Outbound links
-
Hi everyone,
Just a quick question about using info/statistics from other sources in my articles.
If I use a quote/piece of info from another online article do I just say where it's from and link to it? Is this acceptable or do you have to get permission? I find the whole permissions thing quite confusing! I know that outbound links are good for SEO so just wanted to check this.
Thanks!
-
Thanks, EGOL!
You've been very helpful!
-
If they are taking your original content it can be illegal if...
-
they do not have a case for fair use
-
you have not done something to make your content available for other use (such as make it public domain, creative commons, etc.)
Copyright infringement is covered by Federal statute in the United States. If your content is registered you might have a case to sue, even if no financial damage is suffered. It can be considered criminal if the infringer is knowing and willful.
I am not an attorney. I recommend consulting with one if you have copyright problems.
I have done my due diligence and regularly file DMCA's, send informal take down notices, and have my attorney handle situations that might be complex or are against an infringer of note.
-
-
Thank you for your fast response!
Is it actually illegal to do so or is it just frowned upon? I actually compete against some of these sites and it's not just one or two articles, it's the ENTIRE blog (30+ articles).
-
Verbatim articles on a website can often outrank the original source, especially if the original source website is not very strong.
If they do it with my content, I will probably file a DMCA with Google and perhaps with their host.
-
Hello, EGOL.
I like your detailed answer here! I have seen some blogs copy other entire articles (verbatim, images and all) and then just source the original blog link at the bottom of the article. Unfortunately, these sites rank very well for not doing any REAL work.
Is this something that will eventually come back to bite them or are they just going to get away with it forever? Your expertise is very much appreciated!
Thank you!
-
EGOL - thanks so much for this answer. You have really explained this well and put my mind at rest! I will check out the wiki article.
Thanks again.
-
Here is how many people handle these...
If you write your own sentence that incorporates a statistic or a fact that is not original to you, then it is proper to attribute that information to your source. This is usually done in footnote fashion similar to what you see in Wikipedia articles.
This wikipedia article on "citation" is a good place to see examples of how to dot it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citation
Permission is not required if the work is publicly available on a website or in a published book, unless you have agreed to confidentiality of the informaiton. Just use a footnote and a link to their website or a reference to a printed document. Instead of a link you can give the full url if you don't want to use a hyperlink.
If you are going to quote verbatim a sentence or two, but not more than that, then placing that verbatim text in
is often done. This indents the text, separating it from your own, with a footnote number in brackets at the end. [2] Permission is not needed for a short quote from a book or from a website (unless there is a confidentiality agreement). Just make it clear that you have quoted and keep the length of your quote very short - a sentence or two at most. Many people will also place the
text in italics to really make it clear that you have cited.
How many times can you do this in an article? If you do it once with a sentence or two it should be fine. But if you are going to do it multiple times you could run into an infringement problem. How many times? I would get permission if I was going to use multiple blockquotes from a single source.
If you have any doubts about using the text of others in references or quotes, then it is best to consult an attorney about the "fair use" part of copyright law. I am not an attorney and can't give exact answers on this. In fact, many attorneys will tell you that they can't give exact answers because copyright problems often need to be tested in court in front of a jury. It is hard or impossible what a jury will return in many situations.
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
-
Combining adjacent image and text links
Hey, The pages on one of our sites has a lot of links on it, which I have read a couple of times can be bad for SEO, although many say don't worry too much about it. However, I was thinking to reduce links and also reduce code size combining adjacent image and text links. For example they current look like this:
On-Page Optimization | | mdeluk
"
Products page" I am thinking maybe I should change to the following:
"Products page" However, is this bad code and therefore could be bad for SEO? I have tried Googling this but couldn't seem to find anything on it.0 -
How does the footer links impact the the pages SEO quality?
Hi, i want to ask a question. Does this kind of internal links will affect the SEO post quality? Please open the attachment (image) KskOg3U
On-Page Optimization | | joshuaong0 -
Internal linking
Hi Guy's, Whats the best way to set internal links on your website: 1. href=: /page/
On-Page Optimization | | Happy-SEO
2. href=: https://domain.com/page/ Thanks!0 -
Too Many on page links on my homepage question?
Question, on moz analytics, for my homepage, I've gotten the " Too many on page links" notification every crawl. I've always ignored it because i didnt think it affected ranking or anything really. The on page links on the bottom of our homepage are landing pages. Most users reach those pages by searching those specific pages on google. We just decided to put them on the bottom of our page for unknown reasons. My question is, should i remove the landing pages on the bottom of our homepage? WIll it improve search rankings for my homepage? if i do remove them, should i put the landing pages on another page besides the homepage? Does google index my website better without the on page links on my homepage? My website is- prestigeluxuryrentals.com
On-Page Optimization | | prestigeluxuryrentals.com0 -
Using example.info when example.com is a link farm. Ok? Bad? Doesn't matter?
Second question of the day- I'm helping a friend with his law firm site. He is using example.info because example.com is being used by a link farm. Is this hurting his search efforts? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | ahossom0 -
How to handle lots of outbound links
I decided to create a page on my website where I would list all of my favorite resources and 3rd party tools. There are now 35 links in the main content section of the page, all with anchor text, pointing to websites in my industry. My question is this: what is the best practice here? Should I add nofollow tags to the links? Should I do something else to indicate that these links shouldn't be crawled? Frankly, I don't mind passing some link juice to these tools (in this case, and from this particular website), but I might make a different decision with a client's website. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Here is the page I'm referring to, in case anyone wants to look: http://willmarlow.com/resources-2/the-digital-marketing-toolbox/. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | williammarlow0 -
Too many links
Hello, sorry question 2! I run the report it says we have 120 links roughly per page. I know this is bad however I have question about an oscommerce site. I identified some links that can be deleted for example Product picture is a link then the title and then its says details (so I can delete the details and that should save about 15 links) Now I really can only delete the breadcrumb for example car>>ford>>spareparts>>engine If I delete the breadcrumb I would lose four links would you say thats a good idea? or leave the breadcrumb due to the seo benefits. Many thanks for your help. Sonja
On-Page Optimization | | reallyitsme0 -
Max # of recommended links per page?
I've heard it said that Google may choose to stop following links after the first 100 on a page. The landing/category pages for my site's product catalog have earned quite a respectable PR and positioning in search results, and I'm currently paginating their product listings (about 200 products in a category) so that only a couple dozen products are shown on the first page, with links to "next page" and "previous page" being accomplished via query string (i.e. "?page=3"). An alternative option I have is to link to 100% of the contained products within the category's landing page (which would increase my on-page link count to ~300) and use CSS/Javascript to allow the user to simulate browsing between pages on the client side. My goal is to see as many of my product pages indexed as possible. Is this done better using my current scheme (where Googlebot would have to navigate to, say, Landing Page -> Page 6 -> Deeply Buried Product Page) or in the alternative method above, where all the links are in a single page? Since my landing pages are currently treated pretty well by search engines, would that "trust" cause them to follow more links than might normally be done? Thank you!
On-Page Optimization | | cadenzajon0