Are links from charities really better than 'normal' links.
-
Hi Guys.
Just wondering about this idea that links from Charities are particularly good. I've heard people say that links from .org sites are particularly strong. But anyone can get a .org domain, it's just that charities tend to use them more often. Right?
I just don't get the logic. Can anyone give more detail about this? Is it a myth? Is there quality info on this topic I can check out?
We're working with several charities at the moment, and they all seem happy to blog and link to us...so I just wanted to know a little more.
Isaac.
-
Here is my take on this!
In my personal opinion all TLDs are similar in the eye of Google it’s just that people tend to consider .edu, .gov and .org links more authoritative and link to it naturally as compare to .com and .net domains and which is why special TLDs tend to win the race but this is not always the case.
My advice is to see if the org domain has a good and clean link profile and if they are getting a link from quality sources, then go for it and if not the idea is to pass it like any other non-quality domain you pass.
In my opinion, saying that Google give importance to some domains as compare to others is nothing but a myth.
Hope this helps!
-
John Mueller actually very recently addressed this as well on the blog: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2015/07/googles-handling-of-new-top-level.html
Basically, all TLDs are treated the same.
-
I've never seen any evidence that .org links are inherently more valuable than .com or other links. (I've not seen any evidence that .edu links are inherently better, either.)
This post from and this video Matt Cutts seem to imply that the TLD is not a significant factor in ranking.
I think this whole idea that links from certain TLDs (eg .edu) started because people took a true statement (eg "most .edu websites are high authority websites with strong editorial control) and extrapolated that into ".edu links are inherently more authoritative". Mediocre SEO's then latched onto this idea, because they found they could easily get .edu links through blog comments and sell them for a premium by claiming they are more powerful. What you actually had is people building outright spam links and claiming they are great just because they are on an .edu domain.
I analyze .edu and.org links just like I would any other link - relevance, authority of domain, authority of page, editorial strength, etc.
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
-
link building
I want to know is there any way of increasing DA/PA of the website? Is there any benefit in ranking if we increase PA of specific page? Recently my website DA is 6 i want to increase it 30.
Link Building | | hfameraya1980 -
How long until links 'fall off'?
If I have site A linking to site B, and take down the links - does anyone have any experience in about how long they take to 'fall off', that is stop appearing in Webmaster Tools or Moz? I'm going on three weeks currently. Perhaps this takes months?
Link Building | | GFujioka0 -
I have well over 110 identical backlinks of widely varying quality - is it worth taking the page they're linking to down?
The site on which I'm working has been experiencing a month-to-month decline since the Panda and Penguin updates - I didn't get an unnatural links notification, but have clearly fallen off the face of Google with many of the more important rankings. After running a scan on my backlinks, I found over 110 identical backlinks (it looks like the same medical definition and my website is listed in the endnotes as a source - just the URL, not anchor text), some from reputable websites with high pageranks and others that look very 'spammy.' We've redesigned the architecture of the site, so the actual link itself has a 301 redirect on it, but I'm just wondering exactly how much of a liability is it to have these links out there? I'm guessing it's an all or nothing kind of thing given the identical content on each page - on one hand, I'm pretty frantic to get to the root of the Google penalties and get back in their good graces. On the other hand, I don't want to kill the site completely by going after a set of valuable links. Has anyone dealt with this before?
Link Building | | travis-taylor0 -
Internal linking anchor text with automated ASP.NET link building
Hi Everyone I really need some help here, the problem I have must be one that many have. I have a simple e-commerce style website so 1 product page can in fact get 40-50 internal links to it. These links come from a mixture of: 1. The parent category pages that the product sits on (Rugged PDA) and in turn the 10 filter pages of this category page (Rugged PDA, ordered by battery size). 2. Alternative product list on other product pages, So many products link to each other as alternatives. From Google analytics we can see that visitors like to browse product to product seeing 5 alternatives on each page with titles like "Smaller", "more rugged" etc. 3. Manufactuer pages, so we have a link to each product from each manufacturer home page where we talk lots about each manufacture we resell. We also have links from images used in the website. So its a nice usable website but we're finding that Google is still telling us in Webmaster tools that it thinks some links are dubious and we're trying to find out why. We only now have 190 external links to the website, most are internal and from the website or our blog on a subdomain. The problem we think is that we generate the category and products pages all dynamically so the anchor text is looking the same. Will this potentially create issues for us? Dave
Link Building | | Raptor-crew0 -
Does Adding Affiliate ID's to Link Affects it's Value
Hello, I have a question about adding Affiliate ID's to links. I receive a DoFollow link to my website with an affiliate ID in order to track the leads and the traffic that comes from each affiliate link/website. does this link (with the affiliate ID) pass Juice from the affiliate website? (I use canonical link element on my website pages)? how does Google deals with links with affiliate IDs ? is adding Affiliate ID to links reduces it's value?
Link Building | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
How might Google differentiate between an artificial link exchange and partners linking to each other?
Hi, All! Artificial link exchanges (contacting a vaguely connected site and requesting to exchange links to increase your PR) is, as far as I know, considered an outdated, not-so-smart technique, as Google might devalue them. Yet, for real business partners to exchange links seems to be an entirely accepted and encouraged technique. While that would be intuitive to a human who's viewing the pages. how might Google detect when two sites that link to each other are linking because they are trusted business associates (valuable) as opposed to when they are doing a link exchange (devalued)? Thanks! Aviva
Link Building | | debi_zyx0 -
I'm interested in knowing link building strategies for regional businesses.
I'm not just interested in sites to target, but also how to manage anchor text when you are targeting phrases that include a keyword + a geo modifier. Thanks!
Link Building | | medtouch0