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.
Can Foreign Language Backlinks Be Valuable?
-
I've done a lot of searching on this subject, but I keep seeing conflicting answers.
Are backlinks from foreign language websites valuable?
For example, a travel website in English picks up a couple backlinks in Indonesian language (and other languages) from foreign sites that have a DA of 60-70 or higher.
The topic is partially related, but the language is totally different.
Would those links still be valuable for the English website's DA?
Has this ever been answered conclusively?
Thanks
-
@backstagecreat DA is not a direct correlation in terms of the ranking power of a backlink. I am afraid the above mentioned is incorrect.
-
@backstagecreat This is completely incorrect.
The DA score is nothing but a 3rd party measurement and is not a direct correlation of a backlinks SERP impact.
A website with a MOZ DA score of just DA20 can provide much higher rank impact then a MOZ DA40 backlink depending on many other factors.
The DA score in the light you have announced it is meaningless and bad advise.
The DA score or the "Higher The DA" has nothing to do rank power of a link.
The rank power depends more on the type of referring domain either that being the niche or domain trust.
This is explained further
You own a hairdressing website and you get a DA40 link from a lawnmower shop website.
You also then get a link from a different website. This website is DA10. But its actually another hairdressing shop that linked to you.
The DA10 link is going to give much large ranking impact than the DA40 link
DA is just a way to measure things. It is in no way a reflection of the ranking power of a backlink.
I hope this clears up the conflicting and incorrect information made in backstagecreat comment
-
@lynnpatchett Backlinks are a cornerstone of SEO. However, not all backlinks deliver the same value. Links that are higher on a page or from pages with a higher DA will help your website rank better in Google's search results. You can use this information to build higher-quality backlinks.
-
@abdoselim2050 I disagree. Not every backlink has actual value.
These include.
-
Links on noindex pages.
-
Links from noindex spam blogs
-
Links that Google will choose to totally ignore
-
Links from highly spammed and high OBL pages.
-
If a indexed nofollow link is on a page that's never visited
There are many useless hyperlinks out there on there internet some which I have not mentioned here due to he list becoming to long.
-
-
@david5675 Of course they are mate. Google does not care about the origin or language of the site you get a link from. They look first at the niche, the topical relevance and the domains overall authority and trust. As most optimisation pros are aware there is over 200 factors the major search engines base there algorithms on. Google automatically translates the content so it makes no difference in respect to the foreign language.
So can they be valuable. The answer is it makes no difference so yes they are. As long as language and topical relevance translates into the same niche and the page has a low OBL at not spammed to death your good to go.
Many foreign language sites have huge SERP impact. This is why I personally like to target some of my outreach to these sites due to the fact some of them are actually interested in getting an English point of view on certain topics. Furthermore, looking back at the 200 factors Googles evaluates a website with. Diversity is one of them.
-
That's an interesting question indeed. I never saw a conclusive study on this topic, however, it seems that the answer would be: unique, genuine, high quality links will always be of use, especially if the topic of the page is relevant (just like in the example with foreign travel communities linking to travel websites in English) even though it would provide less value because of the anchor and surrounding text being in other language. How exactly less, that's still questionable. I would not concentrate on acquiring such links deliberately, but would not fight against them as well.
-
Every backlink has value, nothing is without value
However, the earned value varies from one link to another
Get backlinks from more than one language - This increases his strength and chances of appearing in the first ranks -
Hi,
This kind of link is pretty common, especially in the travel/tourism industry where lots of foreign language sites discussing holiday destinations etc give links out to relevant sites that are not necessarily in the language of the original article. If it is a freely given link from a somewhat relevant page then it certainly would not hurt, if it is a link that you are outreaching for then I would personally concentrate on other options that are in the same language as your website, Hope that makes sense
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
-
How i can Reduce Spam score of my website
Hi everyone, I'm reaching out to the community for some advice on improving my website's spam score. I've been using the Moz Spam Score Checker and my website, sngplbill.pk, currently has a score of 7%. While this isn't exceptionally high, I'd like to take steps to bring it down as low as possible, ideally under 1%. One factor I've identified that might be contributing to this score is a number of backlinks pointing to my site has a much higher spam score (over 80%). (screenshot attached)sngplbillscore I'm wondering if the community has any recommendations for how to address this situation. Here are some specific questions I have: Does disavowing the backlinks from spamy site seem like the best course of action?
