GWT shows 38 external links from 8 domains to this PDF - But it shows no links and no authority in OSE
-
Hi All,
I found one other discussion about the subject of PDFs and passing of PageRank here: http://moz.com/community/q/will-a-pdf-pass-pagerank But this thread didn't answer my question so am posting it here.
This PDF: http://www.ccisolutions.com/jsp/pdf/YAM-EMX_SERIES.PDF is reported by GWT to have 38 links coming from 8 unique domains. I checked the domains and some of them are high-quality relevant sites. Here's the list:
Domains and Number of Links
prodiscjockeyequipment.com 9
decaturilmetalbuildings.com 9
timberlinesteelbuildings.com 6
jaymixer.com 4
panelsteelbuilding.com 4
steelbuildingsguide.net 3
freedocumentsearch.com 2
freedocument.net 1However, when I plug the URL for this PDF into OSE, it reports no links and a Page Authority if only "1". This is not a new page. This is a really old page.
In addition to that, when I check the PageRank of this URL, the PageRank is "nil" - not even "0" - I'm currently working on adding links back to our main site from within our PDFs, but I'm not sure how worthwhile this is if the PDFs aren't being allocated any authority from the pages already linking to them. Thoughts? Comments? Suggestions? Thanks all!
-
Hi Dana,
I'm inclined to think that this is a problem with how the tools process links to and from PDFs rather than the passing of PageRank through PDFs itself as well, although I am not sure. I would certainly not say no to a link to or from a great PDF if that was the only option, although I have also actively encouraged clients to re-publish their quality content housed in PDF format as HTML and redirect the PDF file to the new source. We're just a lot more sure about how authority passes through HTML files.
-
Very interesting Travis. I hadn't even thought to take a look at some competitor's pdfs to see what they are looking like in some of the same tools. Yes, this is something we need to keep testing to see if we can figure out if going through the trouble of inserting links back to our domain is a worthwhile project.
-
That's interesting, but how are the buildings sites relevant? None of them seem to get much traffic over the last couple of years either. The free docs sites appear to have an appreciable amount of estimated traffic, but what of the next Panda update?
Now, for the thought. I checked Sony.com for PDF files via operator. The tenth result was this. It had a Moz PA of 35. The rest were 1s. I couldn't get any backlink information from Majestic or Ahrefs. So, it appears all of our tools are dreadfully broken in this scenario. The best thing to do is more testing.
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
-
New domain wipes out domain authority
A client wanted to change their domain name, which we have now done. The site content itself is exactly the same. We put 301 redirect links in so that Google searchers would redirect from the old site to the new one. However Moz then said that it couldn't crawl the old domain because of the redirects and advised creating a brand new campaign for the new domain. We have done this but now Moz says that the domain authority of the new site is 2 (it was 14 on the old domain). Specifics are:
Technical SEO | | mfrgolfgti
old domain: https://ryemeadcleaning.co.uk
new domain: https://ryemeadgroup.co.uk So basically it seems like we're starting again from scratch with the new domain and all the SEO from the old domain has been lost? Have we done it wrong?0 -
Do you still loose 15% of value of inbound links when you redirect your site from http to https (so all inbound links to http are being redirected to https version)?
I know when you redesign your on website, you loose about 15% internally due to the 301 redirects (see moz article: https://moz.com/blog/accidental-seo-tests-how-301-redirects-are-likely-impacting-your-brand), but I'm wondering if that also applies to value of inbound links when you redirect your http://www.sitename.com to https://www.sitename.com. I appreciate your help!
Technical SEO | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Site's IP showing WMT 'Links to My Site'
I have been going through, disavowing spam links in WMT and one of my biggest referral sources is our own IP address. Site: Covers.com
Technical SEO | | evansluke
IP: 208.68.0.72 We have recently fixed a number of 302 redirects, but the number of links actually seems to be increasing. Is this something I should ignore / disavow / fix using a redirect?0 -
Mobile site domain authority
Hello, I think this may be a coding issue, but hoping someone can help me. I am still having issues with our mobile site ranking, even though we created redirects/canonical to identify similar content between desktop version and mobile. I did notice through MOZ analysis of backlinks that we have no domain authority. If the mobile site is automatically detected dependent on the user, shouldn't we also have the same domain authority? How does that work exactly? How can we build up the domain authority for our mobile site? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Technical SEO | | lfrazer0 -
Explain me the SEO impact when a website has more internal link compared to less internal links
A website that I am working on has more than 200 internal links (Its because of the design and various kind of service that we offer). I want to know its SEO impact. I also want to know the SEO impact when a website has less internal links compared to more internal links
Technical SEO | | BoniSatani0 -
Multiple domains on the same hosting
Hello, I have around 80 sites (different domains) which are on the same host. Everytime I look up the IP of these domains, it gives me the same IP. The sites are interlinked, all linking to the main domain. My question is: Does the off site link building have effect on the 80 sites?
Technical SEO | | Arianittt0 -
Seomoz api for domains working, for domains+directory not?
We're working on a tool using the seomoz api ... for domains we're always getting the right values, but for longer URLs we're having troubles ... Example: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/6-reasons-why-qa-sites-can-boost-your-seo-in-2011-despite-googles-farmer-update-12160 won't work http://www.seomoz.org/blog works Any idea what we might be doing wrong?
Technical SEO | | gmellak0 -
Javascript funtion as link? Why not show up?
We joined our Chamber of Commerce for the "link" as much as anything. After 9 months of having a link from our local chamber it has never showed up anywhere. You can see the link on my Chambers page, and you can click on it and it works. But it does not show up anywhere else....Not in any backlink checker, not in SEOmoz, not in Google Webmaster Tools. When I hover over our link on their page I see "javascript:encodeclick........my url" Is this link worth anything? What is a javascriptencodeclick? Does Google know it exists and give me credit for it? Our Chamber is clueless... they hire someone to do their website. Their webmasters response to my question was: Hi, These links look like this because this is just the way our system parses URLs that are entered into the membership directory so they can be clickable when displayed in the lister. These links will not have a negative effect on Google or SEO indexing purposes if that is what you are concerned about. They are not encoded or encrypted, this just happens to be the name of the Javascript function.
Technical SEO | | SCyardman0