Getting links on old blog posts
-
There's 100 of blogs with posts that link to my competitors, but don't link to my site.They are mostly lists. Eg: "The best Sites to get blue widgets"
I was thinking about getting in touch with these blogs, and asking them to take a look at my site, to see if perhaps they would add it to the list. In fact, I started doing it and I got some links already.
Now I am starting to worry that Google could consider these links as unnatural, because, you know, the algos are not exactly perfect. Anyway, the links are important for the exposure anyway.
I've two questions:
1. Is there any chance I'll be penalized?
2. May I get a SEO benefit from this links?
-
I agree with you, Alan. That's how most people do it.
I've found through a few small retail sites and a couple of information sites, that publishing useful or interesting content can be enough that other people will share it for you. There are still niches out there where one or two people, working as a team, can produce, in two or three years, more content and better content than all of the competitors in the niche combined. Once you have that, then some of the people who find your site and see the depth of content, will share it for you. And, there are some topics where people will search deeply for the right information.
If you have a hardware store or a toy store or a jewelry store, you don't have to attack the entire industry. Instead, focus on a very small niche of products that are typically not represented well in local stores, and that do not have an online champion.
The niche must be chosen carefully.
I don't have any interest in social media, or making personal connections, or in soliciting others. But, I do have an interest in learning the deep technical details of things and enjoy writing about them. Through that, I provide the community service similar to what you provide. Then a steady stream of visitor questions coming in and being answered, first by email and then published to the content library that provides a service to a consumer community - these are coming from people who may have first purchased at amazon or or some other vendor who places 100% of their effort in making the sale but places zero effort in helping the customer after the sale.
These people are out searching deeply. They feel like they have been abandoned. This is today's internet - Walmart, Amazon, Jet, and others are all focused on the aggressive price competition. Service after the sale and deep information for the consumer has been abandoned at the very time when you think it should be abundant. Nobody wants to write it. How many times have you purchased something and could not understand directions that were written on another continent and then translated into English by someone who knows the language poorly.
That leads to a problem in that you become the default service department for amazon! They don't do it. But if you step into that role you quickly obtain a knowledge of what information people need and when you answer an email, you also place another brick in your relevant content library. So, although I am not making any direct outreach at all to advocate a brand, engaging a community, or soliciting on my own behalf in any way, the questions keep coming in, the content mass continues to grow, and it attracts more and more traffic year over year.
Most business owners are not going to do this because they don't like to write content and they don't have a situation that allows them to invest a lot of time now and not be paid back until years down the road. No SEO will do this because the upfront labor is very high and the return isn't fast enough to satisfy a client. These opportunities are perfect for the person who enjoys working from the cloister.
-
EGOL,
As always, you infuse wisdom into this discussion. I have always been an advocate of "content first, content last". Yet in 2015, search engines are only one piece of the puzzle, and until and unless other efforts for brand visibility / authority / trust are made, the overwhelming majority of sites on the web will leave way too much money on the table.
I happen to believe links need to be generated through our own efforts yet it's not the "traditional" link building. Instead, it's more about advocacy of brand, community service, and participation in the community in which our prospective/existing clients/customers live.
If we are not active in those ways, we build a house on sand.
Just my take on it.
-
just "produce great content" and sit on our asses.
That's what I do.
'Cept, I don't do much ass sittin'. I am right back onto the next piece of content.
If you don't spend any time link buildin' you can make twice as much content and then even if it attracts half as many natural links you have broken even on the links because you have double the amount of content.
The problem with link buildin' is that you can only put 20 hours per week into it. With content makin' at the end of the first year I have 100 articles out there pullin' links and at the end of the fifth year I have 500 articles out there pullin' links, but you are still only able to work 20 hours per week. Rand would say that content makin' is a flywheel activity because it scales while link buildin' isn't.
The biggest risk that you take content makin' is that you are not honest with yourself, or unable to distinguish, "great content" that will become popular from "pedestrian content" that nobody will link to and most people bounce off of.
-
The reason for the skepticism is the scale of spam out there, and the volume of ways spam efforts attempt to trick search algorithms. Google, even now, all these years into it, still does a very poor job of trapping some of that noise, and so the index remains polluted.
