Link building - still effective ?
-
Hi, I know 70-80% of the links on Google have no-follow keyword. What I need to know is if link building by using guest posting and a combination of no-follow links through social media is still effective ? What would you suggest in terms of link building. I have read all the articles on moz and everything, but I need a personal touch on this matter.
Thanks,
Andrei -
Hey guys,
Thanks a lot for the valuable insight. It's definitely going to help me. I also had the impression that linking back to high quality domains by creating unique and valuable content is a great way of improving the SEO.
-
This can be very frustrating. I watched one of our competitors sling shot to to out rank us on many of the terms we were competing on. We had them here at Moz as a tracked competitor and when Panda / Penguin updates hit they tanked. That was satisfying
Just keep on doing things right, Google has the money as really is trying to stop these sorts of tactics.
-
Don is spot on here. Content and Link Building are the top of the SEO priority list. I strongly encourage you to do more research and ignore anyone who tells you that blog posts and any other form of content back linking is out dated. There are so many ways to build links, and the most important thing to remember is that they need to be organic and to quality sites.
Just because someone is ranking well and they appear to have really spammy links doesn't mean that 1. they aren't going down the road of punishment and 2. their link profile is why they are ranking well. There are 200 ranking factors, and about 17% of them are link related.
To touch on social media. It is growing in importance everyday. Social signals are extremely important and anyone who advises against social marketing is way outside of the best practice loop. Be very careful.
You don't want to build no follow links, they carry absolutely 0 link juice If you are building them in places where you will get referral traffic from them, then by all means, build away. Link building was originally devised as a way to drive traffic. It lost it's purpose because it became so manipulated, and now, with the help of penguin, it is starting to get back to its roots. Links have always been the highways and byways bringing traffic to your site, and if your links are driving traffic, they are doing their job. Whether it is from social, blogs or forums.
-
i want to say here that I have a competitor website who is ranking VERY well for spammy low ranking backlinks and he seems to continue to evade any penalties. Its very frustrating for those of us who try to adhere to preferred standards.
-
Hi Andrei,
Link building is important. How you go about it may have been evolved since you last looked at the subject.
When you break it down Link Building was and still is all about building associations on the web to your site. Evaluating a link, the Anchor Text on the link, how many other links are on the referring page, how popular the referring page is, and now if the referring page is part of a spam network determines exactly how valuable that association is.
Knowing that you can also surmise that if you get a link on a popular site it will have much more value than that of a low value site. The trick is how do you actually get that link? The answer really depends on the site.
Guest blogging gained popularity because anybody could write an article and generate a link to their own site or content. Now blogs are a little less forgiving about giving out links and many will nofollow all user generated links. However, you can still find your quality content linked by website authors with follow links. This in a sense is how it always should have worked.
The original vision of web authority remains; the web masters give credit with follow links to things they feel are relevant. In turn search engines recognize this and give more authority to the pages and domains. This method of ranking was well before Social Media even was a blip on the screen. Today the search engine factor in so many other things like social signals, viral content, ad-blocks, user engagement and much more. But the fact is that the underlying vision is still intact. The associations you build via links are important signals to your site.
My basic recommendation on link building is as follows. Know your market. Know where your customers are engaging their peers, and establish yourself as an authority at those spots. Create unique creative content on your site. When appropriate drop links to your content. As an authority on the subject you will find your audience more receptive and may find your links being picked up in other spots all on their own.
Rand hosted a whiteboard Friday about Content and SEO on 10/24/2014. I encourage everyone to read Jeff Ferguson's comment (first) about this white board. It is very informative and provides a different take on how and where link building is going.
Good luck,
Don
-
I would tend to stay away from these techniques, aim to build your links through quality content creation that people genuinely want to link to.
Guest blogging shouldn't really be used as an SEO technique.
If however you are guest blogging to increase your brand awareness, increase your community etc. This would be fine
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
-
Reverse image search tools for link building?
Hi Guys, Looking for reverse image search tools for link building. I want to dump 1000s of images into the tool, so it can find their usage across the web. I have tried picmatch.ca but their support is not great and Tinyeye. Are there any recommended reverse image search tools recommended here on Moz? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | robincar0l0 -
Changing categorisation effect on SEO
Hi I work on an ecommerce shop & we've discussed changing some of out categories. We have one named cupboards & lockers, but want to split this out, so we have Cupboards then Lockers so customers can browse through our main navigation like this. For SEO I know initially our rankings will be affected, but long term moving categories up a level will be an improvement & will be more relevant - has anyone does this before and could provide any advice? Becky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?
OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Link Removal Request Sent to Google, Bad Pages Gone from Index But Still Appear in Webmaster Tools
| On June 14th the number of indexed pages for our website on Google Webmaster tools increased from 676 to 851 pages. Our ranking and traffic have taken a big hit since then. The increase in indexed pages is linked to a design upgrade of our website. The upgrade was made June 6th. No new URLS were added. A few forms were changed, the sidebar and header were redesigned. Also, Google Tag Manager was added to the site. My SEO provider, a reputable firm endorsed by MOZ, believes the extra 175 pages indexed by Google, pages that do not offer much content, may be causing the ranking decline. My developer submitted a page removal request to Google via Webmaster tools around June 20th. Now when a Google search is done for site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com 851 results display. Would these extra pages cause a drop in ranking? My developer issued a link removal request for these pages around June 20th and the number in the Google search results appeared to drop to 451 for a few days, now it is back up to 851. In Google Webmaster Tools it is still listed as 851 pages. My ranking drop more and more everyday. At the end of displayed Google Search Results for site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.comvery strange URSL are displaying like:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com/wp-content/plugins/... If we can get rid of these issues should ranking return to what it was before?I suspect this is an issue with sitemaps and Robot text. Are there any firms or coders who specialize in this? My developer has really dropped the ball. Thanks everyone!! Alan |
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Wikipedia links - any value?
Hello everyone. We recently posted some of our research to Wikipedia as references in the "External Links" section. Our research is rigorous and has been referenced by a number of universities and libraries (an example: https://www.harborcompliance.com/information/company-suffixes.php). Anyway, I'm wondering if these Wikipedia links have any value beyond of course adding to the Wiki page's information. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Harbor_Compliance0 -
Simple Link Question
Hi Guys, I will appreciate if you answer 1 small question..... Will our site benefit from that link?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webdeal
Valuable website related to our business ---nofollow link--> PDF Doc(on second site) ---link to our site ---> Kind Regards,
webdeal0 -
Should We Link To Our News?
We just started an "In the News" section on our webpage. We are not sure what would be the best for SEO purposes. Should we link to the news websites that have the stories about our company, even if they have no link bank? Or should we just take screenshots of the news article and only link to articles that link back to us (this is what we a currently doing)? Here is our news page, http://www.buyautoparts.com/News/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | joebuilder0 -
Site DA and squeeky clean link building
Hello, We've got a piece of useful content we're doing outreach for. No sites we have found are in our exact niche, but there are generally relevant sites we're targeting. What's a good rule of thumb for the minimum PR or DA we should go after to make sure our link building is squeaky clean for the future?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobGW0