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.
How important is the originating country of backlinks?
-
How important is it that you gain backlinks from websites in the same country you're targeting?
Scenario: You have a website targeting users in Japan. How important is it that backlinks to your website are from Japanese websites? Do you need a majority of links from Japanese websites to rank well, or will you do OK with 25% Japanese links and 75% links from other countries?
According to Majestic, sites for popular Japanese brands like tsutaya.co.jp and seiyu.co.jp get more links from US sites than from Japanese sites.
-
I agree with Tom. Backlinks can be from anywhere as long as they don't appear to be blatant spam. I tend to agree that a backlink serves a greater purpose than just link juice and may actually send relevant traffic and business to your company. I would try to target as many local links as possible, but branching out to a global mindset won't hurt at all.
-
It's by no means essential.
I've worked on a number of international sites and you quickly realise that while a website is setup with a geographical TLD and is fully served for that language's audience, the server is located in the US - where so much hosting is. Regardless, this has not stopped the site's ability to rank.
Similarly, evidence of links from a different country working can unfortunately be found in places like SAPE - the russian link network. I've seen countless of websites rank #1, #2 with links from these websites in Russia, Uzbekistan and so on - Google wouldn't be targeting these links if they didn't work.
However, my mindset has always been to acquire links from places that are going to send the most targeted and relevant traffic to your site. In the scenario you've given, this would most likely mean trying to earn as many Japanese backlinks as possible. Links from other places may increase organic visibility, but more often than not referring traffic from links you've earned can be far more qualified and convert more often - so I would aim to get them via links from the country.
Just my £0.02
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
-
Homepage Vs. Inner Page Backlink Building?
If I'm trying to rank multiple inner pages, when does strengthening the homepage become more productive than strengthening the inner pages themselves? Is there a strategy to this? For example, maybe you build up a few dozen backlinks to each inner page, and then focus all your efforts on the homepage? Because, from my understanding, strengthening the homepage will go a long way towards helping your inner pages rank. Is that correct?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
Trading Backlinks a good idea?
New to the "backlinking" party. Wondering if its 'good practice' to trade links with other websites within a like-industry. We've been receiving a lot of emails from other websites asking us to trade links. Is this a good link building practice anymore? Thanks!
Link Building | | asa-php0 -
Will Google penalize for backlinks on non-indexed pages?
Have a client who has a bunch of links from spammy sites that aren't even indexed by Google. Will Google penalize (i.e. Penguin) for backlinks from spammy sites that aren't indexed? I'm guessing "Yes, Google still crawls non-indexed sites and may penalize the sites linked to from the banned site." Anyone have any data or experience with this? Anyone have a non-indexed or banned site? Does Google still crawl it?
Link Building | | AdamThompson0 -
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 -
How important are edu and gov backlinks?
I have heard that edu and gov backlinks are important but how so in a niche area like mine - real estate? Perhaps I am missing the point but I do not see how either type of site would ever backlink to a commercial real estate entity. If these are that important in theory, are they obtainable in practice?
Link Building | | casper4340
