Backlink Questions
-
Hey Mozzers,
I have spent some time researching proper backlink analysis, and then I have been going through some of the steps. Here are a few questions that I have had in the process.
- Why would backlink tools like OSE and Ahrefs return different results for (say): "www.domain.com" vs "domain.com"?
- I noticed that competitors have almost 6x the backlinks as I do, but when I look at where those links are coming from, they are coming from old sites with moderate DA (under 10-30), but many are not current. I also noticed that many of these sites have links placed site-wide so that there are maybe 6+ referring pages per domain. So I guess my question is, how powerful are these links? Am I better off building relationships with bloggers, even though they only offer one link per page? Ultimately it will take me a long time to build the same quantity of links, but it seems like many of these competitors' links are old fashioned, but still moderately effective.
Any help is appreciated, you guys have always been so helpful!
-
The quantity of links isn't as important as the quality of those links. If there are several links to and from low quality websites it is only a matter of time before your competitors get smacked with an algo update. Sure, blog back links take time to build, but they also appear natural, and more importantly, related to the content on your site. That means that theoretically they are good for searchers. This is the best strategy.
Link building should really consist of high authority directory listings, competitive link analysis, branded comment backlinks, social bookmarking, and guest blogging. You should never allow more than 10% of your existing link profile to be added at a time. Doing any more than 10% looks unnatural, and unnatural link building is not the way to go. Buying links is kind of an SEO death wish.
-
Hi,
Regarding the number of links - domain.com and www.domain.com are two separate URLs and hence treated separately. So its a possibility that some domains will link to domain.com and some domains will link to www.domain.com and accordingly the numbers reported will vary.
Regarding acquisition of links - Based on the evolution of links over the past 5 years and Google's stand on acquisition of links, I would strongly suggest that you don't focus on building links artificially. Instead, I would suggest that you focus on the following -
Generation of content that results in a lot of coverage - Surveys, useful information to users/consumers , interactive content are some of the elements of the website that can help generate a lot of natural buzz. IMO, citations and natural references across the web are the future (if not the present already) and keyword based linking should be a complete NO NO.
Focus on consumers - The moment we focus on consumers and come up with innovative techniques for more customer acquisition, more the word of mouth awareness and more the possibility of mentions across the web (social media channels, online press etc)
As far as competitors are concerned, even if say they are using non white hat techniques, its only a matter of time before search engines penalize them.
Regards,
Sajeet
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
-
Canonical Tag Question Regarding Two State Pages
Hi Moz Fam! Question... we have two pages for each state. Both pages are used in our PPC campaigns. One of the two state pages is fully optimized for organic search. The page that's optimized for organic has 1,500-2,000 words, the other one has thin content. All the content is unique, nothing duplicate. We call one set of state pages that I optimized my SEO state pages, then the other ones are our PPC state pages. Should I be setting a canonical tag to one of these pages to let Google know which one is the "master" page? (My SEO state page is the master) I've never used them, so I'm not sure what the right answer is for this. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | LindsayE0 -
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 -
Ecommerce Rich Snippets Category Question
Hello Technical question: I have category pages in my site - and product pages in my site. Category Pages I Have listed Grouped products on them ( i.e. a product that could have multiple offers for each size ) I Have the relevant markup for them ( one for each product ) . Product Pages The Product pages have grouped products as well - but the individual simple products are note marked up. The Product pages have Aggregate reviews on them. My question is this: Should I use the grouped product sku to identify the grouped product on the category page and the product page? Technically they aren't Stock Keeping Units ( SKU's ) - but they could be used to link the 2 together to avoid duplicates. Ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Href lang and multilingual question
Greetings Moz-Hive mind! I'm hoping you can help me on the internationalisation conundrum below; We currently have a website with three distinct 'locales' US, SEA and UK we automatically redirect customers using IP recognition to a locale which matches, we also determine their currency based on IP. The issue we currently have is a lot of duplicate content and no use of href lang or rel=canonical tags etc... My proposed structure would be to create a locale based directory for the three locales we offer. / - being US and most other Worldwide /uk - being UK /as - being Hong Kong and other Asian territories. How would you suggest we set up the href lang tags for these? Because technically there are going to be multiple language possibilities within. Our main customers are English only if this helps. Also as a secondary question, how should I set up the Google Search Console settings for each of these directories? Many thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ashley-Jacada0 -
Please help with serp placment question?
We own discount banner printing and we are trying to rank 1 for pvc banners or vinyl banners and cannot understand for example how the below is correct, we did suffer a link penalty years ago but we fixed this and the domain has some good links (more and better quality than the sites above us) and cannot understand how we rank below most of the sites above us? If we type on for example pvc banners we get http://www.bannershop.co.uk/cats/pvc_banners.htm https://www.hfe-signs.co.uk/banners.php http://bannerprintingandroid.co.uk/pvc-banners/ http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html And if we type in vinyl banners we get http://www.vistaprint.co.uk/banners.aspx http://www.bigvaluebanners.co.uk/ http://vinylbannersprinting.co.uk/ http://www.discountdisplays.co.uk/html/vinyl_banners.html https://www.buildasign.co.uk/banners http://www.monkey-print.com/outdoor banners/budget-outdoor-banners http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Content question about 3 sites targeted at 3 different countries
I am new here, and this is my first question. I was hoping to get help with the following scenario: I am looking to launch 3 sites in 3 different countries, using 3 different domains. For example the.com for USA, the .co.uk for UK , and a slightly different .com for Australia, as I could not purchase .com.au as I am not a registered business in Australia. I am looking to set the Geographic Target on Google Webmaster. So for example, I have set the .com for USA only, with .co.uk I won't need to set anything, and I will set the other Australian .com to Australia. Now, initially the 3 site will be "brochure" websites explaining the service that we offer. I fear that at the beginning they will most likely have almost identical content. However, on the long term I am looking to publish unique content for each site, almost on a weekly basis. So over time they would have different content from each other. These are small sites to begin with. So each site in the "brochure" form will have around 10 pages. Over time it will have 100's of pages. My question or my worry is, will Google look at the fact that I have same content across 3 sites negatively even though they are specifically targeted to different countries? Will it penalise my sites negatively?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ryanetc0 -
Offering discounts and getting backlinks - concerned.
Hiya Mozzers, My client is about to offer discounts (to a few large multinationals... for staff) and there's every possibility these will appear on the web, with a backlink to my client's website (perhaps direct via websitest / via online newsletters and so on). I am thinking of telling client to restrict the number of companies they interact with while I monitor backlinks in case there's some kind of problem with backlinks generated. I am also telling them on no account to ask for backlinks or encourage keyword rich links. Any thoughts on this, anybody? Is there a risk of penalty or am I just being paranoid?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
Duplicate Content Question
Brief question - SEOMOZ is teling me that i have duplicate content on the following two pages http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/ and http://www.passportsandvisas.com/visas/index.asp The default page for the /visas/ directory is index.asp - so it effectively the same page - but apparently SEOMOZ and more importantly Google, etc treat these as two different pages. I read about 301 redirects etc, but in this case there aren't two physical HTML pages - so how do I fix this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | santiago230