Alexa Rank and Linking from Article sites.
-
We are creating unique content and submitting our articles to article sites. I have some questions about the best way to go about this.
1. We are being very careful to create unique content for each submission - so we are not submitting the same article to multiple sites. Each submission is unique, so 1 article per 1 article directory.
2. When I did my research about these article sites at Alexa.com, I noticed that a lot of the article sites are ranking very well globally, but that a lot of them are #1 in Alexa for India. They are still ranked for other countries with very top ranking, for example, they may 9,000 Alexa rank in India and then 18,000 in the U.S. which is still very high.
3. We are trying to reach U.S. customers mostly, so I am wondering if we are still getting value by linking to these sites who have global reach (even though they are ranked best for India).
I would think that this is very beneficial still, but I didn't want to get the wrong kind of traffic by getting links from sites that are primarily getting their traffic from India, even though they are also getting tons of traffic from the U.S. - I am assuming this is OK because a 18,000 or 19,000 Alexa Rank in the U.S. is still excellent and I will benefit by this. But I wanted to be sure.
Feedback?
-
Why wouldn't you submit to multiple high ranking content directories sites? If a few pick you up great....
Are you worried of a dupe content penalty? Are you using C tags to avoid this?
-
Hi, James, that's what most people are telling me about Alexa. But I still have not had a single answer about the India question which was my main concern. thank you.
-
thanks for the input. I agree it's a good method. why I think there has been debate also is that people usually submit the same article to hundreds of sites or dozens of sites. Someone alerted me to the fact that it's better to write 1 unique article per site and not to submit it elsewhere. that seems to be working so far, because it's good original content.
-
Alexa is not the best way to track a website, it only looks at people who use the alexa tool bar, it is evident that many indian webmasters are using it.
I would look at OSE data for the domain, PR, how many pages and most importantly check out other articles on the site too see the pages it is going on...
-
Got ya. I misunderstood from the original post. In that case, there's nothing wrong with what you're doing, and it's a fairly popular method for building links (although there's a bit of an ongoing debate about using this method).
Best of luck!
-
I'm just looking to increase search rankings in this instance. I'm doing so by providing quality and unique content to article sites with a link back to our site.
-
Yes, it is compatible with both Firefox and Chrome. You can find it here: http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
I'm not sure we're distinguishing between traffic from the article sites and traffic from Google search. Are you looking to bring visitors directly from the article sites or are you looking to increase your search rankings?
-
Thanks for the info, Julie. I'll look into MozRank - but the question remains in terms of sites that have strong traffic from countries like India. Is it bad to get links from these sites even if they also rank in the U.S.? My experience has shown that these sites have so far helped, since they have strong presence globally, even if the majority is from India, they also seem to have strong share in other countries as well. Any thoughts on that?
-
Jeffrey,
Thanks for the suggestion. Where do I get the Mozrank extension and does it work w/ Firefox?
What is wrong with article sites if they have PR4-7 and the content submitted is unique? We are seeing tangible results so far. We also do daily blogs and content on our own site.
-
Jeffrey,
Thanks for the suggestion. Where do I get the Mozrank extension and does it work w/ Firefox?
What is wrong with article sites if they have PR4-7 and the content submitted is unique? We are seeing tangible results so far. We also do daily blogs and content on our own site.
-
I would not use Alexa as your basis for evaluating site strength -- in my experience Alexa numbers are not only wildly innacurate, they're not even useful qualitatively. For example, one site I own gets about 17k visits per day. It has an alexa rank of 33,000 in the US. Another site I work on gets about 100 visits per day. It has an alexa rank of 32,000.
The two sites are miles apart, but Alexa not only doesn't see that, but actually misjudges which is more popular. This is true again and again with Alexa rankings. I imagine the problem is with the incredibly small sample set of toolbars users, combined with the fact that there's probably some niche bias among the users.
MozRank or MozTrust are both far better metrics for the SEO benefit of a link (as is just searching for various keywords and seeing if the directory actually ranks -- which I'll bet it doesn't, being an article directory). I haven't yet seen a good 3rd party source for the actual traffic of a site.
-
Have you considered using the Mozrank instead of Alexa? This might be a better metric, plus it's easy to see if you use the MozBar extension for your browser. I definitely recommend this instead if you're attempt to obtain links for SEO value on any site (not just limited to article sites).
I'm not sure I would recommend article marketing for traffic like you're going after. Creating great content on your own site or guest posting on related industry blogs will almost certainly be a better strategy than submitting to general article sites.
