What is the Value?
-
Hi there,
I own a website (non-commercial) which has around 300 pages full of original content, in average about 500 words or so per page. I also own another website (commercial) I was thinking of pointing keywords for all of these pages in the non-commercial website pointing to the commercial website, all the articles are around 2-10 years old, what is the value of doing this sort of link building?
Kind Regards,
-
For a magazine not published in two years i can only say wow.
I would not 301 given this data (yes, more info could change that, but I doubt it). I would look to do two things:
Discover where the traffic is coming from and why and see if there is a way to captitalize on it or improve it. Then, I would institute a good linking strategy going url to url as opposed to pushing all to home page of commercial site. Make sure the anchor text is good, links come from content above the fold where possible (Don't do footer, sidebar links out of convenience, take the time). I would do around 30 to 40 links per month just because I like a slower approach and the ability to change my approach based on new info.
For a good primer on anchor text, Here is a Whiteboard on anchor text from Rand Fishkin
Hope this helps you out, would love to be posted as you watch it, even if just by PM. What I do on projects like these is get a baseline using campaigns and then evaluate it weekly or monthly as I add. For a total site 301 url to url, I watch both sites and graph the result so that we learn from it.
If you are up to it, and you take a road similar or somewhat different and keep all your results, you could write a blog by simply stating the question, the answers, what you did, and then the results over time. In three or four months, you would have a great piece.
Best to you.
-
Hi Marcin,
Thanks for your reply.
I pointed out that this domain is not on the same IP address
The non-commercial domain has a domain authority of 46, it has 61 linking root domains, 151 external links. Although not great reading, it attracts over 40,000 visits from natural search (Mainly Google) so from this alone with not many external links pointing at the website, the articles surely have value or authority from Google, an example being one of the pages is no.1 for a particular keywords attracting over 4,000 visits from natural search and this page has no external links pointing at it.
Hopefully this sheds a little light on what value the website has.
Thanks
-
You have not provided enough information to answer this question.
Robert has already indicated some unclear points (the same IP C-class or not?), and there are more, like domain ownership (if both domains have the same owner, backlinks value will be lowered).
Additionally, we know nothing about the strength of your non-commercial site (if you at least quoted some stats from the Open Site Explorer, we could help you more).
Generally, you could gain some benefit, but I would not expect it to be earth-shattering, unless your non-commercial site is really strong.
In link building, distribution of your backlinks among many domains is very important. You need various backlinks from different sources to really feel the difference in rankings.
-
Hi Robert,
Thanks for your reply.
This website was used to support a magazine which was distributed throughout the UK once a month, whatever was written for the magazine, this was replicated on the non-commercial website, the reason for the non-commercial website was due to legalities, the content could not be used on the commercial website, hope that makes sense.
The website is not on the same IP address. Depending on the article itself for example lets say it was talking about Colds & Flu, the anchor text for this article was relate to cold & flu.
Yes, the website has had no contribution for over 2 years now, due to the magazine no longer being published, however my thinking is that with the article being original and the length of time they have been online, surely this has some value?
I hope this clears things up a little.
Thanks
-
Gary,
This is a bit over broad, but I will attempt to assist you. You have a site that you have for some reason other than commercial. You also have a commercial site. You want to point keywords from non to other. (I am assuming you mean link to other from this on keyword relevant pages). You desire to do this to add value if possible to commercial site.
Given that there are some considerations: If they are on the same C block or IP address it will effect how much juice you get. Also, if they are only loosely related, ultimately there will be less value and all the linking norms must be followed to achieve whatever you are able to achieve at a max.
Now, the real issue is the content is 2 to 10 years old which would seem to mean you are doing nothing with the site at the moment. If that is so, I think you would be better served to go another direction.
Assuming the site serves no current or important purpose or that the commercial site could take up that slack, you could do a 301 redirect of the pertinent pages of non comm to comm. This would assist you in a couple of ways: you have one less site to worry about (soon), you are able to take the link value of non comm and send it to comm with less than a ten percent loss on that value, there is no IP or C block issue or same owner issue, over a month to three or four you will see the value of non comm positively effect commercial.
