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.
Can indirect linking be valuable?
-
I have a client who is using a SEO company (Hubshout, delete name if necessary) to boost traffic to their website.
They are doing this by publishing articles and submitting them to article directories, then they use their own sites/blogs (which are valueless, PR and MozRank of zero) to point to these articles and they say that this helps boost there rankings.
How? They are not linking to the clients websites, creating artificial links from their own websites to article directories instead of the clients website. Are they trying to boost the value of the article or trying to boost their own websites? How does this help out the client?
It is similar to three way linking but is not.
-
Just average articles with a link pointing back. The blogs/websites pointing to these article have very low rank though.
-
The theory is that the "link juice" would flow like this:
Private Blogs -> Article -> website
It can be very effective to do this if the links are valuable - some people choose to do it for safety purposes, they believe that their website will not get put into Google's "sandbox" this way, in case too many links were made and various other reasons. For example, rather than create 1,000 links to the URL, make an article and then point 1,000 links to that article which would flow some of the power to the site.
Not all of the power will be passed through to the main website, but depending on the linking methodologies some people have very good success doing this. There are really many variables here, but if done correctly I would say yes indirect links can be very beneficial.
Those blogs do not sound very worthwhile - if the person is adding content and building links to the blogs, they would be much more beneficial. Google has updated their algorithm's and they are beginning to really weed out these low quality sites. At the end of the day, all you can come to is well educated speculation on the matter. If the website is very valuable it may be valuable to build the links indirectly while focusing on very high quality links only to the main website. If the site already has many links and is a decent age, the person may consider building a greater number of links to the actual URL.
-
Where exactly is the value established in this system?
Specifically, where is the links or mentions to your client? Do these articles contain text links in them?
Are these articles extremely high quality? Or just "average" internet 500 word articles.
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
-
If I disavow bad links on "disavow link webmaster" will they still show up on my moz reports?
We recently found out we have a lot of bad links linking back to our website from spam sites, I disavowed them through the google disavow link webmaster. On my moz report it still shows the links, is that normal?
Link Building | | Ryan.Cruz0 -
Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.
Hi,
Link Building | | JIMBO16
I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim0 -
Do footer links pass less link juice?
One of my best inbound links for PA and DA happens to be a footer link, curious if it's less valuable or has any value at all.
Link Building | | Theskimonster0 -
Are links with space considered to be the same as links with %20?
I wonder if Google would consider those three links to be the same? http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test page.html http://www.example.com/test+page.html
Link Building | | lucek0 -
How can I find all the outbound links from a website domain?
I want to find all the outbound links (basically whatever comes in <a>tag) from a domain (say www.abc.com) as well as all the subdomains under it (say abc.com/a etc). Open Site Explorer provides the inbound links from a website but does not provide any functionality to get all the outbound links from a website. Is it possible to do?</a> <a>Thanks in advance. Deepak Jain</a>
Link Building | | Deepak_Jain0 -
How can I find and fix my broken links
There are a number(110) links that SEOmoz has found to have 404 errors. I have been able to find and fix many of them but there are links that are coming from our home page that do not seem to exist. I cannot even find the links in our system in wordpress. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Is there a way to locate where the links are originating from?
Link Building | | careerealism0 -
Link Exchange
Hi everyone, I just started working for a client in a new niche. After reviewing the backlink profiles of his competitors I can see that the top sites are using a ton of link exchanges. They are from really spammy sites too. The kind that will link to anyone that provides a link back. Anyone else seeing much of this?
Link Building | | SixTwoInteractive0