Multiple similar links without the penguin?
-
Hi,
I´m working with a site where clients proudly will publish a link to us as sort of a sign/partner symbol for using our services. Potentially we could have thousands or at least hundreds of links pointing to us and we could tailor/provide snippets for the links that clients can use on their site.
I´m part of a team that just started working with this site and I realize this is a great opportunity that has not yet been exploited. I´m also a little paranoid that this tactic might be picked up by the penguin or that google sees it as black hat if not done wisely ?
But links will only come from respectable business sites although ranging from different genres both really big and small.
Today links are mostly leading to our frontpage from our clients but I would like to tailor links so that each client could link to a page that is targeted on the keyword/service they have been using (and awarded diploma for) I think this would serve both the client and our SEO better ?I would really appreciate suggestions and comments on how to approach this best!
Here is my plan so far, trying to make good/right use of the opportunity without offending google:
-Most links will be through a logo/sign that shows the award/diploma earned through our service.
I think the "alt" -tag should include both our company brand name and the service/target keyword for the page it´s leading to.-We could also provide a short text describing the earned award and our brand name and this whole text would also lead to the same page on our site.
...I guess using only the targeted keyword as anchor -link within the text would be a bad idea?-Where possible I would also like to customize this short text a little for each client (although that will be hard and only possible to some degree).
As we provide "link material" for the client to include on their site, would it be wise to have them use an image that is hosted on our site or send them the image so they can publish that instead?
Grateful for any feedback on this!
Thanks!
-
Thank you Jake!
I appreciate your input and do see your point but since the links are completely optional and the linked page at our site basically serves as further explanation on the subject and what the sign/badge stands for…also after watching this https://moz.com/blog/weird-crazy-myths-about-link-building-in-seo-you-should-probably-ignore-whiteboard-friday
I can’t help but thinking it would be overly cautious to explicitly tell customers to use nofollow
/Anders
-
Hi Anders,
If you are going to use the widget, it needs to have a very strong and justifiable purpose to be linked to.. You might consider the relevance of the page/site that will be linking to you, and no-following all placement except those you feel are highly relevant .. just to try and minimize risks.
Cheers,
Jake
-
Thank you Jake!
So, do you mean that the js script should generate a personalized badge/image with a link to a page that has personalized info, on our site?
We have 6 different badges/signs to give out to clients for fulfilling different services...and I thought preferably with a link to it´s corresponding in depth page at our site.
Or would you not recommend using any standard dofollowlinks links at all?/Anders
-
This sounds like a stereotypical badge linking campaign, and certainly carries some risk. You are correct to assume you shouldn't use target keywords, etc.. in anchor text less you draw even more unwanted attention. The "safe" practice would be to no-follow those links.
With the latest penguin update, the assumption is that these types of links, upon being identified, would simply be devalued, but the verdict is certainly not in at this point.
You might be better served, from a risk management standpoint, to consider giving your customers a js script code they can place on the site that shows off their badge, much similar to the way Google does this for their partners program, BBB does this for the live ratings updates, etc.. Then if you want to help your customers craft a blog post, or provide some additional information/resource they can write about in a blog/news section on their site, you might consider that in addition to the JS.
Cheers,
Jake Bohall
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 affiliate links affect DA?
Hey guys, over the past two months my DA has gone down from 17 to 12, and I have no dura what could have caused it. I started putting in some Amazon affiliate links in my posts - could that be the reason why? Also, I have about 30 backlinks from a blog with a spam score of 11% - could this also be affecting it in any way?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | AmyAed0 -
Value / Risk of links in comments (nofollow)
Recently I noticed a couple of comments on our blog that seemed nice and relevant so I approved them. The site is wordpress and comments are configured nofollow. We don't get many comments so I thought "why not?". Today I got one and noticed they are all coming from the same IP. They all include urls to sites in the same industry as us, relevant sites and all different. Looks like an SEO is doing it for various clients. My question is what is the value of these nofollow links for the poster? Are these seen as "mentions" and add value to Google? And am I better off trashing them so my site is not associated? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Chris6610 -
Should I Do a Social Bookmarking Campaign and a Tier 2 Linking?
I don't see anything bad in manually creating links on different (about 50) social bookmarking services. Is this method labeled as White Hat? I was wondering if it would be fine to create Tier 2 linking (probably blog comments) for indexing of the social bookmarking links? Please share your thoughts on the topic.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | zorsto0 -
How can I recover from an 'unnatrual' link penalty?
Hi I believe our site may have been penalised due to over optimised anchor text links. Our site is http://rollerbannerscheap.co.uk It seems we have been penalised for the key word 'Roller Banner' as the over optimised anchor text contains key word 'Roller Banner' or 'Roller Banners'. We dropped completely off page 1 for 'Roller Banner', how would I recover from this error?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Need advice on best strategy for removing these bad links.
Heres the scenario... We recently took on a new client who's previous seo company had partaken in some dodgy link building tactics. They appear to have done some blog comment spam, very poorly. The situation we are now in is this: We have a site with an internal page deemed more important than the homepage (the homepage has 60 linking root domains and the internal page 879). It looks as though the previous seo company submitted a disavow request, theres a message in webmaster tools from a few weeks back saying it had been received, but no further correspondence. I have doubts as to whether this disavow request was done correctly... Plus im not sure that Google has issued the site a warning yet as they are ranking position one for the keyword on the internal page. Our clients want us to handle this in the correct manner, whether it be to simply ignore it and wait for Google to send a warning about the links, remove the offending internal page and leave a 404, or try to disavow the links that google doesnt know about yet from 800+ websites. Suggestions for the best practice for dealing with this situation? Any advice is much appreciated, Thanks, Hayley.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Silkstream0 -
Fix Bad Links in Google
I have a client who had some grey hat SEO done in the past. Some of their back links aren't from the best neighborhoods. Google didn't seem to mind until 9/28, when they literally disappeared for all searches except for their domain name. Google still has their site indexed, but it's just not showing up. There are no messages in Webmaster Tools. I know Bing has the tool where you can disavow bad links and ask them to discount them. Google doesn't have such a tool, but what is the strategy when you don't have control over the link sources, such as in blog comments? Could this update have been a delayed Penguin ranking change from the latest Penguin Update on the 18th? http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Tom
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TomBristol0 -
Penguin Update and Infographic Link Bait
Is it still ok to use infographics for link bait now that the penguin update has rolled out? Are there any techniques that should be avoided when promoting an infographic? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eddiejsd1 -
Penguin Update Seems To Benefit Wikipedia Etc
I was updating product info on my site which was apparently hammered by Penguin. As I was updating I was "Googling" the products. I noticed that every single product I carry, Wikipedia held the #1 position in search results. Anyone else noticing this? I previously held the number 1 position on 2 of my products but I was knocked down to 60+...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | chronicle0