Manual Links Vs. Smart Links
-
Hey Everybody,
Is there any downside to the smart link plugins that I see all over wordpress? Basically in short I enter a keyword and where I want that link to go (primarily internal) and set the parameters of repetition etc and it automatically adds the link to that.
Now other than the obvious situation where it might put a link in an awkward place, is there anything wrong with this sort of software? Part of me things that this sort of software would not be liked by Google, and that it isn't really getting counted as a true link, but i wanted to see if there were other thoughts or experience with this.
-
Personally, I wouldn't use it. In my opinion it looks incredibly spammy, unless it's a blog post referring to another post or page on the website.
-
Automation is always risky as you never really have control over the results. As mentioned by Ryan and Dennis, you should put in the effort to create your links manually
-
I would be pretty strict on using tools like these myself as you'd want to make sure you avoid creating pages that are too link heavy and begin to get a spammy feel to them. In some cases it could be quite handy though if you're trying to link up older pages that have very specific product names that would point to specific product pages. Like many tools, it can be used poorly or well.
-
This is a hard thing to answer as I've done both ways lol. For smaller sites, I wouldn't really mind but for bigger ones, manual is better. Manual interlinking is definitely better because you can do it using different phrases that can be related to another post rather than automatically showing the same words. It's just more organic that way and better for user experience which Google is keen on.
I've actually done this auto linking to category pages instead of posts on my older sites so I've played/experimented with this function. I still would recommend the old fashioned manual way as it makes more sense.
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
-
Unnatural link Manual Penalty by Google
Hi, Our product Quiz Maker help users to create quizzes and can share, embed etc. We have a link in our embed code which was DoFollow and we've got many doFollow links from the websites on which our quizzes got shared but these links are too old like 2009, 2012 etc. After that, to complying with Google policies, we've changed the dofollow link to nofollow in embed code. Here are two scenarios: 1.) We've too many dofollow links which are too old and we don't have control over it as these are the natural links, given by our users before we changed the embed code link. 2.) Now, we are getting nofollow links from the widget as the embed code consists of nofollow link. Our embed code is editable and user can change it to dofollow or nofollow as per their requirement. Moreover, some people shared quizzes on their website (without using embed code) with dofollow link. But, now, google is taking manual action penalty against us. How we can resolve it as it seriously affects the overall performance of our website. Thanks
Link Building | | SameerBhatia2 -
Do links from between common sites you run count as "bad" links?
Hi everyone,
Link Building | | AMA-DataSet
Iv recently been asked to review a group of sites. There are 3 sites, each of these sites has a link to the other two sites within the footer or the navigation.
These site are about a similar topic each provides a different perceptive or aims at a specific section of the industry so its not like the links are to irreverent sites. However because the links are in a global section they are repeated thousands of times on each site and count for a large proportion of the link profile to each site, I don't think this is good practise and I want to remove them or at least add a no-follow but my client insists they are relevant to each other and doesn't not want the links removing. What would be best in this situation? remove them? no-follow them? or leave them? Thank you in advance,
Liam0 -
Is there a software to help me check whether the sites that i give link to, also place my link on their site (reciprocal link)?
When i exchange links with others, i usually put their link on my site hoping that they'll do the same. Since it's impossible to check all sites whose link i have placed on my page to see if they have put a link back to me, i was wondering whether there is a kind of software to help me do that!
Link Building | | isidora0 -
Is it a reciprocal Link ?
Hi, I found a great website and tought its content would be extremely interesting for our clients. I wrote about it on my blog (which has an URL with our website URL in it) , Facebook Page and even in Twitter. Meanwhile, I contacted them and offered to write an article about an interesting subject for them. They accepted and liked it so much that they decided to put 2 links for us on two of their pages. My questions are : Will this be a reciprocal link for Google? Did I make a mistake talking about them on my blog ? Did I «devaluate» the links they gave us?
Link Building | | Caru0 -
Are you careful about linking back to sites that link to you?
Suppose that a trusted website added you to their recommended links page. Do you worry that linking back to them from a page on your site will diminish the value of the original link?
Link Building | | Charlessipe0 -
How can I verify who links to me?
I need to verify all the inbound links I have coming in to my site. I've tried using OSE but have been told it does not scrape many smaller sites so cannot be sure of it's accuracy (especially since when I ran it, it returned a small % of the link i know are out there). Is there a way to do this in Analytics? Or another way? Thanks
Link Building | | NiallTom0 -
Searching for links incognito?
Is it important to "cover your tracks" when searching for links? For example, would be it be a better idea to search for valuable links off of my companies network? If so, what are your strategies for stealth searching?
Link Building | | TRICORSystems0 -
The Value Of A Link
Hi There, Let's say I am able to get a link from a very well trust worthy blog that writes abot things related to my business. Now my question is how much value does another link with the same anchor text, from the same blog has compared to the first link, or compared to a new link from a slightly less powerfull blog? Or in another words, if I got 1 link from this great website should I invest my time to find another website where I can get a link from or should I invest it in getting another link from the website I already got a link from ( which might be easier)?
Link Building | | liors0