A lot of backlinks from outside of niche – bad?
-
We have received a lot of backlinks over the years by users putting links on their websites to their home pages on our site, eg:
our.domain/user1
our.domain/user2
…
our.domain/user100000
There are 10’s of thousands of these backlinks, all natural, but many of them come from blogs that are completely outside of our niche. Only a small percentage of our backlinks 1% to 5% could actually be coming from pages related to our niche, the other 95%+ could be users just linking to their home pages.
Could this really hurt us..? We have 1000’s of backlinks related to our niche, yet we’ve noticed that some competitors with less than 50 backlinks can outrank us for certain keywords..
Also related, we’ve noticed these user links popping up on a lot of spammy sites, directories, etc. We didn’t create them but we’re disavowing them now to be safe. So this could also be hitting our rankings.
-
Hi David,
Sounds like you're on the right track there which is great, though it's often better to fix the problem rather than mask it with de-indexing. Even something like giving people an opportunity to write a bio about themselves could be a great way to get some unique content on these otherwise-empty pages as a quick example.
I have seen a correlation between bounce rate and rankings. This doesn't necessarily mean causation of course but whether it's because of that bounce rate or the reason__s people are bouncing less, the ranking result is going to be the same
Moz also covered this topic back in August too.
-
Thanks Chris, that's an excellent insight..
We've actually started to deindex all the 'thin' pages, but it will unfortunately take months for Google to recrawl all. And I think a restructuring is in order as you say. We're busy putting a 'learning' section together (similar to moz but much smaller), so we're going to feature this more prominently too.
I think you're correct about interaction. We receive a lot of organic traffic to these thin pages and people bounce quite quickly. We used to value this traffic, but now I think it just hurts us because of quick bounces. So we're addressing this now with deindexing, better titles and descriptions, and on-page elements to improve interaction.
Two years ago we never had these thin user pages indexed and our main landing pages dominated the rankings.
Have you seen any correlations recently between bounce rate and rankings slip...?
-
Thanks Paddy, great response, that clarifies things for me..
I don't think we've picked up any penalties because the majority of links look fine, they're just off-topic. But as a risk mitigation we've started to clear out the users and disavow the domains that look bad. It's unlikely we're receiving any real link juice from these spammy sites anyway..
-
Ok, that does make things a little different. Having genuinely organic links like this isn't really going to be a dangerous thing in this context. Since they really are legitimate, there will be a decent spread of anchor text, placement etc and you've already got thousands of relevant links as well.
Think of it like social media - Facebook and Twitter rank just fine for a number of things and they have billions of links from all over the Internet. My guess is that the current ranking issues are more related to onsite elements and perhaps the way users are interacting with your site.
There are quite a few pages that are very thin and thousands that offer 0 unique content.
The home page does a pretty good job of giving me the basics but if I were going to sign up, I'd want a little more information so perhaps this would be a good place to start. Create a page detailing each of those home page sections and how they're helpful to me.
If you do go down this route, make sure they're put somewhere handy in the nav. You don't want your important pages to be buried 5 clicks deep in the nav; push them as close to the top level as practical.
There are a number of other onsite elements that could be improved too, like H1s (most just say "What is twiends") and image alt text as some basic examples.
I hope that helps!
-
Hi David,
In terms of whether these links could hurt you, I'd be more concerned about the quality of the links than the topic. If the majority of links pointing at these user generated pages are low quality, then that would be of concern and you may want to disavow the ones that are very low quality such as the spammy sites / directories etc that you've found. You may even want to go as far as removing pages where the people who set them up are clearly spamming the pages hoping to get them to rank for some reason.
The fact they come from websites that are off-topic is a slight concern but they shouldn't "hurt" you as long as they are genuinely natural and it doesn't look like manipulation. If you're also generating links to other areas of the site that are on topic, then I wouldn't worry too much.
I hope that helps!
Paddy
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the response to David's question. I just wanted to clarify, I don't think David is referring to the topic of these pages or the links from these pages out to other websites. I believe he is referring to links from external websites pointing inwards towards these user generated pages. Therefore, Panda isn't something that should come into consideration.
Cheers.
Paddy
-
Hi, yes exactly..
Our site provides each user with a profile page that shows their latest tweets, photos, etc. So a lot of users like to list it as a home page in various places. eg:
-
Hi Dave,
I'm not 100% sure I understand the issue here. Do you mean users set up a profile on your website then link to that profile from their site? Kind of like if I put a link on our site to my Moz profile?
-
Hi Peter, thanks for the response, that looks like a good doc, I'll read through it now..
Please note, I don't have any way to remove the backlinks to our site or make them nofollow. They exist on 10,000 other websites.. The only thing I can do is disavow them, but this is not what the disavow tool is designed for..
Did you perhaps misread what I was asking..?
