What are the lowest acceptable metrics for a link?
-
I understand there is a subjective, human factor when deciding to link to/from a site.
Nonetheless, what are the lowest Moz or Majestic metrics that are acceptable when building links. At what point do you say this site doesn't have the profile I would want?
I am looking to clean up the backlink profile of a site. Also, I would like to set a criteria for building links in the future.
I appreciate your thoughts on metrics when it comes to link building.
-
Like others have said, DA is just a number and in today's Googles eyes, it's all about relevancy of the page, rather than the page authority.
Also a site might have a high DA, but if the link juice doesn't pass down to the page where the link is, DA is irrelevant.
how about looking at links in a different way. Instead why not image Google doesn't exist and the only way to get relevant traffic to your site is from other websites talking and sending referral traffic (through a link). You would then only place links where you know you would get decent traffic and sales - think like this and you will get the relevant links and rank nicely. DA and numbers are irreverent then, it's all about relevancy
-
While I understand you are looking for the lowest metrics that are acceptable, I think that is the wrong way to go about it. The focus should not be on the metrics and instead on the users and the relationship. In fact, if you hone in on only authoritative sites, your link footprint will appear very unnatural. Basically, it is unnatural to have ALL authoritative links and that does not look good to the search engines.
There was a great post by James Finlayson on moz last year. This post will hopefully do a better job explaining this than my brief answer:
http://moz.com/blog/how-guest-bloggers-are-sleepwalking-their-way-into-penaltiesAlthough the post was about guest blogging, it definitely pertains to your situation as well. Imagine you arbitrarily decide that the lowest DA you want is 30. Your link graph will look a ton like the unnatural one under the Link Quality section. Instead, just focus on building relationships and links where it simultaneously profits users and your brands and the outcome is guaranteed to be good.
-
All of the numbers are borderline arbitrary. I would simply state; "Don't be stupid." That will get you further than anything.
-
Chasing the domain authority for links is not really as straight forward as that.
- Domain has DA of 50 but not really related, is starting to crack with poor content etc
- Domain has DA of 15 is spot on in terms of directly related content and quality. It's a new site and looks like it will develop.
- A good link profile will have a natural mix of low to high DA, with an upturn for the most common 30-50 DA. This will include a good sprinkling of no-follow. When researching I tend to filter 25+ but keep an open mind on everything.
For cleaning up a profile you can't look at those measurements, you need to go into each site and manually check out it's content and history, its own link profile and make a judgement if you are in the right neighbourhood. Of course directories, 'comments' links and badly placed 'articles', thinly veiled paid for (do-follow) are much easier to weed out.
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
-
Does this count as a link?
Somebody listed me on their site with this link code A Link Between Worlds Walkthrough It does this weird redirect tracking thing to my site. Would that count as a link back to me?
Technical SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Junk/ Spammy Links Help
I am trying to get rid of all of the junk/spammy links from a site. Problem I am running into is OSE is only showing 7 links and there are way more than that. Is there a reason for only a few links are showing? How would I go about seeing all the links so I can get rid of them? Thank you in advance, Scott
Technical SEO | | scottdrost0 -
Link Indexing Thoughts
We have have several promotional Articles put out for a few client sites, (posted on sites - not article directories) That was in Sept, it looks like they have not yet been indexed - any ideas on best to get them indexed? Not just these, but a lot of external links indexed quickly -Google seem to be slowing getting to them (big web after all....)
Technical SEO | | OnlineAssetPartners0 -
Press release not giving me my link juice
The other day we released a press release, see it here http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120717006087/en/Rapid7-Metasploit-Pro-Increases-Vulnerability-Management-Efficiency. I asked them to include two links (seen in the first paragraph) with targeted anchor text (vulnerability management and penetration testing). The press release was published and when I check the open site explorer to see if I got any link juice from the press release, I am not seeing the link...ugh I noticed that they are using some sort of tracking code that seems to be redirecting the link, is this the problem? I talked to our sales rep at businesswire and he told me that they could take the code off if that is what needs to be done. Do you have any insight into this or have you ever ran into this problem?
Technical SEO | | PatBausemer0 -
What i should do about bad links ?
Hi, my blog is http://www.dota2club.com/ and i have many bad links to my blog what i should do about that and how ? i started 10 days ago guest blogging but my bad links from before are hurting my blog. please help 🙂 thank you !!!
Technical SEO | | wolfinjo0 -
Can I turn off Google site links?
I thought at one time I had turned off the option to have Google sitelinks. I did this so that each of our pages that had a strong presence would occupy a unique slot on the first and second page of Google. This was important to us as we were battling some reputation management issues and trying to push out negative listings from the front page. Recently I noticed sitelinks were back up and when going into Google Webmaster Tools, I could figure out how to opt out of them. Any suggestions?
Technical SEO | | BRConsulting0 -
How to find all the links to my site
hi i have been trying to find all the links that i have to my site http://www.clairehegarty.co.uk but i am not having any luck. I have used the open explorer but it is not showing all the links but when i go to my google webmaster page it shows me more pages than it does on the semoz tool. can anyone help me sort this out and find out exactly what links are going into my site many thanks
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Broken Inner Links - Tool Recommendations?
Do you have any recommendations for tools that scan an entire website and report broken inner links? I run several UGC centered websites and broken inner links, and external, is an issue. Being that these websites are several hundred thousand pages large, I am not really all that excited about running software on my desktop (xenu link sleuth for example). Any online solutions you could recommend would be great!
Technical SEO | | uderic0