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.
Are Sidebar Backlinks worth for SEO?
-
Hello!
Let's use the following example:
I have a blog (let's call it Blog A) and I find another blog in the same niche (this will be Blog B) that has higher DA and PA than mine. Will Google penalize me if the Blog B puts a link to my blog in their sidebar?
Remember, the Blog A and Blog B are from the same niche.
I ask this because Google says that links on sidebars appears in every page and in some pages the link may be useless. But if both blogs are from the same niche, there won't be pages where the links will be from different themes and with less relevance.
So, is my thought correct: we can use sidebar links without caring about penalization ONLY if the blogs are from the same niche?
Thanks in advance!
-
Hi Kelvin,
Thank you for posting this question! I have recently look up into Moz Resources and these are some insights.
1. Focus on "Natural" editorial links, those that are editorially given by other website owners. This would be much more efficient than having to contact someone and ask them to link to you. (Provide them a good reason for them to do so. Making them aware of that reason.) - Cons, it takes time but nevertheless is HIGHLY VALUED.2. Manual 'outreach' link building - most common which involves manually contacting website owners and bloggers to get linked.
An important note from Moz Res: Google has been devaluing and even penalizing 'self-created, non-editorial links' which often fall in line with black-hat practices that aim to fool the search engines into thinking a piece of content is relevant and important when it isn't.
Non-editorially given link, inherently carry less weight than other types of links. Focus on tactics that give you editorial links that add value to your website and business.
**What you should do in my opinion:
-
Look out for blogs with great evergreen content (**with good rankings, good links, seeming decent traffic, etc) and link to a relevant page on your site.
-
Look out for more active sites(usually have better overall quality, search performance, and a more active audience) - with a more active audience, potentially increase your chance to attract more decent traffic to your page.
Whether or not you succeed, it is crucial that you have a structure towards link building, which is very much dependent on a combination of your available assets and resources.
Hope the above insights have answered to your question applying to all kind of links. Different kind of links brings different impact to your business (whether or not this bring awareness to the potential audience).
You can visit my blog at https://www.corsivalab.com/blog and have reference to how I am actually backlinking the necessary stuff. Marketing is all about learning and sharing, the blog too has tips and ways you can better strategize and do links for marketing purposes.
Let's learn more as a community!
Cheers!
-
- topic:timeago_earlier,28 days
-
Thanks, Bryan!
I am already looking for Guest Post opportunities to build more High Quality Backlinks. The articles recommendations are very good also! Thanks.
-
Hey there! I agree with Justen, sitewide links offer little to no value and could potentially do more harm than good. I would find somewhere else to place the link(s).
Not sure if you've already read this but here is an article that can help you learn more about MozTrust & MozRank Score
Although this article is from 2011, Dr. Pete does a great job explaining thin content.
Hope these help!! Cheers
-
Thanks for the answer, Justen!
I ask this because I've got a Spam Score 7/17. I will show the flags and what I am willing to do to remove them. We are an e-commerce and have a blog too.
- **Low MozTrust or MozRank Score **(?????)
- **Large Site with Few Links **(look for more partnerships to build a more consistently Linking Building strategy, one way I thought was Sidebar Backlinks that was a strategy used before)
- **Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Subdomains **(maybe start using more nofollow in the links from our blog to the store?)
- Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Domains (since the beginning we only used Do Follow)
**- Small Proportion of Branded Links **(here I think in using the brand's name in the anchor text when the bloggers post something about my store)
- Thin Content (this doesn't makes sense to me)
- Low Number of Pages Found (Google has almost every page indexed, so again, this doesn't makes sense to me)
Are my actions correct? Is this the proper way to solve this Spam Score problem?
-
You might want to consider having the link placed elsewhere. Linking from Blog A and Blog B in the same niche seems only natural because it's highly relevant. Sitewide outlinks however are not great. If it was my site, I would rather have the owner of Blog B mention me in one of his blogs. A page called "link partners" or something like that is also not great.
Overall, I would say more relevance = higher value of the 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
-
Backlink builder (Professional)
If I wanted to hire a professional person to build high quality backlinks for me, where would I look? I'm asking here because I'd rather go on the recommendation of other businesses owners, than a google search. Does anyone have a person that they can recommend? It's for an insurance agency in Texas. Many thanks
Link Building | Oct 30, 2024, 10:47 AM | laurentjb2 -
All backlinks not showing on my website
hey folks, i am fairly new to SEO and i have noticed that i have backlinks that tools like ubersuggest or SEM rush are nothshowing my product is lazyapply.com. -> It's an automated job search application can anyone suggest me what should id do ? PS - for example i have backlink from crunchbase.com but my website is not showing me that
Link Building | Oct 15, 2024, 8:35 AM | viveklazy0 -
How Many Backlinks does I need to rank?
A keyword Olehana private label cosmetic company that also my competitor have 4k ref domain for this keyword. So Do I need more than 4k ref domain with anchortext "olehana" Please help me. Thanks.
Link Building | Jan 20, 2023, 5:52 PM | arainbadami0 -
Media Kit for SEO?
I am working with a company that gets a significant amount of press, but often we do not get links from these articles or the articles do not have the best anchor text. Any suggestion, tools, or articles that help optimize this exposure to for seo benefits?
Link Building | Feb 6, 2015, 6:54 AM | jkosarek0 -
$10,000 backlink?
Hello guys, Would you pay $10k for a pr9 backlink? Thanks!
Link Building | Oct 5, 2014, 5:53 AM | The_Kiwi_Man0 -
Hidden Backlinks
Hi, I hope someone can help me with this. We have a competitor who appears to be ranking No1 for a competitive search term with a very lame site and above some authoritative sites. He has been here for some time as well. When we check out his back link profile through OSE, Majestic and Ahrefs they show as only 3 backlinks from no PR sites. However, someone pointed out that they could be using a link network that is blocking every crawler apart from Google, Yahoo and BIng. I would like to know if there is a way to confirm this. For instance I know that we can use screaming frog to mimic Googlebot, however, if there a way to reveal the real backlinks to a site like this using any tools. Thanks
Link Building | Dec 20, 2013, 2:53 PM | kirstyseo0 -
PR1 and PR2 backlinks
We're doing some content marketing. I've heard that it is a good idea to target even PR1 and PR2 sites (small DA sites). I'm concerned about these sites disappearing after a few months, as we've found that losing a backlink can sting a bit and be worse than never having it. Though this isn't as big a deal any more. Anyways, can somebody say when a PR1/PR2 backlink would be appropriate to go after? Some of them would be easy and if it's appropriate I'd like to include them. So far they would only pass our standards if they are Above PR0 Look like a white hat, quality site from the outside Have a clean backlink profile Look like they're going to stick around Successful Social Media Accounts a plus What are you guys' criteria for including these sites? Do you gain value from them?
Link Building | May 29, 2013, 9:58 PM | BobGW0 -
Backlinks From Press Releases - Should I Disavow Them?
About 2 months ago, I published a press release through PRWEB with a link back to my website of course. Now it must have been one of those morning where the coffee wasn't strong enough as my website already has a Penguin penalty I'm trying to get lifted. The intent wasn't to spam the web but rather to gain some traction in the business hosting world. Like I've said, the coffee must've been too weak that morning as it didn't even cross my mind to see if I could "nofollow" the links in the press release. I just hit the submit button... As I'm in the process of submitting a disavow links request to Google, I'm wondering if I should include the URLs to copies of those press releases? I mean, there's no way I can find all those links as it was submitted not long ago. Google and link tools will keep discovering other copies of the PR for months to come probably.
Link Building | May 9, 2013, 6:54 PM | sbrault740