Any way to tell if a link has been devalued?
-
I have some listings in lawyer directories some of which have very hig PR , links, traffic, etc. For example, www.nolo.com, I know that Google has more or less recently devalued a lot of directory links. I would assume that a monster site like nolo would not be one of those, but does anyone know any way to tell?
Paul
-
There are two quick methods I use to check if a site's ranking has been devalued or penalised;
-
Compare the Page rank of the site in question with MozRank. If MozRank is 1.5+ points different, then the site may have been penalised by google and lost some of it's PR.
-
Pick a sentence from the site of 5-6 words and search for this sentence in google enclosed in quotes. If you find the the site is ranking on the first page, then it probably hasn't been penalised or devalued heavily.
I also use gut instinct for a lot of links and usually that's good measure - If a site look spammy, then it probably will to google. As for nolo.com, it looks like a pretty decent site to me, so I would be surprised if it's links have been devalued.
-
-
One way you could test if a link is passing juice is to set up a page that targets a long tail phrase (maybe 3-4 words) and check the ranking. Then get a link on the site to point to the page and see if the rank jumps higher. If there is a significant jump in rankings (like from #30 to #3 for example) it would suggest that the link still passes juice.
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
-
Does using non-https links (not pages) impact or penalise the website rankings?
Hi community, We have couple of pages where we we have given non-https (http) hyperlinks by mistake. They will redirect to http links anyway. Does using these http links on page hurt any rankings? Thansk
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
What is the feeliing of "Here's where our site can help" text links used for conversions?
If you have an ecommerce site that is using editorial content on topics related to the site's business model to build organic traffic and draw visitors who might be interested in using the site's services eventually, what is the SEO (page ranking) impact -- as well as the impact on the visitors' perceptions about the reliability of the information on the site -- of using phrases like "Here is where [our site] can help you." in nearly every article. Note: the "our site" text would be linked in each case as a conversion point to one of the site's services pages to get visitors to move from content pages on a site to the sales pages on the site. Will this have an impact on page rankings? Does it dilute the page's relevance to search engines? Will the content look less authoritative because of the prevalence of these types of links? What about the same conversion links without the "we can help" text - i.e., more natural-sounding links that stem from the flow of the article but can lead interested visitors deeper into the ecommerce section of the site?
Algorithm Updates | | Will-McDermott0 -
Links hovering at the bottom of a search result
Hey folks, Curious has to the how and why there are links at the bottom of this search query for "Justin Bieber Networth" for other celebrities, completely unrelated i.e. "harry styles, taylor swift" etc. http://imgur.com/DNXuyRW (also attached) Is this an SEO tool? How did they embed this into a search query? Thanks! Screen Shot 2015-06-08 at 12.04.43 PM DNXuyRW
Algorithm Updates | | Anti-Alex0 -
How do I control the "link-tree" part of the SERP results?
Hey Mozanarians 🙂 Is there a way to change the pages that are shown on the "link tree"? (e.g. see bellow picture)
Algorithm Updates | | DanielBernhardt
Lets say that I dont want the "career" page to show on the "link tree" can I do that? Thanks and lots of love!
Daniel Bernhardt BLo9KSr.jpg0 -
How Does Google Treat External Links to URLs with # Anchors?
Here are two URLs to explain this example: **Original URL: **example.com/1/ **URL that points to anchor within the webpage above: **example.com/1/#anchor Does Google treat these two URLs as separate entities or the same? For example, does an external link to the anchor URL pass full PageRank value to the original URL? How does Google handle this? Is there anything negative about this situation? Are there any risks associated with links to the anchor URL? Finally, is it more valuable for an external link to point to the URL without an anchor?
Algorithm Updates | | SAMarketing0 -
I think my inbound link anchor text looks un-natural to google - How to fix?
Hi all, For a bit of back ground see this question i posted recently: http://www.seomoz.org/q/lost-over-65-of-organic-visits-since-sept-please-help From the responses there and looking into my backlinks and my competitors i can see an issue with the anchor text on my inbound links... nearly all keywords and very very few brand names etc... From what i can gather (using open site explorer) the page in question has: 1100 inbound links from 900 domains These use 90 different anchor texts 106 of these links use my brand / website name in the anchor text These 106 links are spread over 18 domains (73 from 1 directory) About 5-10% of the links are from directories, the rest are from what i would describe as "proper websites" From my very limited knowledge of this, the issue is my brand / website should have a far higher ratio of links using it as the anchor text then any keyword... which as you can see from the above is not the case... If it wasnt for that 1 directory there would only be 33 links with my brand from over 1000... I need to start fixing this, but was wondering how to start... Below are a list of options i could try, i have no idea if these would help or hinder, any advice you could give on the potential affects of below options would be very helpful: Options (the below are hypothetical, i have no idea if i will be able to get it done - Just thinking out loud here): Get as many as possible of the "directory" links removed Remove keywords from 50-60% of links and replace with branding Or Try to add branding to 50-60% of the anchor texts something like [Brand] + [keyword] Forget about whats been done previously / changing it will not help in anyway / and focus on branding in anchor text for any future link building? Thanks James
Algorithm Updates | | isntworkdull0 -
How do these people have so many external back links?
A few of the sites that I 'compete' with have blogger accounts...and according to the research I've done they have over 500 million external, followed, links! These are mom blogs....and they aren't trying to do any SEO. I've noticed that if you are using blogger (as opposed to wordpress) and adding embed youtube videos to your blog you can set it to auto populate to youtube and also get a link in return. From what I can gather this just happens with blogger accounts since bloggers...and youtube...and google are all related. Does that have something to do with the crazy amount of followed external links they are getting? They also have a domain authority of 96 (which is because blogger is a trusted domain.... Is the sub-domain a better number to look at since their blog is a sub domain on blogger? Also, does anyone know who to get the same sort of exposure in youtube as blogger blogs get...or if it's even possible? Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | NoahsDad0 -
Too many page links?`
Hi there This blog insert was flag suggesting there was too many page links? I cant identify the same problem? Can anyone explain?
Algorithm Updates | | footballfriends0