Link Building | | Faizali.786
Are there any other potential reasons why my website might have a spam score, even with these backlinks?
What general strategies can I implement to improve my website's overall SEO health and reduce its spam score?
Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!0 -
Unsolved Anyone else finding that the Link Intersection tool is not accurate?
I ran the Link Intersect tool on my site vs competitor's site. The first 3 domains it tells me the competitor has links from but I do not are: medium.com, behance.net, and moz.com. I thought this was odd because I know for a fact I built profiles with a link on all 3 sites. So, I went to all 3 and found my links on these sites. I also double-checked in the Google search console and they show up there. Am I understanding the tool wrong? Is it really showing me sites we both have vs what I don't have?
Moz Tools | | pcannon0 -
Directory Listings no longer counted in Backlinks?
Interesting situation when I looked at Google Search Console this morning, I found that back-links from directories had dropped off and am wondering if anyone else is seeing this? Specifically, I am in Australia and had links from Yellowpages.com.au and Truelocal.com.au to my primary domain. Interestingly, Yellow Pages had gone a bit crazy recently in that the number of links to my site seemed to balloon exponentially from about 50 when I first listed to 700+ to 1500+ to 1800+ and then the balloon popped. Truelocal in contrast was only ever showing the 1 link. There have not been any changes from my end, and I only ever had one listing in these directories so not sure what generated all these extra links in Yellow Pages. Anyone else in Australia noticed a sudden drop off in Google Backlinks from Directories? If not it may just be a temporary blip.
Link Building | | Excal0 -
Top 20 sites for backlinking
My security jobs website was doing very well in Search engines until the penguin got hold of me. I don't profess to be at pro at SEO however seem to have a knack of getting sites to rank well. I think I made some basic mistakes with the original security jobs website, to many links to soon, so I have started again and will build up slowly the backlinks quality rather than quantity this time. My questions is what are the top 20 or so sites that are good to backlink from?
Link Building | | SecJobs0 -
Frustrated with spammy backlinks from competitors
I've only been doing SEO for my company for the last month and I've made some headway but what is really frustrating me right now is a couple of competitors that have OBVIOUS spammy links ranking in the number 1,2,3 stops all over the board for the keywords i'm going for. One competitor in particular has anchor text links EVERYWHERE that make absolutely no sense...junk like... "I have never been more saddened by anything in my life than when my grandfather got cancer. I told my uncle he needed to buy some auto insurance. I really like pork." I mean, these links are the pages with the most page authority and page rank out of all of the ones they have...and I'd venture to say that almost all of their backlinks are like this...well, half of them are just random links with good anchor text on the sidebar of a bazillion spam websites (diapers, toys, fake blogs, etc.)...while i have about 3k links and most of my top competitors have about 5k links...these guys have over 33k. Worse yet, when I look at something like Alexa rank, they have pretty high overall traffic rank but it shows traffic rank in MX (mexico) instead of the US...these guys only sell in the US! I mean, they're black hat if I've ever seen such a thing and they rank superbly on all keywords. What can I do to compete with this junk?
Link Building | | jgower0 -
Should I Just Copy A Competitor's Backlinks?
Forgive the newbie question, but now that I have found SeoMoz and OpenSiteExplorer, should I just piggy back on my competitors backlinks? What would be the downside? By way of explanation, I've never had the need to explore SEO before. Our site, Widgets.com has always ranked highly for all Widgets keywords because we have the keyword in our domain and our site has been around since 1998. But out of the blue this summer, a site, let's call them WidgetsCircus.com suddenly began outranking us on widgets keywords, and pretty much every keyword we can imagine in our little widget universe. Now that I have run OpenSiteExplorer, I can see how they've done it. They've pretty much spent the last year commenting on blog posts all over the place, editing wiki pages, etc., and built thousands of links for all these widget keywords. So, I'm wondering: why shouldn't I just go down the list of links and do exactly what they've done? Where they commented on a blog, why don't I just comment right along side them. Obviously, this has worked for them! Wouldn't it work for us too? Or is that too simple?
Link Building | | brianmcc0