are exceptions as I did get a .mil and a few .edu links from it as well. Now, the traffic to the site definitely went up due to the new section as did social engagement. So, just for this it may be said that it was worth it.
But despite all of this, I have not seen any major changes in SERP (up or down) in the last 6 months since this section was released. It just seems like the "link juice" is not transferring in any meaningful way despite a pretty simply site structure. I have also not seen any marked increase in conversions on the site. So, while Google does not seem to be punishing the site for this section, it also does not seem to be giving it credit for this either (even though it ranks well for its own keyword).
In the end, it is as Andrew said, it depends on how much time and money this section will cost you. Based on the current success of this section on my site I would still say the 2 months to create it were worth it. I just hope that the SERP benefits will propagate to the rest of the site in the long term
Good luck.
-
Morning, BobGW,
It depends on the purpose of your question:
- If your question is: will these links help? Yes, they'll help if the links aren't spammy. They may even help you tap into new audiences, keywords, and referrals.
- If your question is: are these links worth your time/money? That depends on your parameters. If it's cheap for you to experiment, experiment. If it's NOT cheap for you to experiment, then it depends on your risk tolerance level. I'd recommend you go for it; you should try to explore the possibility of what those keywords do for your site.
Hope that answers your question!
--Andrew
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
-
Will deindexing a subdomain negate the benefit of backlinks leading to that subdomain?
My client has a subdomain from their main site where their online waiver tool lives. Currently, all the waivers generated by users are creating indexed pages, I feel they should deindex that subdomain entirely. However, a lot of their backlinks are from their clients linking to their waivers. If they end up deindexing their subdomain, will they lose the SEO benefit of backlinks pointing to that subdomain? Thanks! Jay
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MCC_DSM0 -
Do you know if there is a tool that can tell you if a url have backlink?
Hi, Do you know if there is a tool that I can check backlinks for thousands of URLs Thanks Roy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kadut0 -
Do I want backlinks from companies my site has a business relationship with
I automatically think yes... but nofollow links will be safer - that would be my choice as I always err on the side of caution... If I reached out to the entire network with quality content, as I would through a PR campaign, I am wondering whether the pre-existing business relationship would mean the link wouldn't be seen as truly independent by Google. Your thoughts would be welcome, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Can you explain why a site with loads of keywork anchor backlinks is ranking well?
Hi All, A couple of years ago my site got punished and i kind of figured out it was due to keyword anchor text backlinks. I recently was considering getting a new SEO company and found one that promotes another company in my industry. However, when i look at the backlinks, of the website they do SEO for, via open site explorer - I noticed nearly all of the backlinks are keywords. website in question is http://goo.gl/6nRzLi And if you see the search results here: http://goo.gl/9bXoxY they are ranking on first page with very big brands - and have done for about a year - but nealy all of their backlinks are the keywords in this search... I understood this is the kind of thing that killed my website 2 years ago - are these backlinks ok? should i still consider this SEO company to work on my site, i 100% do not want my site to be penalised again so any advice appreciated. thanks James
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | isntworkdull0 -
Handling pages that are no longer relevant (both permanently and temporarily)
Hi, We run a travel site with a number of programs, and each program has its own dedicate page, ie example.com/programs/program-xyz Some of these programs stop running and we no longer offer them, other-times they are on hold and will be reactivated later. Our old strategy was to 301-redirect these programs to another, relevant program. However, I believe that could be flawed. Would it not be a better solution to display the page as normal (with a 200 code) and instead of having the details of the program rather show some text saying the program has stopped and list a few suggestions. I just don't want to set off any spam-flags by pushing SE value via a 301 redirect to unrelated pages Here are some other scenarios I was thinking: For the program are only temporarily on-hold (ie not taking bookings for now) 302 redirect those to more appropriate pages For programs that are permanently on-hold (ie will never take bookings again) show a custom 404 or 410 page (With text with suggestions of different programs) Any suggestions or feedback on this would be most appreciated. -Jason
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Clickmetrics0 -
Are backlinks the most important factor in SEO?
I have had an agency state that "Backlinks are the most important factor in SEO". That is how they are justifying their strategy of approaching bloggers. I believe there are a lot more factors than that including Target Market definition, Keyword identification an build content based on these factors. What's everyone's thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndySalmons0 -
50,000 backlinks in webmaster tools from one site???
Hi All, I'm new to evaluating backlinks, but I just saw I got over 50,000 links from a backlink that was added on ONE page at this site here: http://www.netnewspublisherDOTcom. I presume this is not a good thing, and if I contact them to remove the one link on the one page, it won't solve the other 49,999 links that Google is seeing pointing to us, so what do I do??. Should I contact them and ask to remove it and see if they don't and then disavow? Or would you just tell Google to disavow the whole site? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mlm120 -
Forwarding Empty URLs to Homepage for SEO & Old Backlink Salvaging - Is there any value or risk?
Our company owns about 30 URLs that we aren't currently using. Is there any SEO value to be gained by forwarding these content-less URLs to our homepage if they aren't currently indexed by google? Some of these sites were previously in use at low traffic volumes by companies who licensed use of our brand and URL. After parting ways a year or longer in the past, no 301 redirection was done to save the link juice, so it's long gone at this point. However, there may be some sites on the net that are still linking to various pages on the URL. What would be the best course of action to salvage any value of these URLs until they are in use again as full websites? Insights would be greatly appreciated! Cheers, Justin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | grayline0