Correcting an unnatural link profile
-
A site I work with ranked page 1 for a competitive keyphrase until recently. (Not Panda-related as far as we can tell.) We've done extensive on-site tweaking and the page is still parked at 27-32 in the SERPs. We believe the only viable explanation at this point is an unnatural link profile.
Over the course of several years the site has racked up a large collection of footer links with anchor text due to business relationships with the sites in question. So the profile is now skewed, with the result as follows:
- 100,000 domain links (top 10 competitors range 1800-50k)
- 87% anchor text optimized (competitors 0-41%)
- 99% follow links (competitors 85-100%)
- The vast majority of links are footer links
We're working on creating more natural, high-value links but this of course takes time. In the short term, two questions:
- Should we aim to remove or change some of the footer links? If so, do we remove them, or just change anchor text? How many?
- How many new links should we pursue each month to make a meaningful impact on the profile without being too aggressive?
Any other thoughts on how to fix this are also appreciated. Thanks!
-
You want to have less than 100 links on a page, that includes internal and external links. using a tool like seoquake or even an seomoz tool may exist to check this kind of on page info.
generally you want to have a constant link building profile, do you think facebook and twitter getting incredible volumes of links would get penalized?! no of course not. natural just means regular and normal looking. if you can build 100 links in a day and then spend 10 days not building links you are much better off building 10 links a day for the 10 days.
really you shouldn't be in charge of your incoming links, your quality and value bring in links by having people like your content and share it.
hope this helps
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
-
If I use links intag instead of "ahref" tag can Google read links inside div tag?
Hi All, Need a suggestion on it. For buttons, I am using links in tag instead of "ahref". Do you know that can Google read links inside "div" tag? Does it pass rank juice? It will be great if you can provide any reference if possible.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pujan.bikroy0 -
Link Structure June 2019
Question Which link structure is better in 2019 for best SEO practice Example A) https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/soft-plastic-lures/ Or B) https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/fishing/fishing-lures/soft-plastic-lures/ We're on the bigcommerce platform and used to have https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/categories/soft-plastic-lures/ Last year we went from bigcommerce long URL to short to bypass the link juice being sent to /categories Now we have an SEO company trying to sell me their services after a bit of a steady decline since september 2018 and told me that we should have link structure as example B and that is likely the reason for the dip.. Due to breadcrumbing, True or False?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | oceanstorm
I explained i had bread crumb like shown in https://www.fishingtackleshop.com.au/berkley-powerbait-t-tail-minnow/ buy the SEO guy said no it needs to be in the URL structure too. I was under the impression that Short urls opposed to long was better these days and link juice is passed better if it is short url direct to the point? Am i wrong?1 -
Link conundrum - losing nav/footer links in mobile view
Hi Moz folks! I'm currently moving a site from being hosted on www. and m. separately to a responsive single URL. The problem is, the desktop version currently has links to important landing pages in the footer (about 60) and that's not something we want to replicate on mobile (mainly because it will look pretty awful.) There is no navigation menu because the key to the homepage is to convert users to subscription so any distraction reduces conversion rate. The footer links will continue to exist on the desktop view but, since Google's mobile-first index, presumably we lose these important homepage links to our most important pages. So, my questions: Do you think there is any SEO value in the desktop footer links? Do you have any suggestions about how best to include these 60-odd links in a way that works for mobile? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | d_foley0 -
Does Navigation Bar have an effect on the link juice and the number of internal links?
Hi Moz community, I am getting the "Avoid Too Many Internal Links" error from Moz for most of my pages and Google declared the max number as 100 internal links. However, most of my pages can't have internal links less than 100, since it is a commercial website and there are many categories that I have to show to my visitors by using the drop down navigation bar. Without counting the links in the navigation bar, the number of internal links is below 100. I am wondering if the navigation bar links affect the link juice and counted as internal links by Google. The Same question also applies to the links in the footer. Additionally, how about the products? I have hundreds of products in the category pages and even though I use pagination I still have many links in the category pages (probably more than 100 without even counting the navigation bar links). Does Google count the product links as internal links and how about the effect on the link juice? Here is the website if you want to take a look: http://www.goldstore.com.tr Thank you for your answers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | onurcan-ikiz0 -
Google WMT Turning 1 Link into 4,000+ Links
We operate 2 ecommerce sites. The About Us page of our main site links to the homepage of our second site. It's been this way since the second site launched about 5 years ago. The sites sell completely different products and aren't related besides both being owned by us. In Webmaster Tools for site 2, it's picking up ~4,100 links coming to the home page from site 1. But we only link to the home page 1 time in the entire site and that's from the About Us page. I've used Screaming Frog, IT has looked at source, JavaScript, etc., and we're stumped. It doesn't look like WMT has a function to show you on what pages of a domain it finds the links and we're not seeing anything by checking the site itself. Does anyone have experience with a situation like this? Anyone know an easy way to find exactly where Google sees these links coming from?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingof50 -
How do I find the links on my site that link to another one of my pages?
I ran IIS Seo toolkit and it found about 40 pages that I have no idea how they exist. What tool can I use to find out what internal link is linking to them so I can fix them or get rid of them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Best links to gain?
Hi, Just a quick one to see what peoples thoughts are regarding links. I have just gained a free link on a .gov website in the UK. In one of their offers pages, will this provide any link value or domain trust to me and what can the benefits be SEO wise from having a link on a government domain? The link is just the website url with a a few lines of text detailing our address etc... so its not got any anchor text regarding targetting one of our brands. It is equallly, less or more important to target anchor text links to specific brands or to get good high quality links from trusted sites such as the .gov one I have linking to my root domain? The website is a local council website in the UK. And was listed by a member of their staff, who only list in the offer page if your offering discount to council members etc..., so its not a spammed page or anything like that. What are peoples views on anchor text links vs domain url links? Cheers Will
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | YNWA0 -
Do outbound links matter?
The value of inbound links is clear but do the number of outbound links matter when it comes to SEO and search engine rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | casper4340