What do you think about this strategy?
-
I am new to SEO but have been hired to handle the SEO for a martial arts school. They had previously attained top three rankings primarily using nofollow on every link on the homepage except footer links which had anchor text of their keywords pointing to their second tier pages. Each of those second tier page also had all nofollow except a single footer link that had a keyword anchor text link going back to the home page.
Seemed to work for them.
I was going to keep it as as well as focus on creating about 10 separate wordpress blogs. They want to give each blog to a student who will post daily and from each post link to their site via anchor text. Anything wrong with this?
Thanks
Wiliam
-
So even if the website is top 2 in google--For instance usually if you type in mma training in bergen county you will see www.njtraininggrounds.com listed at sometimes the first three spots---you would still say to take some page rank away from the index page and have a followed blog from there?
-
Rather than having 10 separate blogs, I agree that you should have only one blog but make each student an author. That way the content will be aggregated and consistent rather than having your efforts thinly sliced.
-
Hi Shane, thanks for the info. I think I may have them do that instead. Do you think the blog should be accessible from the homepage?
-
Thanks Ryan
-
Safe may be the wrong outlook
This strategy is definitely employed by many, but i think they are slowly seeing the returns on these types of strats slipping. Not to say they do not work, but not sure it is a good idea in such a small niche (probably a pretty big SEO footprint will be left)
If you have articles that call for linking to your site that has a logical and informational purpose, then this is a good strat, but just throwing out content with anchor text to your site is sometimes a waste and possibly hurtful.
IMHO - Forget so many word presses and concentrate on having a blog on your site that generates quality informational content that is related to your niche both directly and abstractly. This is a site link building strategy that can payoff in incoming links and traffic.
Now this is not to say that other avenues should not be taken, but if you have lots of content that can be created then i would keep alot of it on your site mostly in one place so you are not spreading all that potential traffic to alternate sites not on your domain (wordpresses)
Just an idea
-
You can offer as many anchor text links as you see fit. Understand that only the first link to a given page will pass the anchor text.
Unless a student really takes their blog seriously and writes high quality articles, these blogs probably wont offer any linking value in terms of PR. They may very well bring in some long tail traffic and gain exposure for your site that way.
-
Hi Ryan, thanks man. Will do. Do you think it's a good strategy to create the wordpress blogs manned by students daily with fresh posts, and then have those blogs link back to the main site? Any idea how many anchor text links is safe to put per post?
Thanks a lot
-
The strategy of nofollowing internal links to the degree you mention goes directly against what we know as best practices for the SEO industry.
As far as the results achieved, I would relate it to a recent Las Vegas experience. I was with a friend who had a 19 while the dealer had a 10 showing. Blackjack logic says to stay on 19, no matter what. He decided to hit, he got a 2, and the dealer had 20. His choice worked in that particular instance. Even so, I would never duplicate that action nor recommend it to anyone else. The point is, don't confuse the results with the tactic.
Another mozzer just referenced this link in a Q&A reply which talks about using nofollow on internal links: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/pagerank-sculpting/
The summary: I would remove nofollow from any internal links, and know that footer links are considered weaker then links found in your content.
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
-
Brand sections performing badly in SERP's but all SEO tools think we are great
I have had this problem for some time now and I've asked many many experts. Search for Falke in Google.co.uk and this is what you get: http://www.sockshop.co.uk/by_brand/falke/ 3rd Our competitor
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpbarber
http://www.mytights.com/gb/brand/falke.html 4th Our competitor http://www.uktights.com/section/73/falke 104th this is us ????? 9th for Falke tights with same section not our falke tights section? All sites seem to link to their brand sections in the same way with links in the header and breadcrumbs, Opensite exporler only shows 2 or 3 internal links for our compertitors, 1600+ from us?
Many of our brand sections rank badly Pretty Polly and Charnos brands rank page 2 or 3 with a brand subsection with no links to them, main section dosn't rank? Great example is Kunert, a German brand no UK competition our section has been live for 8 years, the best we can do is 71st Google UK, 1st on Bing (as we should be). I'm working on adding some quality links, but our comtetitors have a few low quality or no external links, only slightly better domain authority but rank 100+ positions better than us on some brands. This to me would suggest there is something onpage / internal linking I'm doing wrong, but all tools say "well done, grade A" take a holiday. Keyword denisty is similar to our competiors and I've tried reducing the number of products on the page. All pages really ranked well pre Penguin, and Bing still likes them. This is driving me nuts and costing us money Cheers Jonathan
www.uktights.com1 -
What Navigation strategy should I pursue for this local SEO project? Why?
