Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Do other sites linking to my page with a low domain authority affect my rankings?
-
Hello, my page authority 30, I see other page with an authority of 21 for example linking to us. Is this good or bad, does this affect our ranking? A lot of these don't have anchor text, I'm guessing we should reach out to these webmaster to include anchor text with the keywords we want to drive traffic to this page or make as descriptive as possible?
Thanks!
Laura
-
Backlinks from DA 21 sites are nothing to sneeze at. I'll take them all day long. Moz actually just rolled out a great tool called "Spam Score". The lower a spam score the better. It will show you the spam score for any links that Moz has found. Spammy links can affect your rankings, so spammy links should be investigated and possibly disavowed. If your site's own spam score is low, I wouldn't get my panties in a knot.
-
Hi there
A lot of this will come down to common sense and research. A couple of things I would point out:
Anchor text - Try and steer clear of exact match anchor text. It can trip spam filters if you have too much of that going on in your backlink profile. Try to make more use of branded anchor text. You can read morehere.
nofollow links - Don't disregard links because they are nofollow. They can be valuable and important, especially if that link is relevant to your business and helps expands your visibility to your audience. There's a great article here about nofollow.
PageRank - Google doesn't update this metric anymore. You can read more here. There are metrics elsewhere via OSE and more below that I list that you can find just as useful.
All in all - the best way to define a bad link is to use your own intuition and common sense:
-
Does this link help my website?
-
Is this link relevant to my website?
-
Would I trust this site (that's linking to me) if I landed on it?
-
Is the website or content in which I am being linked from topically relevant to my website?
-
If you check metrics - does anything about the metrics (domain authority, page authority,Majestic, SEMRush traffic/ranking data, etc) make me feel uneasy?
-
Are the links from directory templates? (example)
-
Inspect URLs with blatant spam words
-
Free
-
Porn
-
XXX
-
Submit
-
Directory
-
Paid
-
Links
-
URL
-
Sex
-
etc.
-
Check for multiple domains and URLs on the same IPs
-
This can usually show link farms or spam
Google views backlinks as who you associate with. If you hang out with shady people, you're probably a shady person. If you hang out with intelligent people, people probably think you're intelligent. Same applies for Google.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
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
-
How do I find http backlinks to my domain?
Hi, We spotted a number of sites linking to us from http sites, not https sites. How can I use backlink tools to find just those from http sites? Right now I'm looking at exporting a spreadsheet with 3.3 million entries and filtering - and there's not one person here who wants to do that! Thanks in advance. Screen Shot 2021-11-03 at 10.49.12.png
Link Explorer | | mark_seomoz10 -
Ranking Keywords are not showing on Moz
i just check my Apk Finds on moz site explorer and check its ranking keywords but it does not show it please help me my site age is 3 months
Link Explorer | | malik12378670 -
How to download full list of internal links properly with OSE?
Hi Moz Community, I am having issues getting a full list of my internal links when I go to the Open Site Explorer. When I export the internal links into excel, I am getting half of my URLs and 80% of what I am getting is absolutely crazy URLs that are super super old. Plus, these old URLs are not even showing in my campaign crawls. So the crawls themselves are different. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated, since I am trying to get a full picture on the internal link structure of my site. Thanks!
Link Explorer | | RyanRhodesGW0 -
What does "Number of Linking Root Domains" in Open Site Explorer actually mean?
I've read through the forum, but I'm confused as to what "Number of Linking Root Domains" means in the Linking Domains report. For example, if the root domain is Moz.com and the number is 135,000 does that mean there are 135,000 links from Moz pointing back to my site or does it mean there are 135,000 sites linking back to Moz? Any help is appreciated. Thank you!
Link Explorer | | karrabarron1 -
Moz Pro: Linking RDs to Page much lower than Google Search Console
I'm trying to use the Analyze Keyword tool in Moz Pro, and in the SERP Analysis table, my page has a PA of one, and zero root domains linking to it. If I look at the page in Google Search console, it says I have 229 root domains linking to the page from well known domains like github.com, meetup.com, stackoverflow.com, etc. This particular keyword has been tracked in Moz for the last 6 months, but I just noticed that it was extremely low. I am relatively new to Moz, so forgive me if I sound confused, but can someone explain to me how the numbers can be so low?
Link Explorer | | jakebellacera0 -
Why doesn't my site show up in Moz Site Explorer
I started this website about 2 months ago, www.guyetteroofing.com. I know it still needs a lot of work, but I can't find any information on it on the site explorer tool.
Link Explorer | | billyguyette1 -
Open Site Explorer Recently Discovered Links Question
Hey Mozzers, I have a question regarding the Open Site Explorer Recently Discovered Links. I know that I have receive follow link from a few sites that have more DA than my site. I am wondering why it is taking so long for OSE to discover these links? I double checked the sites to make sure that they don't have NOFOLLOW (sorry for the double negative), and the sites have linked to my site for over a month now. Any ideas? I'm not concerned about it because Search Engines have discovered those links. I am just curious why this is, or if it is normal. Cheers!
Link Explorer | | evan890 -
Why Open Site Explorer is Showing 0 Total Internal Links?
Open Site Explorer is reporting "0" value under "Total Internal Links" as well as "Internal Followed Links" metrics for my website. I have a good interlinking of pages throughout the site.
Link Explorer | | vivekrathore
Is there an issue with OSE (Open Site Explorer) crawler ? OR There are some crawling problems with our Website's structure ?
Can anybody please give an idea or recommendations on this ?1