Avvo.com: Are links in the contribution area bad for SEO?
-
Hello all and thank you for taking the time to read my question.
I am struggling with a client of mine. I have done just about everything that I can think of that has worked on other sites. Banging my head up against the wall here.
He is VERY active in the contribution area of Avvo.com (answering questions and making guides). His site use to rank very well but now it can't be found at all. One of the things that caught my attention is the way he would leave his citation in his answers for AVVO. He would leave a direct link to his website. Since his rankings have dropped I have advised him to stop. Do you think Google is treating them as spam? His link profile is small >1000 links but half of them are from AVVO
I was wondering if anyone else any experience with this?
Thanks in advance
-
No, you cannot edit Avvo answers. I suppose you can ask the folks at Avvo to just remove all of client's answers. No idea whether they will do it for you. I have had them remove an answer or three for me, so it can't hurt to ask. Not sure how your client will feel about you doing that, of course.
-
Agreed. Its gonna be a long night. Thanks
-
Thanks for the reply. The links are set to nofollow but as you mentioned I am still skeptical. There is no way to edit the answer from what I can tell so far. Not sure how I can eliminate the links now.
Pass the coffee... I am gonna be here a while.
-
Avvo provides only one follow link, and that is in the person's profile. Links in answers are nofollow. As a result, answering questions on Avvo should not harm a site.
I answer a lot of questions on Avvo and it hasn't hurt my firm's site. I often put relevant links in the link section of my answers. For example, if I am answering a question about medical malpractice, I might put a link to a page I wrote on the basic requirements for a medical malpractice case. However, I do not put links to my firm in every answer. I only use links when I think the person might be a potential client for my firm and I would like to guide him/her to my firm's site.
I agree with irvingw that your client may well be doing this sort of thing all over the web, which might be the source of the problem. In addition, if your client is adding a general non-useful link back to his website, he might be violating Avvo's terms of service.
I see a lot of disavowing in your future.
-
If the links are set to NoFollow, it shouldn't have any impact. However, many SEO's feel that excessive links can set off a a spam trigger even if they are set to Nofollow. If the links are set to follow, than I would certainly be concerned if you had money keywords as your anchor text links. I would edit all the articles and eliminate all the links. Avvo lets the lawyer link to their website so adding these links in their answers isn't necessary at all. I suspect that this lawyer probably utilized this same linking strategy across other web channels. Good luck cleaning this all up.
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
-
Google News results ...can it be SEOed?
Hello Everyone. I simply wanted to know if anyone had some useful insight on what it takes for a legitimate website to appear within the Google News results. I have rarely, or ever, had to dabble in this kind of SEO, but after coming across a situation with a perfectly legitimate website, I'm now scratching my head. The site in question is a very well established website, with 0 "seo" done to it. All links organic, all traffic legit and they have VERY strong social media presence. The site's current DA is 50. Its a 3 letter domain. Some of the points I believe are important quantity and quality of content (% of aggregated vs actually original content) overall % of "news" content vs rest of the site content authors/writers credentials (how would Google evaluate the authority of a writer, so his/her content is newsworthy?) overall site authority rich snippet and code needed to be indexed? I think rel publisher or rel author tags have something to do with it? making sure to have basic SEO in place: canonical tag, unique headers, etc. What am I missing? They have one particular competitor that seem to be ranking for almost everything news related, while being a similar site in content and authority, however they are nowhere. They have submitted to Google News before (not even sure what that means) but have failed to be included -- does this put a "stain" on them for any reason or impede the possibility of being indexed in the Google News results in the future? ANY input is appreciated.
SERP Trends | | 1stOTLJK0 -
"&" in search for site:domain.com
Hi, a few days ago we talked to a seo agency. They told us something about the "site:" search, that we hadn't heard before.
SERP Trends | | Sandra_h
As they told us, a search for "site:domain.com/&" would give you the number of relevant pages that Google indexed for your domain. We tested this search with some domains. Lots of the results showed up to 25% less indexed pages, than the search for site:domain.com/ Has anyone heard of this before, or is it just a sales gimmick?0 -
How to count number of app's installations for users who install app from https://play.google.com?
The task is to find out which banner on my site provides more installations of the game. The banners' urls link directly (refferal source in the url is specified) to the game page on https://play.google.com. Google Analytics and Google Play are connected but I've faced the problem that Google Analytics counts only visitors who install app via Google Play app so visitors from the banners to play.google.com aren't counted at all. That's the question, is there any way to count visitors to the app page on play.google.com and to count the number of installations by these visitors ?
SERP Trends | | seoMob0 -
Best way to prevent "Duplicate Content" for different links
We are working on job portal domain. As we know jobs going to be expired day by day. I will give you my question by example. Example: I have two links [mysite.com/Jobs-In-Cincinnati and mysite.com/Jobs-In-Atlanta]. Before month I had too many jobs on both the links. Jobs were expired one by one after two/three months I don't have any jobs on both the links.So I got same page content on both the links like "please refine search". Google consider these two pages as duplicate content issue. Will you please suggest which is the best way to come out from it? Thanks in advance.
SERP Trends | | Shanil1230 -
What are your go to SEO & Marketing forums?
This is more of a starting point for a discussion than a question, but I am hoping your answers will be of interest to most of the readers. Apart from SEOmoz what are your favourite forums and blogs for SEO and internet marketing news. Do you also read non-web marketing blogs?
SERP Trends | | ske110 -
Does anyone know of good SEO vs PPC ctr history studies
I have read some like http://www.seomoz.org/blog/mission-imposserpble-establishing-clickthrough-rates This is over a year old now and http://www.marketingprofs.com/chirp/2012/8504/paid-vs-organic-search-are-ppc-ads-winning-the-google-click-wars-infographic Please let me know of some other good studies that have been done that show how the CTR continue to go down on commercial terms for most searches cause google is putting in more stuff.
SERP Trends | | DoRM0 -
If i rank for BRAND-NAME.com for my salon, will it hurt my rankings if i make a BRANDNAMEbeautyshop.co.uk for my shop?
I'm looking into starting eCommerce retail shop, off the back of my salon's success. Yet I'm split into using a cart software on my excising domain or a multi-channel shopping software on a new .co.uk linked via the menu of my salon domain. Ideally i could proceed and use both domains for the one company just to clarify: my salon domain is uk targeted and is "www.Brand-Name.com" (with - seperating brand words) my proposed shop domain is uk targeted "www.BrandNameBeautyShop.com" Any ideas if it would hurt my campaign to do such a thing?
SERP Trends | | ramtulla0 -
Does google follow text links without the link?
Hi A short question. Lets say I have been mentioned in an article online like "also mentioned on www.domain.com is" but the url mentioned is not a link does that give any seo value at all to my site? Does it count towards building a brand i googles eyes by being mentioned a lot but not awarded a link? Hope you can help clarify
SERP Trends | | AndersDK0