Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Link Building
    4. Does an external link to an image file on my site help my SEO?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Does an external link to an image file on my site help my SEO?

    Link Building
    2
    3
    1860
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • AlexLenhoff
      AlexLenhoff last edited by

      I found a few websites that are displaying images from my site.  Curiously, they have also linked these images to the source image file on my website.  I found these because Moz showed these sites in my list of backlinks.  I assume that means it impacts my Domain Authority.  But does this actually help me in search engines since it's not linking to a page on my site?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • AlexLenhoff
        AlexLenhoff @TimHolmes last edited by

        They are hot linking, but I was more asking about the accompanying link to the image on my site.  If it's not clear, it looks like this:

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • TimHolmes
          TimHolmes last edited by

          I think the following posts will cover this topic on images for seo and hot linking. I would imagine the problem you face is that it will be eating into your own servers bandwidth by serving these images for someone else.

          https://moz.com/community/q/can-hotlinking-images-from-multiple-sites-be-bad-for-seo
          https://moz.com/community/q/seo-issues-from-image-hotlinking
          https://moz.com/community/q/images-and-seo

          Cheers

          Tim

          AlexLenhoff 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • cceebar

            Do links from such sites as TripAdvisor give any weight or support for SEO

            And what about other sites like quora or other niche forums/blogs where one might leave answers, with a link to their profile, which has a link back to the owner's website? _Cindy

            Link Building | | cceebar
            1
          • Alick300

            Links from coupon sites

            Hi All, I post coupons on coupon sites a month ago and when I checked backlinks of my website I saw approx 1000 links coming from coupon sites on my Brand Name. IMO it is quite natural please share your views. *All the big brands listed on that coupon sites e.g amazon, dell etc Thanks

            Link Building | | Alick300
            1
          • darkmediagroup

            Best SEO practice to redirect affiliate link

            Hello, I got an affiliate program on my website, that redirects the affiliate link to the main site like: site.com/ads/aff_code/  ->  site.com/ (The redirect is done using a 301 status code.) On the redirect process the site stores a cookie to track the affiliate sale. Will Google and others SE follow this permanent redirect, transferring the relevance of this affiliate link to my main site? In other words, if an affiliate does something wrong (like spams), does the bad reputation will be transferred to my main site? Is there a better way to do that from a SEO standpoint? Thanks,

            Link Building | | darkmediagroup
            0
          • littlesthobo

            Web Designers and SEOs using backlinks from client sites

            What are your thoughts on SEOs and web designers putting their own links in the footers of client sites. For the sake of argument, lets assume that the client is happy for the link to be there. I'm referring to the SEO merits of the link being there from an 'irrelevant' website. My belief is that this goes against what Google is looking for and that these are irrelevant links and likely to be picked up and penalised.  That's what I believe! However, I see lots of sites offering SEO services that have dofollow links from their client sites, using exact match anchor text and they are all ranking highly. Is it just a matter of time before Google sniffs them out and penalises them for it?  Or should I be going through my client sites and adding myself a dofollow link in the footer? (with their permission of course). The highest ranking sites in any UK city do this.  If you search SEO Manchester, SEO Leeds etc and find the top ranking sites and check them out on opensite explorer, they are all using a disproportionate amount of dofollow backlinks form client sites.

            Link Building | | littlesthobo
            0
          • motosantiago

            Do inbound links to download .exe files improve SEO?

            The site, (http://www.bartenderbarcodesoftware.com/) sells barcode software.  They also provide free printer drivers on their site.  During a recent domain change (before I started helping them), they began looking at their inbound links and found quite a few external sites linking to these download files.  However, when someone clicks on the link on one of these sites (i.e. http://vvs-motor.com.ua/barcode-printer-drivers) it immediately begins downloading the file (i.e. http://www.seagullscientific.com/downloads/drivers/archive/7.2/7.2.4/Unimark_7.2.4.exe) without taking the visitor to the site. The owner would greatly prefer this traffic to engage with the site and is considering 301 redirecting those download links to an actual webpage. Question:  Would this look suspicious to Google?  Would this have a positive or negative effect on SEO? The last factor to consider is that many of these sites will likely just recreate the list based on the new links at some future point. Thanks for any help!

            Link Building | | motosantiago
            0
          • Personnel_Concept

            Does link from a blog in Blogger.com helps in SEO ?

            Do you guys think that adding good quality blogs to blogger.com and then getting a link from those blogs will help ?

            Link Building | | Personnel_Concept
            0
          • theLotter

            Does blocking domains help remove bad links?

            I have affiliate websites that are harming for one of 2 reasons: 1. They are on adult websites (and I don't want to be in a bad neighborhood) or 2. They are using a Frameset (so their content appears identical to mine and I am getting "credit" for all their junk links) I cannot get these websites to remove our links so I have blocked their IPs on our production firewall. Is this an effective method or should I do something else with these links?

            Link Building | | theLotter
            0
          • donford

            Helpful or Hurtfull / Distributor Links to Our site on every product page?

            We have a distributor site with a page rank of 3 on its home page, and 0-1'ish on its product pages. While our manufacturing site is PR 4 getting close to 5... We are thinking about adding a link from our distributors product pages to our manufacturing appropriate material information page. This would be about 10k links spread out among 7 materials. We want to add these links to help our distributor sites customers, but we don't want to hurt our manufacturing site in the process. I personally don't know of any problem this would cause, but our manufacturing site is so important I need to verify adding this many links wouldn't hurt us. Your thoughts and knowledge is appreciated.

            Link Building | | donford
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.