Linking Out To External Sites
-
Hi, All
If I have created a (website, logo, email campaign) for a client and written an article about it with screen shots on my website and link to them with a (do-follow) link how does Google see the (do-follow) link?
Regards to the sites they have one link in the footer on the home page, which is a (do-follow) back to our site. Also, the websites are not in my Niche.
-
Hey Chris,
Don't get me wrong, I am with you in leaving behind the high risks, my frustration comes more from Google's SERP results and behavior on spam sites than what you say, but I dont think a footer link for a web design company produce any sort of threat or places a site on a "churn and burn" status or even high risk. Then again I bring MNS, quick cash in, affiliates and spam in mind when I see "churn and burn" so it might be me.
-
Yiannis, I agree with you that anchor text has a lot to do with tripping the filter and that some industries are cesspools of spam. But, as a replay to a new SEO practitioner's question, I'll stand by what what I said--it won't get anyone in trouble algorithmically. Yes, I know I sound like Jill Whalen (and Matt Cutts) but the longer I'm in this business, the less I have a problem with that and the more I'm willing to leave the higher risk stuff to those who still have a few sites they're willing to churn and burn.
-
Hi, Yiannis
The anchor text for linking out to the clients is either (visit brand name or visit the website here) . For linking back to my site it is (website by brand name).
-
Hi, Chris
What you said makes sense and if I am reading your post correctly I am better of making all the sites I build (no-follow) back to me because as you said it is a link I am in control of and if I had 100 sites that is 100 (do-follow) links, which if they gain trust and Authority, could make up a part of my link profile.
In theory is this manipulating the search result having links from my clients as a (do-follow), because I am gaining a (do-follow) link with the only purpose of helping my site and in my control?
Also I will make all my internal links (no-follow) to my clients.
-
Sorry to break the Matt Cutts buble here but while I agree with you Kered, this is more theory than practise...or to be precise, it leans more towards the exception than the rule.
For me it always depends on the keyword, the niche and which keywords you target. i have seen industry sectors (for example: "web design" related keyphrases) where indeed what you say is true and others (such as "pest control" related keyphrases) where black hat, 2003 SEO and corruption are present to such an extend it makes me sick. And I am not talking about sort term, unless sort term is 1 year and 7 months I am monitoring this industry and counting, on a sector where top 10 makes thousands of dollars per month.
I wouldn't nofollow any of the links or if I had to I would nofollow the link I send to the client web site. I would keep the footer link and bear in mind 2 things. 1) If you use anchor text you play with the keyword % ratio so be careful or put your brand name there 2) its a footer link, thus not much value.
but nofollow it? No i wouldnt.
-
Hi, Martijn
So I am better of making all links to my work (no-follow) from my website and just leave the link in the footer of the sites I build as a (do-follow) or (no-follow)?
-
Kered,
Just nofollow them and you'll be OK. Don't look at links that you control as an option to help you build your domain authority. Agencies, tend to lean heavily on the sorts of links your talking about because they're so easy to acquire over time. But let me tell you, I've seen hundreds of agencies briefly rise to the top of the search results on the strength of back links from clients, only to fall off the cliff once some threshold has been passed.
You're not going to get dinged for the kind of link you're talking about if it is a singular occurrence or if they make up a small percentage of your total link profile. The problem tends to be though, that one leads to two; two leads to four; four leads to eight and eventually they outweigh all your other links and then, boom, you take the fall.
-
It probably will be seen as a low quality link back to your site and to their site as it probably will be seen as reciprocal. Not sure for what kind of advice you are looking here.
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
-
Wordpress #comment links?
We just started our trial account and have the results from our first Moz Pro Site Crawl. It's showing that we have a large portion of our pages have 'Too Many Links' and I'm trying to determine exactly what this means and how to fix it. The article referenced is from 2011 and doesn't fully address what I'm looking for. Here are a few questions: 1. Can we lower the 'link count' by adding a 'no follow' or does too many links, count links regardless? The question being, is the only way to solve this by removing links or are their no follow or no index options that will prevent us from having this issue moving forward? 2. Comment Links: Our site is in Wordpress and I just recognized that each of the comment links are followed: https://screencast.com/t/b0CIKVafWw. These aren't links from our users, rather these are links within Wordpress and are structured like this: https://mysite.com/blog-post/#comment-6970. From my screenshot you can see they are highlighted as 'followed links'. Is there a setting within Wordpress to turn this off or is there another option I should consider? Should we just make these no index, no follow links? Will that solve the 'Too many links' problem? I searched through the Q&A's and couldn't find an answer directly to my question. Most were around people leaving links in the comments section, which isn't what I'm looking for. Thank you for any help you can provide.