Of course, just building great content is never enough and won't ever be enough. So we just need to check the boxes regarding the potential for Google to think "this isn't legitimate".
-
They are real, quality, relevant, etc, etc. Is there any good reason for such skepticism? It seems like every link building idea is met with a negative attitude, as if we should just "produce great content" and sit on our asses.
-
Are they legitimate placement? Meaning - are the posts you seek links from real, quality, and relevant posts, and not on sites that are created for spam purposes?
Are you asking for a link and NOT specific anchor text, and NOT the wording they would use?
If the above scenario is what's happening, it's valid to reach out this way. As long as you leave it up to them to decide whether to include your content or not, and decide what they write, and what anchor text to use, and there is no reciprocal exchange, and no paid aspect, you "should" be fine.
Of course, it's impossible to know what some poorly trained manual reviewer might think about them, however that's the only scenario where I'd be concerned in this situation.
And if all of the above criteria are met, then those links would be helpful to readers of those sites, and thus have a chance of bringing actual human users to your site. Which makes them valuable for many reasons, one of which is SEO.
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
-
Fixing broken links from old domain
Howdy Mozfans, I am fixing some broken links and I was wondering if someone could help me out. Multiple old domains (www.olddomain1.com, www.olddomain2.com and so on) have been migrated to www.currentdomain.com/olddomain1 and www.currentdomain.com/olddomain2 over a year ago. The old domains redirect to the current domain but we found that a lot of those were redirecting to 404 pages at the current domain. We now redirected all URL’s that were on the old domains correctly. Will those redirects ever get indexed (and passing linkjuice) since the old domains haven’t been used for such a long time? If not, would it be a good idea to redirect the 404 pages on the current domain (that were a result of the previous redirects)? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | SEO-Bas0 -
Been offered a no follow link on a blog post ?. Is it worth it ?
Hi All, We are having a go at doing our own link building and just wanted some advice on a couple of questions I've found some industry related blog sites which could be good but alot of them only offer a no follow link ?. Is this worth it ? And if ,so what is the advantage of having a no follow link ? as it won't directly help with our DA etc ? I've also noticed some of these sites link to each other or recommend each other (i.e other blog sites) which may be some sort of link network ?.. I take it this is bad ? and could be penalized by google ? thanks pete
Link Building | | PeteC120 -
A website with a spam score of 5 is back linking to me. How important is to get that link removed?
There is a website that OSE has identified with a spam score of 5, it back links to me with a very specific key word. How important is it to have them remove those links?
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
Footer Links And Link Juice
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register /privacy /terms /search /sitemap /disclaimer /blog /register So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together? This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
Should I link from my blog back to my product pages?
Hello... I just installed a blog on my Magento site. My question is whether or not i should be linking within posts on the blog back to the product or category pages that i am talking about...from an SEO perspective. If in my post i am talking about flashlights being important when preparing for a storm, should i link the word flashlights to the flashlight category on my site? I know I can do this, the question is should i, from google's perspective. A) should i link the word (flashlights) to that category on my page B) should i put a line at the bottom of every post that says something like "if you are interested in purchasing flashlights, visit this link" and hyperlink that whole sentence... THANKS!
Link Building | | Prime850 -
Should I remove links from my internal blog?
I have blogs/news sites on every one of my clients' websites (each representing a different business within the same industry - self storage). On each of these blog sites, I have a writer who places about 3-5 exact keyword match links (varying anchor text) to give interlink juice to the other off-site businesses owned by the client. Each of these blogs receive about five posts per week. I am sure this is mega-over-optimizing and a stupid thing to do considering penguin. So, my questions are: Moving forward - 1. Should i stop adding so many blog articles to each site? 2. How many interlinking anchor texts should I use per blog? 3. Should I go back and either get rid of all those interlinks on past blogs or just trash the blog articles altogether? Please help if you can - I very much appreciate the responses best bd
Link Building | | creativeguy0 -
How do I start trying to get links from blogs
Do I just find blogs websites that are in the same topical area and ask them can i link back?
Link Building | | Feily0 -
Hey, I want to get 10 Best quality Links soon, Please suggest
I have to get 10 links with different keywords with in hour. Can anyone guide please
Link Building | | Virrtuo0