Many thanks
Dave
-
This is discussed many times. And answer is YES. You can see here what Josh Bachynski says:
http://themoralconcept.net/pandalist.html
Look on #5 in section Low quality factors.That's why you can see here or in blog sections moderators often remove links to sites. Because some people just make comment to get a link to their site. You should do this too. Or make them "nofollow" at least.
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
-
Can Foreign Language Backlinks Be Valuable?
I've done a lot of searching on this subject, but I keep seeing conflicting answers. Are backlinks from foreign language websites valuable? For example, a travel website in English picks up a couple backlinks in Indonesian language (and other languages) from foreign sites that have a DA of 60-70 or higher. The topic is partially related, but the language is totally different. Would those links still be valuable for the English website's DA? Has this ever been answered conclusively? Thanks
Link Building | | David56751 -
Tracking Backlinks
Hi there, I'm looking for a tool/ service whereby I can track backlinks & be alerted when:
Link Building | | jasongmcmahon
a) They've moved
b) They've been removed & 404 is generated Is anyone aware of any such service?0 -
Guest Blogging good or bad?
Hello Mozzers, Matt Cutts once told that guest blogging is a bad way to get links, then he relativized it again and said it's okay. We all know Google doesn't want to count those links, what they want are editorially given links. Now my question, what's your view on this topic? Do you still use guest blogging as a link building technique? Best regards, grobro
Link Building | | grobro0 -
.edu backlinks.. where to point them for a scholarship
Hello, My company offers an annual college scholarship to Women in Business. I have numerous colleges that have agreed to post our scholarship on their college websites. I want to make sure I get the full value of the .edu backlink and need some advice. I have a brand new scholarship page with no authority and that's basically orphaned from the rest of the website. This page details the application process for the scholarship. If I were to link out to my home page, and say 3-4 other top landing pages, would this be the best way to flow some of that link juice into my site? Or is there a better way to do this? Another thought I had was this.... I could take one of my top landing pages, www.example.com/example, and place the scholarship information on that page at the bottom, and have the school link to this: www.example.com/example#scholarship (so the scholarship info appears on top when applicants click it)-- My question here is this... becase the second URL includes an anchor, does google treat that as a different page? Or would the pagerank flow to www.example.com/example ? Recovering from unnatural link warnings and algorthmic penalties and trying to get the best benefit out of the new, quality links I'm building. Any advise would be appreciated! THANKS!
Link Building | | ktrout0 -
How to find keywords in super-small niche?
hi I try to find good keywords to rank a “dog day care” site for and can't seem to find anything that makes sense. This is a company that sells franchises of their service – dog day care. So there is a “mother site” where they advertise service in general and try to sell franchises. If you go “pet franchise”; “pet franchises”; “dog day care franchise” etc – you get virtually zero traffic keywords. On the other hand if I use “doggy day care” it will bring mostly people who are looking for a place to leave their dog for a day. Doesn't make sense either way. Same goes for local sites. If you look at “doggy day care location” it brings next to nothing. Using “doggy day care” without specific location doesn't make sense either, as certain location applies only to people living in say 50 mile radius. I would really appreciate any ideas how to approach this. How to promote small “dog day care” franchising company? And how to promote particular locations? Thank you in advance, JJ
Link Building | | jjtech0 -
Backlinks in client website footers - best strategy?
I work for a web design & development agency. We are looking to rank for 'web design' and 'web development'. Typically we have a credit in the footer of every site we build (below). We have a lot of backlinks (>60,000) this way. web design and development by We link 'web design and development' and '<our name="">' separately.
Link Building | | JeromeSavon
Does this strategy sound ok and can anyone suggest improvements?</our> Thanks0 -
Backlinks: What are they really and how can I create them.
I am relatively new to the SEO world, and I want to build backlinks linking to our main site. My preferred way to create backlinks is by adding them in my blog comments or forum responses. I am an active participant in a large number of blogs/forums related to our field and I would like to add relevant backlinks in the comments/answers I post. I originally thought that a backlink was just a link, but none of the links that I have added to blogs like that have been recognized as backlinks. https://www.dynaread.com/ Why is this so? I know now that good backlink would be something like: Dynaread is a science based dyslexia remediation program for older struggling readers. However I have no idea how to add this types of links to blog comments or forum pages where there is no link tool. Do I have to do something with HTML? Please explain briefly what a backlink really is and most importantly how I can create them. Thank you in advance for your help! Joy P.S if you have suggestions about some resources where I can learn more about the subject please let me know. I love to learn more.
Link Building | | Dynaread0 -
How much time Google takes to see my backlinks
Hi, I got bunch of nice links in high pr sites. But some links was a 2 month ago and i cant find it in webmastertools, opensitexplorer and yahoo, because of that i dont know if my links are working good for my site.
Link Building | | Ex20