On-Page Optimization | | FabulesslyFrugal0 -
Webmaster Tools - How your data is linked?
This may be an easy questions, but I can't seem to find the answer anywhere and I never really looked into it before. In google webmaster tools, in the dashboard there is the section that says "How Your Data Is Linked". What does that refer to? Is that just using internal link anchor text, external link anchor text or a combination of both? I am pretty sure that it is a combination of both, but I just want to make sure before making some internal link changes so that the most common anchor text is no longer "Prices" and "Sign up". Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | rayvensoft0 -
Which pages on my site should I back link to
The majority of the back links I have been creating link directly to our home page and to the store page. Is this the best approach or should I be trying to spread the links throughout our site to include product categories and subcategories etc?
On-Page Optimization | | Hardley0 -
Site is not ranking for a particular keyword !!
One of my site is ranking for all the main keywords except one. This keyword is just a variant of those keywords which are all ranking in top 10 (page 1) in Google. Why is it happening? Does Google punishes site for one keyword. I know competition of keyword matters but other keywords with similar competition are ranking. And even the site is very well optimized for this keyword (titles and site copy without any stuffing) Any Solutions ?
On-Page Optimization | | Personnel_Concept0 -
Too many links??
Hi mozzers I have a question that I need some feedback on please, I run 2 websites both e commerce retail sites and both doing well with SEO however, Our strongest site and parent site so to speak links to our sister site. Here is the outline. Site1 parent site is hosted on a unique URL and on a VPS. I have 384 links coming into this site from the other sister site. from various pages Site 2 the sister site, has 68,864 links coming in from site 1 as we have a link in the footer on site 1 to the home page of site 2. So far we have had no adverse affects from the Google zoo releases, however I am concerned that this many links will soon get penalized. Thoughts from anyone please? I am considering removing the footer link, thus removing 68,000 + incoming links. Looking for any advice here please. thanks Ryan
On-Page Optimization | | RyanC10 -
Sudden Site Rankings Drop
Good day guys, We have been following strict SEO strategies for the past 6 months, all sites have been improving incredibly well, all except one. The site in question is http://bit.ly/IH4pkM . The site is regarding automotive spray booth equipment. We were ranking on the first page for the keyword "spray booth" (which is the most important one), at place #4 for weeks on end. However since half-way last week, the site has been dropped to half-way the second page (#17). There are barely any crawler errors listed for our campaign on SEOMoz. There were several pages of which the meta description was missing, but that has been fixed earlier this week. When it comes to link building, I looked at what the top competitors were doing, and was looking for unique link building opportunities myself. We have received 0 webmaster tools warnings as well. I do not believe we are penalized due to the "penguin" update. After all, if you search for for the company's name in Google, it is still listed on there (# 2). Nor have we been part of dodgy link networks at all. So my question is, what do you guys believe made us drop the rankings? Is there some on-page issues I am overlooking? Any recommendations to restore out previous rankings? Kind Regards, Roderic
On-Page Optimization | | Michael-Goode0 -
Building content pages, redirecting and linking
Previously the company had created some .HTML content pages around top shoe styles and top manufactures. One or two of these pages used to rank but have been neglected over the page 18 months. I want to build out new content round our top styles / top manufactures and I am wondering if I should use the existing HTML pages or create new pages that use our content management system. The .HTML pages can contain keywords in the URL, using our content management system, all URL’s are www.site.com/content/home/contentid=1234abcd. If we use the .HTML pages all content is managed manually. If we build out 6 to 10 pages, this can become a resource issue and may result in a bad experience for the website visitor. From an SEO perspective, does the benefit of having the keywords in the URL outweigh the manual management hassles? And if not, should we 301 all the HTML pages to the new content pages? And from a linking standpoint, I want these content pages to point to the new version of the top style. From a navigation standpoint, we also want to provide access to all styles from the manufacture. Should we nofollow the links to all styles?
On-Page Optimization | | seorunner0 -
Site-wide keyword density
A colleague of mine was saying that he has been able to get top ranking for a high traffic term by using variations of that head term on multiple pages that are associated with the main page. For example,he would optimize a landing page for the high traffic word "Construction." He would then build pages under this landing page that are optimized for variations of this word: "Construction facts," "Industrial Construction Companies," "Construction Resource Allocator" etc. His theory is that the subpages add credibility with spiders that the root page is the best for that root page. This doesn't seem like it would work, but I'm curious as to what other people think.
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340