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.
Best possible linking on site with 100K indexed pages
-
Hello All,
First of all I would like to thank everybody here for sharing such great knowledge with such amazing and heartfelt passion.It really is good to see. Thank you.
My story / question:
I recently sold a site with more than 100k pages indexed in Google. I was allowed to keep links on the site.These links being actual anchor text links on both the home page as well on the 100k news articles. On top of that, my site syndicates its rss feed (Just links and titles, no content) to this page.
However, the new owner made a mess, and now the site could possibly be seen as bad linking to my site. Google tells me within webmasters that this particular site gives me more than 400K backlinks.
I have NEVER received one single notice from Google that I have bad links. That first.
But, I was worried that this page could have been the reason why MY site tanked as bad as it did. It's the only source linking so massive to me.
Just a few days ago, I got in contact with the new site owner. And he has taken my offer to help him 'better' his site.
Although getting the site up to date for him is my main purpose, since I am there, I will also put effort in to optimizing the links back to my site.
My question:
What would be the best to do for my 'most SEO gain' out of this?
The site is a news paper type of site, catering for news within the exact niche my site is trying to rank. Difference being, his is a news site, mine is not. It is commercial.
Once I fix his site, there will be regular news updates all within the niche we both are in. Regularly as in several times per day. It's news. In the niche.
Should I leave my rss feed in the side bars of all the content?
Should I leave an achor text link on the sidebar (on all news etc.)
If so: there can be just one keyword... 407K pages linking with just 1 kw??
Should I keep it to just one link on the home page?
I would love to hear what you guys think.
(My domain is from 2001. Like a quality wine. However, still tanked like a submarine.)
ALL SEO reports I got here are now Grade A. The site is finally fully optimized.
Truly nice to have that confirmation. Now I hope someone will be able to tell me what is best to do, in order to get the most SEO gain out of this for my site.
Thank you.
-
Howdy richardo24hr,
One of articles that changed my SEO life was written by Rand back in 2010:
All Links are not Created Equal
The article is still valid today, and update link Panda and Penguin have further changed the landscape of links. Here's a few important points to keep in mind:
1. Multiple links from the same domain don't always help. It's better to have 50 links from 50 domains than 10,000 links from one domain. After the first link, other links from the same domain may pass value, but that value tends to diminish.
2. Since the Penguin update, sitewide, over-optimized anchor text can lead to penalties and/or filters targeting your keywords.
For example, a sitewide footer link (or sidebar link) that pointed to your site with optimized anchor text is often seen as non-editorial (as it's placed automatically by your CMS) and this could actually hurt you.
3. Google is getting better at sniffing out site with "administrative" relationships, and tend to devalue these links. So a site that links to you from 100,000 pages is likely to broadcast a relationship between the 2 sites to Google, so Google may possibly devalue these links.
Links from this site can help! But the danger is to overdo it in a way that can actually act counter to what you're trying to achieve.
The best links from this site, from an SEO point of view, would be:
- Editorial. Meaning they are linked to in the body of a text article, and not auto-generated by a CMS
- This means the links are varied in thier anchor text, and not over-optimized
- I would avoid sitewide links
- RSS links are tricky, but in general I don't see them adding much value. Although these links are often scraped and posted on 3rd party sites. In this case it's best to use generic or branded anchor text like the full url of your site: example.com
If I had to choose, one link on the homepage may well give you more value than 100,000 RSS links. There's probably an opportunity to do more than this, but I'd do a thorough link audit to look for as many over-optimized links from this domain as possible.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
I guess my question was too hard to answer?
-
Thank you
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 to check if the page is indexable for SEs?
