Googles stance on Back Links via a Badge/Form
-
Hey guys,
Does anyone know what Google's stance is on backlinks that come via a form, WordPress theme or badge. For example if I offer website security and provide badges for websites that are malware clean (with a back link to my website) and 100 websites sign up to my website will this be deemed as bad practice in Google's eyes?
Also if I create a free WordPress theme with a backlink to myself?
The second question sounds like I'm providing content for a link which seems okay but the first one can go either way.
Thanks
-
Thanks Travis!
-
Thanks Wiqas!
-
Hello,
This is more than tricky. I have witnessed websites that are ranking high doing the same practices (Most of Internet Marketing Companies, Web Design Companies, Themes, Plugins etc) but such link schemes have costed thousands and thousands of websites.
Here is example of one big brand victimized recently by such link schemes
There are hundreds of such examples. So if you like to move this way
- Use Non Money Anchor (May be Brand Name)
- Make sure to turn link into "Nofollow"
I strongly agree with Travis! Nice advice in deed!
I hope that this will help!
-
These would likely be deemed a link scheme unless the links are nofollow. We can bring up a number of examples where sites appear to get away with these tactics, but followed widgets and footer links are definitely high risk. If you genuinely want exposure for your site, nofollow the links and make sure they don't contain 'money terms'. (e.g. Free Malware Scan)
Both of these tactics have been done to death. A lot of sites have been penalized due to dofollow links in themes, widgets, plugins and badges. If you still want to do this, I would strongly suggest using a nofollow attribute on 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
-
AllTop Linking Me to Other Sites Feeds, Webmasters Reporting Lots of Broken Links
I submitted my blog to All Top awhile ago and something seems to be wrong with their feed. They're sending people to mysite.com/truth-o-meter.com/this-is-a-post. It's not just truth-o-meter either. I'm getting links that are supposed to go to all kinds of political blogs. As a result, I'm getting a ton of broken links reported on Google Webmasters. I couldn't find any real support option on alltop.com, and when I log in, there are no sites for me to manage. Instead, I resubmitted the site with the correct feed address and in the comments, I mentioned the problem. All I got was a message saying the site was rejected. I believe because I already added the site. But I'm thinking they didn't pay attention to the comments. (In fact the message may have gone through an auto-filter considering how quickly it was rejected.) Is there a way to solve this? Is this a situation in which I would use the disavow tool? If All Top continues to create bad links, how do I stop the issue once and for all? Thanks!
Link Building | | eglove0 -
Internal Links - First Link Rule Confusion
Hello All - I would like to create a guide for my team of rules for internal links and I could use some help. My understanding is that Google only counts the first link to a page, so any crafted keyword text links within the content do not count if the page in question is linked to from the main navigation. Is this correct? For example, if the menu or drop down menu in main site nav (which exists on all pages of the site) includes a link to a particular section that will be the only one that ever counts since the menu is on every page? Example: let's say a website selling cat toys includes a drop down menu on the homepage with links to "holiday cat toys". Does this mean that no other text links in content on the site will support that page from an SEO perspective since the link is in the main nav and will always be the first one counted? In the past we have added text links in the content on the homepage to important pages on the site. It seems to work, though now I'm questing these tactics based on the first link rule. I would appreciate some advice, clarification, thoughts, etc. Thanks!
Link Building | | JBMediaGroup0 -
Creating your own blog for back linking to your site
Our competitor seems to be linked to a blog that they have created themselves. From an SEO perspective is it worthwhile creating a blog that is related to your particular industry and then only including links back to your site. Also is there any way to upload ,articles etc automatically to the blog to cut down on the people hours involved in updating content?
Link Building | | Hardley10 -
Can high SERPS and/or social signals minimize Google penalties and a back linking removal question
As I am continually sizing up my competition in the SERPS I have scanned their sites with a fine tooth and comb. I have found that these sites practice in the very things that I have practiced in the past and have removed thinking that may be some of the reasons I was hit with Penguin. Some of these factors are: Link Scheme with sites they own (C Blocks) Content for Search Engines (Keyword rich text) Exact anchor text in back linking profile Yet even though my competition practices in these methods (One site even places exact anchor text in the footer and header of every page for one of their other forum site) they seem to have not even been touched with any of the recent updates. In fact it seems their ranking have increased. In scanning these sites the only major difference that I have been able to see between them and I is that their SERPS are higher than mine and they have way more social signals than me. One site has about 73k facebook likes where I only have about 300. My question is Can Google ignore penalties for sites that have higher SERPS and /or social signals that would effect another site that had lower ones? My other question is related to back links My main site has links from another site I built a long time ago (Pre SEO and not knowing what I was doing) somewhere in the 73k range. Obviously a HUGE signal to Google that this might be spam and I am aware. I have removed the links from that site but unfortunately the average crawl rate per day is very low so it is taking a very long time for Google to find those pages and re-crawl them to find the links gone. Since that site I have than has those links pointing to my main site has very low traffic I am totally willing to kill that entire site with a 404. Can this help speed up the removal of those links from that site? I figure since the site no longer exists all links from that site will be removed almost immediately from my main site. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Does a hashtag link pass the same amount of link juice as a link without a hashtag?
Example 1: link to: http://www.domain.com/#something-inside-the-page Example 2: link to: http://www.domain.com/
Link Building | | adriandg0 -
How often does Google crawls old pages, is it worth to get links from them ?
Let's say there's a blog post in my industry niche that's 2 years old. Is it worth to get a link from that blog post ? How do I know Google will actually re-crawl that page, and how long can that process take ?
Link Building | | pqdbr0 -
Can you have too many badge links?
If you badge program becomes really successful, can too many badge links hurt your rankings? Since they are image links that are often placed in the sidebar of blogs, could Google mistake badges as do-follow ads and apply a penalty?
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Link Building Features/Tutorials
I am previewing this software and am getting a little lost in its features. I am really looking for something that will help me identify link prospects, filter out the low-authority domains, and organize this information into an actionable list. Can anyone point me to resources (tutorials, etc.) on how to do that with this software? Which tools should I be using and how can I use them to reach these goals?
Link Building | | Falconberg0