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
-
My Backlinks are indexed in Ahrefs But Not Indexed in MOZ. Why?
I Create backlinks for my website to Increase DA But Backlinks are indexed and Ahrefs Show that backlinks but MOZ is showing backlinks. I am confuse Can you explain?
Link Building | | Seogamesokay1a0 -
301 redirect backlink
Hello, My website is brand new! I am planning to do have some 301 redirect backlinks. Is it safe in terms of SEO ? Do i have any SEO benefits? let me know. Thanks
Link Building | | EchoMartinez1 -
Spammy backlinks are working?!
Hello, fellow MOZers. I just read this article of this guy (not myself, I promise 🙂 ) I never heard before: http://stream-seo.com/churn-burn-backlinks-case-study/ According to him SUPER spam is actually helping, and, according to him again, google punguin didn't knock it down either. It looks and sounds all very shady and salesy for all those tools he is mentioning (actually, not just mentioning, but linking to). At the same it looks impressive if it's true. My thoughts are that it's falsified/buttered article, otherwise, if everything he says is true, we would see direct correlation between ranking position and number of backlinks (linking domains). I've been struggling to resist the temptation to try some spammy techniques to get backlinks to see what happens, but, at the same time, my brain says not to be an idiot.
Link Building | | seomozinator1 -
Backlink Report Totals Discrepancy
I have been having a tough time getting my customer backlinks developed. However; I noticed when I run a backlink report for http://www.mycustomer.com, www.mycustomer.com and customer.com that I get three different backlink totals. Is there any way to forward to of the above URL's to one or am I doing something wrong when I am developing the backlinks?
Link Building | | InfinityTechnologySolutions0 -
Do NOFOLLOW backlinks have ANY value? or did I waste money?
So, I hired a helping hand to create some back-links for me (in form of comments on some blogs and forums etc) About 60% of those links created are using "nofollow" attribute in the link. Is there ANY - ANY! value in creating such links? or is just wasted time and money and Google will absolutely not give any love for NOFOLLOW links? please share you insight. thnak you.
Link Building | | limens0 -
Changing backlinks anchor text
Hi, I've read a few blog post here that suggests the strength of building links using your brand as an anchor text. This supposedly gives the site authority. Currently a chunck of the back links to my homepage are on generic terms i'm trying to rank for which doesn't seem to be working very well. I was thinking of contacting the various webmasters to change the anchor text to that of the site brand name but wondering if this will signal a manipulation of links to the search engines and potentially could be flagged as paid links? Has anybody done this before and what is the danger of doing this? Thanks Duke
Link Building | | clickangel0 -
Backlinks I don't want
Hi all. According to google webmaster tools www.buywatchesin.net made 29,245 links to ONE category to my website. I went to this site and they copied my article with my links without my permission. Its the same one on all sites in that domain. Thats a lot of links and I thinks that bad for my site. I can't find any contact details to that site. What do you think, any advise?? Please help!
Link Building | | menswatchshop0