I can get hundreds of natural links from real estate agent sites, but should I?
-
I have a website that generate leads for real estate agents nationwide. I have an auto email that sends out the referral agreement and in the email I ask them to place a link to our website on their site somewhere to be a part of the program. I can get as many as 10-15 links in a few hours in every major city in the U.S. Most realtor websites have websites that are new, or haven't posted blogs and have a Moz domain score of 1 and trust score of 1.
I have been thinking of only selecting websites with descent Moz rankings instead of having all agents link to me, even ones with a low moz score. Is it a bad idea to get a bunch of links from legitimate websites that have low Moz scores?
-
The first thing I would ask is how you define "legitimate"?
If these "legitimate" sites are websites for actual businesses in your industry then the answer to your question is no. It is not a bad idea to get a bunch of links from legitimate websites that have low Moz scores.
Moz scores only reveal certain aspects of what makes a good linking site. One aspect moz metrics do not measure is relevance. A relevant site in your industry with low Moz metrics linking to your site can possibly do more benefit to your website for SEO purposes than a non-relevant site, unrelated to your industry, with high Moz metrics.
Another consideration to take into account is a site may have low Moz metrics this year but grow to have high Moz metrics in future years. For most realtor websites that are new as you have mentioned, this is likely going to be the case. Getting a link on the site will grow in benefit as the site gains authority and trust with time. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with getting a suitable link on a site with low Moz metrics and there could be great upside future rewards.
The potential problem I'm seeing with your strategy though is that there is a strong possibility that the sites that put a link up to your site for the free program will not keep the link on the site for the long-term, especially when the link doesn't make sense on the site and possibly look spammy. Considerations to have the link applied with suitable contextual text that make sense for the linking site will both be more fitting for them and also beneficial for the SEO of your site.
-
As long as the links are marked nofollow you don't have to worry about being penalized for unnatural link building. To stay in line with Google's webmaster guidelines you should make that a part of your strategy. If you're getting hundreds of dofollow links in a matter of days, Google is going to know those are unnatural whether they have a high DA or not.
Google has stated in the past that they may pass value through a nofollow link, so don't consider it a dead end for SEO efforts. I would consider any link from a legitimate website to be of value, regardless of what their moz score is. Remember that any score from moz or any other third party is an approximate measurement of Google's algorithm and does not guarantee anything. There may be something valuable to your website on other sites with a low DA.
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
-
Community Discussion - How can we apply the skills we have as marketers in new, creative ways?
Hi everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful week! This week's discussion question comes from Tuesday's (December 😎 blog post by John-Henry Scherck, The Step-by-Step Guide to Turning Link Prospectors into Lead Generators. From the post: "Digital marketing is a pretty introverted industry. This tends to make us a bit hesitant to embrace sales and outbound selling. There’s no beating around the bush: Sales can be difficult, scary, uncomfortable, and awkward — but if you want to grow your client base, it may require getting out of your comfort zone." John-Henry shows us the opportunity for people who are good at link prospecting to apply those skills to lead generation, improving business opportunities by creatively using the skills they already have. SEOs and marketers wear many hats, and have a diverse skill set at their disposal—how else can we apply the skills we already have in creative ways?
Industry News | | MattRoney5 -
Do old links from my own unrelated subject websites improve or hinder my rankings?
Several years ago I placed links on two of my other websites I own and control one my old company about CCTV installation and the other one is the official website for actor Sir Roger Moore. The links are going to my holiday cottage letting website http://www.endeavourcottage.co.uk/ and at the time I wanted to improve my rankings with these links which are still there. The vast majority of my other inbound links are natural and are on other people's websites with some diversity regarding the anchor text. So my question is the old links on these unrelated subject websites which are also stored on the same web hosting company causing a problem and would it be beneficial to remove them to leave them in place? Also several years ago I set up two other websites at the same hosting company also promoting holiday cottages in the same place thinking I might have more bites of the cherry, but they've produced very little traffic and are not ranked at all well, but they do links to my main letting website, could these because in a problem? My domain authority seems to be equal to some of the companies which are higher placed for the short tail keywords on page 1 of Google and they have less inbound links, although they are usually bigger companies and I know many things which influence rankings. I am trying strategies to improve the rankings, which have dropped to a small degree over recent months.
Industry News | | WhitbyHolidayCottages0 -
Penguin 2.0 Update - Just Hit - Google Messes up again, can anyone on SEOMOZ please tell me why or how some of these websites are ranking?
