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.
Blog Posts: 1 link per 125 words?
-
I've seen this "1 link per 125 words" for blog posts suggestion pop up a variety of places. I wanted to know if that's "correct" or a best practice? In my posts, I generally write between 800 to 1200 words with about 4 to 6 links in the body of the post. However, (and this may be a problem) I add about 13 links in my closing paragraph, "if you have any legal questions, etc etc, click here for your "Tampa personal injury attorney, Clearwater Personal Injury Attorney, etc etc for all the areas we practice in related to that blog post."
Should I stop doing that? Does that come off as spammy? (The blog is hosted on our site, if that matters for this question at all).
Thanks,
Ruben
-
If it is natural, and all about UX, then there is nothing to worry about, in my opinion. Sounds like you are doing a great job!
-
I think people misinterpreted my question. I didn't "start boiling articles down to numbers," I just posted what happens to be the averages for my posts. When I write them, most come out to about 800-1200 to answer the question, and I end up citing about 4 to 5 sources. When I saw a few "1 link/125 word" suggestions, I wanted to see if there was any validity to that and if the numbers that I naturally produce could be a problem...other than the footer links, of course. I now see why that's a problem.
-
I get why I shouldn't use the footer links anymore, but I don't understand the comment 'sounds like a great way to get a Penguin attack." For my posts, it takes about 800 to 1200 words to answer the topic, and I usually end up citing/linking to 4 outside sources. I don't plan on this framework, but that's basically the average.
Are you saying the posts have too short a word count or there are too many links? Yes, I do understand I should be focusing on content and ux first and foremost, but since you said that in relation to the number I gave, I was wondering if that triggered some red flag I need to know about.
Thank you for your advise and input. I appreciate it very much.
Ruben
-
Doug says... "Ignore the links".... I agree....
If this is an "on site" blog you should be focused on the message. You should be blogging to educate your readers or present your point-of-view. Link to another page on your site only when needed or when you want to let the reader know that you offer a service (and this should be limited to genuinely relevant links).
Blogging on your own site isn't about generating links to other pages. It is about demonstrating your expertise. The links that you should be after is the ones that people read what you have to say, are impressed by it, and link to it from their own website because what you have said is so important that they want THEIR readers to know about it.
-
Got to agree with EGOL here. As soon as you start boiling articles down to numbers like this you're going to lose. There's no magic formula that will protect you from bad copy.
Ignore the links for a moment. Think about how your blog post is going to help promote you business/service. Is it being posted somewhere your target audience are going to read it? Is it useful/interesting to that audience. What's the one thing above all else that you want the reader to do once they've read the article...
-
I've seen this "1 link per 125 words" for blog posts suggestion pop up a variety of places. I wanted to know if that's "correct" or a best practice?
Where are you reading this stuff? I wouldn't read that author any more.
In my posts, I generally write between 800 to 1200 words with about 4 to 6 links in the body of the post.
Wow... that sounds like a great way to get a Penguin attack.
However, (and this may be a problem) I add about 13 links in my closing paragraph, "if you have any legal questions, etc etc, click here for your "Tampa personal injury attorney, Clearwater Personal Injury Attorney, etc etc for all the areas we practice in related to that blog post."
I would stop doing this right away.
-
Hiya,
Firstly it depends if you are linking out of your site or keeping the linking pointed inwardly. Google recently decided it didn't like press releases and guest postings (which upset a few people!) so don't put all of your guest posts in one basket!
For me I'm of the opinion (or style of content marketing) that blog posts should be about the content not the links (obviously its still good to link to things relevant to the post). You should make a blog post that will want people linking to it.
I would say keep links natural looking.Hope this helps and best of luck.
-
Hi Ruben!
I would say that this seems a bit "too much". How about adding a "location" area to the site, and link to it from some sort of main menu instead? Or perhaps one location area to every law section?
Best regards,
Anders
-
Yes, it looks spammy too and really isn't helpful to users and visitors who are reading the information you are writing and sharing. Don't scare your users away with spammy looking links. It's probably affecting the on page elements as well as constantly reproducing the same (internal or external links) on all these blogs posts. These type of 'footer' links at the bottom of all the posts also look spammy to the engines. If you do keep them there, select only 1-2 that are of importance and rel=nofollow the others. I
My recommendation if to link naturally inside the site and blog. Don't just link to yourself., your products, or your pages. Be bigger than that
Link to other outside sources as well. Don't be afraid to expand on the type of links you use inside your content. Most people are, but when you link intelligently, and for the benefit of the user, the page's performance, click through, time on page/site, etc will improve. It's a win/win for you and your users experience. Not only will you see in time that you are linking to other really valuable sources for your clients, those sites will be watching who is linking to them, and might garner the attention of the staff there for a natural link mention on their site, or request for a 'quest post'.