Hi Mozzers, Context: I am working with a plumbing company that is located in NC and covers 6 locations( 1 address + 5 target cities). To start off I am planning to SEO his main location + 2 to 3 areas. The initial plan is to create 30 (10 services for 3 locations) unique landing pages for the main area and the extra locations,. His services are: PLUMBING EMERGENCY PLUMBING WATER TREATMENT WATER HEATER INSTALLATION WATER HEATER REPAIR TANKLESS WATER HEATERS SEWER AND DRAIN CLEANING REPIPING GARBAGE DISPOSALS GENERAL PLUMBING Since I am including 2 to 3 extra areas offering all these services above, should I include a subnavigation which will create a localized microsite within the site itself for these extra locations or not? Please specify why? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Hiring - SEO Strategy Planning - Airline Industry
Hello everyone, Looking to hire someone to help me out with a project in the flight tickets industry. Someone who's worked with similar industry and can provide some assistance with SEO strategy.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickMacario0 -
A challenge! What off-page strategies would you employ first when ranking a brand new small business website?
I'd love to hear what you guys do. I think the game has changed now in the era of Penguin. Gone are the days where you can build a few quick links and suddenly your new site is ranking fairly well. Obviously, the first steps are to get the on page SEO right - titles, good keyword use, etc. Eventually, the goal may be to build some content that will attract natural links. But, we all know that is going to take time. So, here's the scenario: You've got a new client with a website in a fairly non-competitive niche, say, a piano mover in Seattle. The site is indexed, with no external backlinks. You're happy with the current on page SEO. The site is currently ranking on page 3 for "Seattle Piano Mover". What would you do next?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MarieHaynes0 -
SEO Strategy for Microsite
I am working on a project to build a microsite of sorts that will represent a joint program between two large organizations with established web presences and strong domains. Each of the organizations has dedicated sections on their sites speaking to the program, but the leadership has decided the joint program deserves it's own site with dedicated content. The two larger sites perform very well for SEO, and I don't necessarily want to jeopordize thir rankings by delivering content that competes directly with them. So I am doing some keyword research to find some opportunities that will alllow me to use the new site to target keywords not yet being captialized by the larger sites. My grand scheme is to have the three sites targeting the broadest array of keywords possible, thus maximizing exposure and avoiding competition. Here is the rub: the content between the three sites will be different but very similar, and there will be plenty of cross linking, especially from the existing sites to the new site, as we grow the brand of the joint program. I'm curious to here some expert opinions on what the puitfalls of the strategy are and what are some of the things I can do to avoid falling in the black hat category - I recognize that proliferating sites around a single topic and cross linking them is black hat. The organizations simply want to build a brand around a joint program and we are striggling to do that without a dedicated website.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AmyLB0 -
Google Freshness Update & Ecommerce Site Strategies
Just curious what other ecommerce SEO's are doing to battle fresh content. We've been having our clients work on internal blogs, adding articles one click away from landing pages, and implement product reviews when possible but I don't know that it's enough. Our bigger customers have landing pages (usually category pages) with very competitive keywords. So my main issue is what to do with fresh content on category pages.. I've toyed with the idea of having the landing page content re written every now and then. We used to use a blog parser to bring snippits of comments from the blog into landing pages but I believe that to be a problem with duplicate content. News snippits from other sites don't seem beneficial either. Anyone have any other ideas?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Best strategy behind moving country subdirectory to dedicated TTLD wo/ loosing organic search volume?
Community, We are about to move one of our most popular country sub directories from brandname.com/de/.. to brandname.de . We have just purchased the domain so while the domain has been registered in 2009 the URL has zero domain authority. What is the best strategy to execute the move while being cautious about loosing too much organic search volume the subdirectory is receiving right now? Obviously it will take some time to build up DA on the TTLD so maybe it is a good idea to keep the country directory for a little longer and start on the TTLD with just a static landing page, place some links, wait until it receives some DA builds up and then perform the move. Thoughts? /TomyPro
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tomypro0 -
Is this a good strategy?
Okay, so let's say I have a landing page or an ecommerce website with limited content. If I start a blog and write quality posts that have anchor text linking back to my homepage, then bookmark the hell out of those blog posts, post to twitter, cite the post on Q&A websites, etc . . . would that be an effective strategy beyond the normal stuff like directory submisson and blog comments?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DanHenry0