Do links hold there value after 12 months?
-
Hello, We need to find out if links that we setup, which are older than 12 months hold any value? Do new links hold more value than old ones and therefore should we let the old links become inactive? If we do let the links become inactive after 12month will that effect the PA/DA of the site?
-
Andrew, to answer your question in simple words, yes...aged links help. Now, the way I am looking at it, there's also this bigger problem. Imagine scenarios below. Website A.com has 10,000 natural links. You add 50 Rented Links. Now, 1 year later, "naturally" your natural links should grow. Also, with the nature of the Internet, some of those 10,000 links will be lost...sites expire...people loose interest in their websites/blogs, clean-up efforts and other reasons. So gradually you are both gaining and loosing links on a regular basis, which is natural. So if the 50 rented, essentially 50 anchor text links are gained and lost after 12 months or so, they give a clean indication of something going on. The risk is there...on a scale of 1-10 of affecting your link profile, the risk maybe 3-4. Imagine the above scenario for Website B, which only has 100 total natural links. And you add 50 Rented Links and those links disappear after 1 year...that's a much higher risk compared to the above scenario. The risk in both situations is 2 fold. A. Loss of PA/DA B. Potential Issues with Link Profile. Does that make sense ? I hope this helps you make decisions.
-
There is no research that cites that links lose or gain value with age, but I believe both are equally important. A lot of people who buy links will lose it after a certain period and if a lot of such links are lost, Google can detect something (if it hadn't already!) and would remove juice/ demote accordingly. As the links age, the trust to those links increases as well.
New links are very important as well as it gives signals of 'freshness' of the quality of the content/page that it hasn't become obsolete with time.
-
When you talk about letting the old links become inactive, do you mean these are paid/rented links that you are letting expire? If you could define what you mean by inactive, that'll help us answer the question better for you. Thanks!
-
Hey Andrew,
In fact, the more a link has aged, the better. It's a sign of stability to have a wide range of dated links pointing to your site. It shows that your site is continuously and consistently sought after by others (people referencing your material, etc.).
It is still important that you continue to build links though, as you don't only want to have old links. If you haven't gotten any new links to your site in a long time, it can be a sign that your site may have gone stagnant.
So, the old links are good, but keep building them.
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
-
Site-wide Links
Hey y'all, I know this question has been asked many times before but I wanted to see what your stance was on this particular case. The organisation I work for is a group of 12 companies - each with its own website. On some of the sites we have a link to the other sites within the group on every single page of that site. Our organic search traffic has dropped a bit but not significantly and we haven't received any manual penalties from Google. It's also worth mentioning that the referral traffic for these sites from the other sites I control is quite good and the bounce rate is extremely low. If you were in my shoes would you remove the links, put a nofollow tag on the links or leave the links as they are? Thanks guys 🙂
Technical SEO | | AAttias0 -
Should I nofollow Geo-located links on a site?
I run various sites that use Geo-location to place related links in navigation menus on a page. For example, if you land on the home page, we will see that you are in Florida and then in one of the content boxes on the page, show job listings that this site has in Florida. We also give the option to search for other jobs or use other navigation options. The idea is to try to help the user along the best we can, but ..... What opinions do persons have here on if these links should be nofollowed as GoogleBot will always see links to places in California etc. - wherever Googlebot is crawling from? Would this then be confusing as we are a site that focused on the entire US and not just California etc Thanks!
Technical SEO | | CleverPhD0 -
Followed Linking Root Domains and No Followed Linking Domains
If you have more NoFollowed Linking Root Domains than Followed Linking Root Domains is that a problem?
Technical SEO | | INN0 -
Navigation links tagged as H3
I'm reviewing a website that has used the H3 tag in the Navigation Menu. I've not seen that before and first thought is it is a dodgy. Tags should relate to content on the page not link to another page. As a result of using H3 in Nav the ratio of content wrapped in Heading tags vs body content is quite high. My recommendation is to remove H3 tag from Nav but having searched Moz and not finding an article to verify that recommendation thought I'd ask the question.
Technical SEO | | NicDale0 -
How many links can i do in a day
Hi, I built a niche site yesterday, the domain was 1 week old. What is the safest way to do link building? I.e How many links should i do in order to be in safe? So far, i've concentrated on building my social profile. Like getting as many retweets as possible. Slowly getting facebook likes and added few youtube videos with my link in it. Now i am on to link building. I will only do legit link building methods. Currently i am gonna get 2 press releases. But can you tell me no. of links i must get in a day. PS: The keyword i am competing is highly competitive.
Technical SEO | | Vegit0 -
Can Google read onClick links?
Can Google read and pass link juice in a link like this? <a <span="">href</a><a <span="">="#Link123" onClick="window.open('http://www.mycompany.com/example','Link123')">src="../../img/example.gif"/></a> Thanks!
Technical SEO | | jorgediaz0 -
How to measure number of links out from a page
Following on from earlier Q, what do you all use to count links out from a page. I believe there is a bing tool which does this, though rather than a list of sites a simple number would be ideal?
Technical SEO | | seanmccauley0