I am getting a bit tired now writing all of this so please excuse grammar and spelling mistakes, I wanted to post this up quickly tonight so I could possibly get some feedback by morning. So I feel I figured out some of the new update that just hit and I am sure the update will continue to keep coming and rankings will most likely change for a while, but I do have a few questions in the mean time if they stay. Please look below, why would some of those sites be ranking? Some sites utilize no onpage SEO, some no backlinks, one of the sites is a single page site and every page is a broken link even the contact us page and it's rank 1..... I am not 100% sure that Google got this one right. I see many instances below where other sites are much higher quality and have more authority. It's as if Google took terrible sites and said here is a site for you, now deal with it and I hope it works out at the top. I do see several sites that belong on the first page, but I see others that are very questionable. This is how the following is written below. Before the url is the anchor text density % for the site. This indicates the percentage of the amount of times the anchor text was backlined versus other anchor texts they used. Issues with the sites. Most of these sites don't utilize onpage SEO and it's clearly not a factor for onpage density purposes, there is a site with 37% keyword density on it. Some sites even have broken links. Please note: I already know that there is a lot of data that is analyzed to determine rankings more than this, but PA/DA is suppose to be a major factor according to everyone that believes in SEOMOZ.org. So I am taking in account for many of those factors being calculated due to this. These are just some random keywords I picked, because I know you need to analyze other SEO firms after and update to figure out what lasted and what didn't. All of my sites lasted due to ethical tactics, but I had some rankings move down and others go up, very odd. Keyword Analyzed: CHEAP SEO Not Knowng http://searchengineland.com/the-hidden-cost-of-cheap-seo-social-labor-131585 92-DA 75-PA - A lot of content 4715 words on the page including comments. not known http://www.searchenginejournal.com/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-cheap-seo-or-link-building/45932/ 87DA 63 PA Words on page 3673 Not known www.cheap-seo-solutions.com 26 DA -- 38 PA 1112 words on page 9.52% www.cheapseocompany.com 34 DA ---- 41 PA 10 + anchor texts but 623 words on page 10.26% seocheap.net 35 DA --- 45 PA 10 + anchor text 855 words on the page I am not 100% sure why this is ranking lol, the services page isn't even working it errors out. The onpage SEO is sloppy and the writing looks forced. Why is this even ranking? The site also looks low quality. The density is higher than SEOMOZ even and it has less words. In this case DA + words carried this site up, not the anchor ratio being low. 6.17% http://www.cheapseo-services.com cheap seo Page Authority DA 28 -- PA 38 276 Words No onpage, 35 duplicate pages, free template, etc.. etc.. 10% www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-do-seo-cheap DA 94 --- PA 56 only 5 anchor texts used on this page. 8651 Words I am willing to bet if you diversified this with about 5 more anchor texts this could be number 1 easy. This only has 5 total diverse anchor text backlinks for this page. Keyword Analyzed: Affordable SEO Services Rank 1 47% www.affordableseoservicesx.com/ 24DA PA36 New site It still has broken links all over the page The Contact us page doesn't even work lol. Great going Google on ranking such a high quality 1 page website. 471 words How is this site ranking? How could Google even rank this site? Rank 2 The Term isn't mentioned at all accept in title and header not known mbseoservice.com/ da 20 pa 32 PR 0 Just has affordable seo services in title anchor Possible New Site 627 words Rank 4 12.77% affordableseoservices.net 22 DA 35 DA - Proof Exact match domains still work great with high diversity rates, low word amounts, bad DA, etc..... 348 words Rank 5 4.24% www.howardsemgroup.com DA 39 PA 49 893 words. Rank 6 2.49% www.i4.net/ 59 DA and 66 PA 588 words Rank 7 4.71% www.bluefrogseosolutions.com/ DA 31 PA 42 527 Words This site looks like it was created in 1998 and never updated. Low quality site IMO Rank 8 Not Known www.mainstreethost.com/ 76 DA 81 PA possible co occurrence added in with main domain name /url 281 Words not 1 exact anchor text match Rank 10 2.7% bestcheapseoservices.com/ 18 DA 29PA This is just a blog site, come on Google... 4379 Words
Industry News | | MarketingOfAmerica0 -
How can you change 'Google related searches'?
I am having problems for a few clients where google is suggesting negative related searches. I have had success getting Google suggestion (auto-complete) to suggest the keywords we want to be associated with the brand but the 'Searches Related to....' at the bottom of the search page is a big problem. Many of the terms are negative of sometimes defamatory and have absolutely not relevance to the brand. Even upon clicking on the related searches the pages Google displays are about other businesses. Can anyone suggest how to teach Google these term are irrelevant or any other suggestions as to how to remove them?
Industry News | | skehoe0 -
Suggested Link Builder and Brief
Hello I am looking to do some link building to get a clients site up the rankings. I would like to utilise the cheaper fees of an SEO in another country. India or somewhere Does anyone have any good references. I can see some good ones on O-desk. $6 dollars per hour. Also does anyone have an example brief/spec that would allow to to communicate key aspects? Thanks James
Industry News | | smashseo0 -
EMD question. How far can you push it?
A site targeting "orange juice" and "apple juice" as keywords is the example I'm going to use. Would you have any EMD related benefit if the domain was appleorangejuice.com for either of those keywords or both? To elaborate, this is NOT a question about how users would respond to such a domain. I think we can all agree that having the domain orangejuice.com would make ranking for that term easier and the same with applejuice.com. Is there any benefit then in using appleorangejuice.com with regards to optimizing for Both keywords or only 1? and which do you think would get the bigger benefit; apple juice or orange juice since the latter appears in sequence? I also feel the need to mention that this question arose from the fact that one of our clients insists that having the keyword in his domain will make his life a lot easier but the EMD for that phrase is not available so we're looking for different domains that are not mind numbingly obvious in their attempt to get ranked quickly.
Industry News | | MassivePrime0 -
Any pointers for my site would be greatly apprecieated and rewarded.
We just started changing all the meta data and adding relevant blog content. Anything I'm missing? Any advise or "after panda" link building strategies? inkfarm.com
Industry News | | ibex0 -
Anyone know how to get into Google Advisor search?
Looking for information on how to get into Google Advisor (https://www.google.com/advisor/home). Google is rolling out their own meta search engines in select categories right now - finance and hotels to start - but i cant find any documentation, help or data on how to get yourself in that feed/search. Anyone have experience in with this yet?
Industry News | | rhutchings0