Does this lose link value?
-
I have a link to my site from a post on an online forum. I now want to include the forum in a blog post about good industry-related e-forums. If I link to them in this article, will I lose the value from the link on the post in their forum, and could it be seen as spammy?
-
Thanks for your responses. It would definitely be beneficial to users, so I may just get on and do it. It is a good quality link though, hence my consternation.
-
Hi Trevor,
In general no you don't lose link juice for reciprocal linking. Why? because the original practice of evaluating the value of a website factored in how many other domains were linking to it. While that is still true today many other things also factor into the ranking now. Had this not been true you would have never seen the rise of "link rings" and "link pools", and ultimately Google penalizing these sites with Panda and Penguin.
The key here is as it always should be, does X site deserve a link from you? Which means, does putting that link on your site give your users any additional value? If the answer is yes, then by all means link to it. On the other side of the coin, that website should have asked the same question about your site, does their users gain any benefit by them linking to you? You should hope the answer is yes.
If both sites benefit from the mutual link, there shouldn't be any problem. If however, as John Cross suggested it becomes a pattern, then you can suffer a penalty.
I hope that helps,
Don
-
Good question, I am not sure anyone knows the secret sauce - but in my experience It comes down to ratios... so if you have 100 back-links and all 100 of those back-links have a reverse back link - then the site would be at high risk of a penalty...
But if it is a one off then it is of little consequence. Why don't you just nofollow the reverse link?
Also no data on it, but I think google devalues the original link if you reverse it... hence we avoid like the plague... if a high quality link.
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
-
Affiliate link building
I saw articles that said affiliate link building is not good. We are a training company that offer only some training programs. My idea is get other training company to link back to us, but only if they do not offer the same training as we do. We could reward them by giving them commission if the sale happens. But to do this we will need to track the URL where the hit came in from from our website. Is this a good idea or not?
Link Building | | Heinwest0 -
A website with a spam score of 5 is back linking to me. How important is to get that link removed?
There is a website that OSE has identified with a spam score of 5, it back links to me with a very specific key word. How important is it to have them remove those links?
Link Building | | absoauto0 -
Using sitewide links to improve link profile?
Hi Guys... When I look at my competitor's link profile, they often have thousands of backlinks. For example, one of our main competitor, he got 3,400 backlinks in total but only 80 referring domains. When I look at my link profile, I have around 50-60 referring domains, but hardly 80 backlinks. My question is, is it okay to get a few sitewide links (no-follow of course!) to get to the thousands backlinks? Or I will be able to achieve top rankings with my current link profile? Thanks!!
Link Building | | TheSEOGuy10 -
Link Building - Affiliate Link Programs
I'm getting some conflicting information when researching this... I want to create the most organic link building strategy that not only gets high authority sites linking to a website, but relevant websites. I'm creating an affiliate link program where I link to partner and affiliate companies, who in turn link back to me. The question is where to put these links. I was initially thinking of putting them in the footer so they add credibility to every page, and in turn ask my affiliates to do the same thing. However; some sources say that Google no longer looks at links in the footer section. Is it true that Google doesn't count links in footer sections? And do you have any tips on creating this Affiliate Link Program?
Link Building | | reidsteven750 -
5 Million Links?
Hi all, I've been hired as the chief marketer at a (very) high traffic web company. Ironically, I don't have much SEO experience but I have been able to figure out PPC, on-page SEO and SEO content generation pretty well over the last few months. What I don't get is link building. My question is this; we're trying to move from the 3-4 SERP slot to the 1-2 SERP slot for a short list of keywords. My boss asked me to get busy with link building. Our competitor has over 2 million external links and we have roughly 60 thousand. What do I do? How do I start? Is there a legit, white hat way to get this job moving? Any insights would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance!
Link Building | | SEOguppie0 -
Blog traffic / link ratio? (Esimated of how much traffic will result in a link)
Hi, Was wondering if people could please tell me some estimates of how much traffic is likely to gain links to a blog post? For example 1,000 hits = 1 link, Hence 10,000 hits = 10 links to a blog post? I understand there is no magic ratio I just want to know what people have achieved. I’m after averages not just a one off really successful blog post too. Please specify the topic you achieve this in e.g. SEO, photography, business, heath... etc.
Link Building | | charles10 -
Too many external links vs linking root domains - good or bad?
Hi guys, After the latest Linkscape update, we noticed that our website have 424,671 external links with 4,395 linking root domains, so roughly 100 links/domain. Does Google consider this to be a negative thing or we do not need to worry about it. Many thanks. David
Link Building | | sssrpm0