Hope some of that helps! Cheers
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 do I fix a broken link to a product category page in wordpress?
We are building a new site currently at http://67.222.109.48/~cheapnan/ I started doing some SEO after the developer I hired failed to do it even though it was in the agreement. I did our old site so I should be able to do this but I am new to wordpress. Now when i go to the products tab at the top of the page the first 2 have broken links, I checked the rest and there are 3 total that I need to fix. I am unsure how to access the navigation so I can fix the links. Please tell me where to look.
Content Development | | cheaptubes0 -
How Are You Handling Blog Posts/Author Pages when Employees Leave the Company?
What do you believe to be the best approach in handling blog content for employees once they have left the company? We don’t want to remove the blog posts so they need to stay, but then there are the author pages. This gets tricky because the CMS ties the blog post to the author. One approach might be to change the author’s name to the Company’s name to get around author pages for people no longer with the company. It’s kind of tricky because the blog posts won’t have the same credibility if they don’t have a person’s name/photo associated with the post. We could leave the blogger’s page and list him as a “Contributing Author” once he’s left the company. Thoughts?
Content Development | | RosemaryB0 -
Can We Publish Duplicate Content on Multi Regional Website / Blogs?
Today, I was reading Google's official article on Multi Regional website and use of duplicate content. Right now, We are working on 4 different blogs for following regions. And, We're writing unique content for each blog. But, I am thinking to use one content / subject for all 4 region blogs. USA: http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/ UK: http://www.bannerbuzz.co.uk/blog/ AUS: http://www.bannerbuzz.com.au/blog/ CA: http://www.bannerbuzz.ca/blog/ Let me give you very clear ideas on it. Recently, We have published one article on USA website. http://www.bannerbuzz.com/blog/choosing-the-right-banner-for-your-advertisement/ And, We want to publish this article / blog on UK, AUS & CA blog without making any changes. I have read following paragraph on Google's official guidelines and It's inspire me to make it happen. Which is best solution for it? Websites that provide content for different regions and in different languages sometimes create content that is the same or similar but available on different URLs. This is generally not a problem as long as the content is for different users in different countries. While we strongly recommend that you provide unique content for each different group of users, we understand that this may not always be possible. There is generally no need to "hide" the duplicates by disallowing crawling in a robots.txt file or by using a "noindex" robots meta tag. However, if you're providing the same content to the same users on different URLs (for instance, if both example.de/ and example.com/de/ show German language content for users in Germany), you should pick a preferred version and redirect (or use the rel=canonical link element) appropriately. In addition, you should follow the guidelines on rel-alternate-hreflang to make sure that the correct language or regional URL is served to searchers.
Content Development | | CommercePundit0 -
Guest blogging resources
Mornin' Anyone have any guests blogging resources to find guest bloggers and blogs to guest post on? I've been using My Guest Blog but it runs dry after a while. Thanks
Content Development | | Martin_S0 -
Changing the author of a post
Hi, I've a number of wordpress posts that were written by different authors, and I want to merge them into a single author. If Google sees that originally the post was rel authored to person A and later we change the author reference to person B, will Google see this as suspicious in any way? Or does it not matter, as long as it's only attributed to a single author at any one time? Thanks, Leigh
Content Development | | Leighm0 -
Posts vs Pages and Rankings Differ Greatly
I use wordpress for most of my sites and generally have a post 'news' section. What I've noticed is that just about every time a post will always rank much higher and much faster than a 'page'. As long as I don't let it get buried in the news archives it continues to rank well, better than if I were to create a 'page'. Is there any sort of reason this might occur? I'd like to be able to just create 'pages' but at this point in time it makes no sense.
Content Development | | GYMSN0 -
What are tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 keywords (pages)?
I am seeing these terms, but for the life of mine I can't understand what they are. Could anybody explain that in layman's terms? Thanks.
Content Development | | VinceWicks0 -
Simple question: How many words optimal for blog posts
Hello, We're adding a blog to one of our sites. How many words should be in a blog post for it to be optimal for the search engines? If it varies from industry to industry, please give a couple of examples. We were going to do 500 words but that seems a bit long. Thanks!
Content Development | | BobGW0