Hi, I'm building the extension for Chrome, which should show me the status of the indexability of the page I'm on. So, I need to know all the methods to check if the page has the potential to be crawled and indexed by a Search Engines. I've come up with a few methods: Check the URL in robots.txt file (if it's not disallowed) Check page metas (if there are not noindex meta) Check if page is the same for unregistered users (for those pages only available for registered users of the site) Are there any more methods to check if a particular page is indexable (or not closed for indexation) by Search Engines? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | boostaman0 -
On 1 of our sites we have our Company name in the H1 on our other site we have the page title in our H1 - does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1, H2 and Page Tile
We have 2 sites that have been set up slightly differently. On 1 site we have the Company name in the H1 and the product name in the page title and H2. On the other site we have the Product name in the H1 and no H2. Does anyone have any advise about the best information to have in the H1 and H2
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CostumeD0 -
Google indexing only 1 page out of 2 similar pages made for different cities
We have created two category pages, in which we are showing products which could be delivered in separate cities. Both pages are related to cake delivery in that city. But out of these two category pages only 1 got indexed in google and other has not. Its been around 1 month but still only Bangalore category page got indexed. We have submitted sitemap and google is not giving any crawl error. We have also submitted for indexing from "Fetch as google" option in webmasters. www.winni.in/c/4/cakes (Indexed - Bangalore page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_blr_cakes.xml) 2. http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 (Not indexed - Hyderabad page - http://www.winni.in/sitemap/sitemap_hyd_cakes.xml) I tried searching for "hyderabad site:www.winni.in" in google but there also http://www.winni.in/hyderabad/cakes/c/4 this link is not coming, instead of this only www.winni.in/c/4/cakes is coming. Can anyone please let me know what could be the possible issue with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | abhihan0 -
Do I have to many internal links which is diluting link juice to less important pages
Hello Mozzers, I was looking at my homepage and subsequent category landing pages on my on my eCommerce site and wondered whether I have to many internal links which could in effect be diluting link juice to much of the pages I need it to flow. My homepage has 266 links of which 114 (43%) are duplicate links which seems a bit to much to me. One of my major competitors who is a national company has just launched a new site design and they are only showing popular categories on their home page although all categories are accessible from the menu navigation. They only have 123 links on their home page. I am wondering whether If I was to not show every category on my homepage as some of them we don't really have any sales from and only concerntrate on popular ones there like my competitors , then the link juice flowing downwards in the site would be concerntated as I would have less links for them to flow ?... Is that basically how it works ? Is there any negatives with regards to duplicate links on either home or category landing page. We are showing both the categories as visual boxes to select and they are also as selectable links on the left of a page ? Just wondered how duplicate links would be treated? Any thoughts greatly appreciated thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Merging Sites: Will redirecting the old homepage to an internal page on the new site cause issues?
I've ended up with two sites which have similar content (but not duplicate) and target similar keywords, rather than trying to maintain two sites I would like to merge the sites together. The old site is more of a traditional niche site and targets a particular set of keywords on its homepage, the new site is more of an authority site with a magazine type homepage and targets the same set of keywords from an internal page. My question is: Should I redirect the old site's homepage to the relevant internal page on the new website...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lara_dar
...or should I redirect the old site's homepage to the new site's homepage? (the old site's homepage backlinks are a mixture of partial match keyword anchor text, naked URLs and branded anchor text) I am in two minds (a & b!) (a) Redirecting to the internal page would be great for ranking as there are some decent backlinks and the content is similar (b) But usually when you do a 301 redirect the homepage usually directs to the new homepage and some of the old site's links are related to the domain rather than the keyword (e.g. http://www.site.com) and some people will be looking for the site's homepage. What do you think? Your help is much appreciated (and hope this makes sense...!)0 -
Outbound link to PDF vs outbound link to page
If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea. However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect? e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Do 404 pages pass link juice? And best practices...
Last year Google said bad links to 404 pages wouldn't hurt your site. Could that still be the case in light of recent Google updates to try and combat spammy links and negative SEO? Can links to 404 pages benefit a website and pass link juice? I'd assume at the very least that any link juice will pass through links FROM the 404 page? Many websites have great 404 pages that get linked to: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=http%3A%2F%2Fretardzone.com%2F404 - that was the first of four I checked from the "60 Really Cool...404 Pages" that actually returned the 404 HTTP Status! So apologies if you find the word 'retard' offensive. According to Open Site Explorer it has a decent Page Authority and number of backlinks - but it doesn't show in Google's SERPs. I'd never do it, but if you have a particularly well-linked to 404 page, is there an argument for giving it 200 OK Status? Finally, what are the best practices regarding 404s and address bar links? For example, if
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Alex-Harford
www.examplesite.com/3rwdfs returns a 404 error, should I make that redirect to
www.examplesite.com/404 or leave it as is? Redirecting to www.examplesite.com/404 might not be user-friendly as people won't be able to correct the URL in the address bar. But if I have a great 404 page that people link to, I don't want links going to loads of random pages do I? Is either way considered best practice? If I did a 301 redirect I guess it would send the wrong signal to the crawlers? Should I use a 302 redirect, or even a 304 Not Modified redirect?1 -
Are duplicate links on same page alright?
If I have a homepage with category links, is it alright for those category links to appear in the footer as well, or should you never have duplicate links on one page? Can you please give a reason why as well? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dkamen0