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
-
SEO traffic + backlinks question
Let's say I want to write a guest post for a website that is relevant to my website. Should i guest post on a website with high traffic but the traffic country is not mine? (eg// My website sells products in Canada only, should i guest post on a high traffic site from India?) Or would it be better to find a lower traffic website to guest post on but their organic traffic comes from Canada? Thanks!
Link Building | | chrisjordan0i10 -
Backlinks Question
Hi all, i own a small business in an extremely competitive marketplace. I have also educated myself greatly about seo over the past 3 years and currently do my own. The one thing I cannot figure out, for the life of me, is how my two competitors keep beating me in rankings without backlinks. I mean, I have about 3K solid backlinks, mostly do follow, from top notch publications, sites, citations ect. In ahref, it shows that he has almost no backlinks. I cannot crack th third spot, but they dominate with zero backlinks, and the domains are only a bit older than mine. Thoughts on this?
Link Building | | ImeuOkou0 -
Website Getting Huge no. of backlink?
Hey support teams suddenly, my website Portable Power Station getting a Huge no of backlinks with same domain, but i did not created, is it look spamming or not, What is impact on ranking in Google SERP, does it increase my website Spam Score?
Link Building | | ali-ahmed20 -
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 -
Redirecting broken backlink to my site
Hello guys, I found an expired domain with inbound links from 41 different root domains, almost all of them from relevant sources. I have 2 ideas in my mind: A) I am thinking about buying this expired domain and place a 301 redirect to a post in my blog who talks about a similar subject.Relevance: let's say the content of the expired domain is about "horses wallpapers" and the content of my site is about "horse transport". Not the same, but a post in my blog could talk about "top 10 horse wallpapers". Do you see what I mean? B) Contact all the webmasters with broken links, alert them and expect they are nice and place a nice link to the post in my blog talking about "top 10 horse wallpapers". What do you think? Should I take A or B? Any other idea? I added a picture with the Domain Rank of the broken links 🙂 Thanks a lot !!! Luis V1LZBC3
Link Building | | Yeeply.com0 -
Backlinks from Open Site Explorer not updated
Hi folks! I was checking the backlink profile for my website - wishpicker.com - we got linked to by a large number of prominent websites in the last couple of months. For some reason, this does not seem to show up when I do a backlink search on OSE. Is there something that I need to do here/ fix? Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | AB_Newbie0 -
Daily backlinks
Hi whats the number of backlinks i can create a day, for each keyword that i want to rank for, some say 5-10 or 20-30, other say there is no limited, if you create quality backlnks i know its not about quantity but quality ,but really whats a best answer? Thanks
Link Building | | xverticle0 -
Are backlinks to a domain that redirects useless?
I am working on trying to get backlinks. We are currently redirecting a few Domains to our current domain name. One of the Domains that is redirecting is the main Domain, we will be advertising in the near future. Can I send backlinks to the redirected URL or does it only carry link juice if it is to the main Domain?
Link Building | | hfranz0