Again, as with linking, you must follow the norms of 301 redirect like url to url in .htaccess and not domain to domain, etc.
If I failed in the details of what you wanted, I apologize and would take another stab if I knew the urls or more details.
Best.
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
-
SEO value of 301 redirects from non-existent sites.
I have a question about an SEO tactic. There is this site that has purchased three domain names, and has redirected them to their main site. The three domains are: Spokaneduilawyer org, Spokaneduilaw com, and Spokaneduilawfirm com and the website has all three domains redirecting to their main site. What is the SEO value with this? I looked at those three domains on Majestic and they have no backlinks that I could find, and when I looked on archive.org I didn't see any history of those domains being actual sites that might bring traffic. What is the webmaster trying to do, and what is this tactic called?
Link Building | | RandyHT0 -
Paid Directory Value
Hi All! Recently we scaled back the number of paid directories that we use for our clients, mainly due to them being devalued. To select which directories made the cut, we looked at things like Domain Authority, Page Rank, and Trust; all of the things you're supposed to be looking for in a quality link. We even used the list of directories here on SEOmoz as a reference. Two of the directories we use are Yahoo and BOTW, both of which seem to draw the ire of many professionals here. Is there something I'm missing? If these directories have solid numbers, why such backlash towards them? I appreciate any insight you can give me! Frank
Link Building | | FrankSweeney0 -
SEO Package: Good Value?
I'm having a real hard time trying to dig through all the BS and find a reputable SEO company that delivers quality and value. Anyway, here's a package that I'm considering from a company called eBrandz. It seems a bit overpriced to me, but I don't have a lot of experience with reputable SEO companies, so I'm hoping someone can weigh in - on both the package itself for the price, and the company (if you have any information about them). $1500/month 8 Guest Posts (With 80 Bookmarks) 8 Articles with Syndication (With 80 Bookmarks) 1 Press Release (With Bookmarking) 75 "Curated Business Directory Submissions" Social Bookmarking for 5 Urls (Each Url to 20 Sites) 1 (every other month) Video Creation (45 to 90 seconds) With Submission and Bookmarking.
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
Value of certain directory links
I am looking at the links to a competitors site and they have a ton of links from things like this http://www.directoryws.com/ Is it worth submitting to something like this? It has a 58 domain authority from Moz.
Link Building | | EcommerceSite0 -
I'm thinking about buying a competitor and 301 redirecting? How much SEO value?
I'm thinking about buying a competitor and 301 redirecting their site to mine. The high level stats are as follows. My site has a DA of 46 and the homepage has a PA of 55. 375 root domains, 170,000 links. The site sells millions of dollars worth of product each year. The competitor (who I had never heard of) has a DA of 58 and a homepage PA of 64. They have 634 root domains and 260,000 links. They aren't selling much of anything (less than 100,000 per year). We might be able to operate their site but I'm concerned about maintaining 2 platforms. My question is about the value of buying this site and 301 redirecting it to my site. Would this create long term SEO value or not? Any examples that have been documented are greatly appreciated.
Link Building | | bradwayland0 -
Content Strategy - High Value on Lots of Sites vs. High Value on One Site
Good afternoon Mozzers. I have a discussion based question and I'd be interested to know your thoughts. I currently implement a content strategy where we create a series of high value How-to written articles, relevant to our audience and then work at getting them placed on multiple high value websites. I have just been offered an opportunity with a PR6 domain to create a similar series of content but place it all on their site with links back to ours through a dedicated section. So my question is would I gain more value from small amounts of great content in lots of places vs. a lot of great content in on place? Effectively 1 link from 20 sites vs. 20 links from 1 site.
Link Building | | RobertChapman0 -
SEO value of expired Pages
We run a classified site and after every day there are thousands of ads/pages that get expired which has no use to visitors. What is the best practice to deal with them keeping SEO factor in mind? Should we keep them as they are linking to home page. redirect 301 to existing, 404 to home page or any other practice. Please advise.
Link Building | | razasaeed0 -
Do links from my own subdomain to my main domain carry any value?
I currently have a Wordpress blog set up on a subdomain i.e blog@ etc. I wanted to know whether the links from the blog to my main site carry any value.
Link Building | | Store210