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
-
Bad ranking and drops on main keyword
Hi Guy's, I have a question about a website that ranks between SERP 10 - 20 and often drops out of the search results. Looking at authority it should score in atleast in top 10. Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language
International SEO | | Happy-SEO
https://www.vaneyckshutters.com
Keyword: Shutters (in all languages) Netherlands: SERP 10 - 20 and drops
Belgium Dutch language: Top 3 position
Belgium French language: Top 3 position History:
In the past, the website was live on domain extensions: .nl (Dutch) .be (Belgium) Later they switched to .com/nl/ (Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language) .com/fr/ (Belgium - French language) And finally they swtiched to .com (Netherlands + Belgium - Dutch language) .com/fr/ (Belgium - French language) *All switched where provided with redirects In 2016 Q3 a new website was launched provided with https://, there where some issues with redirects but that's mainly fixed now. After launching the new website the positions where terrible. The website didn't score on the keyword: Shutters, and some times not even on there own brandname. After a while it stabilised but still sometimes the website dropped out of the search results. A few weeks ago we made some technical changes and now we see drops again. Strange things Still we see strange things happening. Mainly the fact that Belgium NL and FR score good, but that could also be because of lower competition. What about the search result: site:vaneyckshutters.nl (indexed) site:vaneyckshutters.be (indexed) i came across this article, and looked at: vaneyckshutters.nl/robots.txt (present) vaneyckshutters.nl/robots.txt (present) Strange that the meta titel is ignored bij Google:
".com" meta title is the same as the indexed ".nl" and ".be" At some point a saw a redirect from the old website to the new:
302 permanent redirect (made me think there was some tweaking going on) I asked a friend if he could provide some SEO advise and gave suggestions: - In the robots.txt is see "disallow:[empy]", is that smart? Canonical on home is set to: "/" but redirect without "/" x-default in alternate is missing Advise Does anyone see the issue or has an advise for us? Maybe we are missing the clues and is something going wrong on: Server/domain level (redirects) Authority level (still some 404's) Technical issues (hreflang) etc. etc. Hope someone can help us out! Thanks a million!0 -
My indexed site URL removed from google search without get any message or Manual Actions??
On Agust 2 or 3.. I'm not sure about the exact date...
International SEO | | newwaves
The main URL of my website https://new-waves.net/ had been completely removed from Google search results! without getting any messages or Manual Actions on search console ?? but I'm still can find some of my site subpages in search results and on Google local maps results when I tried to check it on google
info:new-waves.net >> no results
site:new-waves.net >> only now I can see the main URL in results because I had submitted it again and again to google but it might be deleted again today or tomorrow as that happen before last few days
100% of all ranked keywords >> my site URL new-waves.net had been completely removed from all results! but I'm still can see it on maps on some results My site was ranked number 1 on google search results for "digital marketing qatar" and some other keywords, but the main URL had been removed from 100% of all search results. but you can still see it on the map only. I just tried to submit it again to Google and to index it through google search console tool but still not get any results, Can any one help to know what is the reason?? and how can I solve this issue without losing my previous ranked keywords? Can I submit a direct message to google support or customer service to know the reason or get help on this issue? Thanks & Regards0 -
International SEO : Redirecting spanish visitors to spanish site
Hi There, I have a problem I need an advice for. I run an e-commerce site in French. Things are going well. I also run the Spanish version of this site. We are starting to sell. But nothing like French site. I have traffic coming to the French site from Spain from visitors with Spanish language and they don't buy anything. That is strange as the conversion rate is good. Si I want to redirect them to the Spanish site. We sell phone parts. Our SEO is mainly based on brands, make, and reference numbers. So keywords are almost the same in both languages. Of course, site.es is aiming at google.es, and site.fr at google.fr So I am wondering. If I redirect these visitors to the Spanish site, Will it affect french site's SEO? Thanks
International SEO | | Kepass0 -
Ranking well internationally, usage of hreflang, duplicate country content
I'm trying to wrap my head around various options when it comes to international SEO, specifically how to rank well in countries that share a language, and the risk of duplicate content in these cases. We have a chance to start from scratch because we're switching to a new e-commerce platform, and we were looking into using hreflang. Let's assume an example of a .com webshop that targets both Austria and Germany. One option is to include both language and region in the URL, and mark these as such using hreflang: webshop.com/de-de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
webshop.com/de-at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Another option would be to only include the language in the URL, not the region, and let Google figure out the rest: webshop.com/de/german-language-content (with hreflang de) Which would be better? The risk of inserting a country, of course, is that you're introducing duplicate content, especially since for webshops there are usually only minor differences in content (pricing, currency, a word here and there). If hreflang is an effective means to make sure that visitors from each country get the correct URL from the search engines, I don't see any reason not to use this way. But if search engines get it wrong, users will end up in the wrong page and will have to switch country, which could result in conversion loss. Also, if you only use language in the URL, is it useful at all to use hreflang? Aren't engines perfectly able to recognize language already? I don't mention ccTLDs here because most of the time we're required to use a .com domain owned by our customer. But if we did, would that be much better? And would it still be useful to use hreflang then? webshop.de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
webshop.at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Michel Hendriks
Docdata Commerce0 -
Best domain for spanish language site targeting ALL spanish territories?
hi, we're have a strong .com domain and are looking to launch a site for spanish speakers (ie latin america + spain). we already have various subdirectories for some foreign language sites (eg. ourdomain.co.uk, us.ourdomain.com, ca.ourdomain.com, ourdomainchina.com, ourdomainindia.com etc) we already have a B2B site ourdomain.com-es which will remain the same. I'm thinking best practice would be to launch translated copy for the following: ourdomain.com/es ourdomain.com/cl ourdomain.com/mx ourdomain.com/pt etc etc firstly is this the best option? secondly, i'm really interested to hear whether there is a less time/resource intensive route that would give us visibility in ALL spanish speaking territories? Also - if we go with just one of the above (eg ourdomain.com/cl) how likely are we to get traction in other spanish speaking territories? any help much appreciated!
International SEO | | KevinDunne0 -
How to optimise a site for 2 countries
Hi there - Any help with the below much appreciated I am helping an Australian company, producing packaging products for businesses. Their site is hosted in Australia and their offices are in Australia. They have asked me to take care of both on-page and off-page SEO so that they rank for keywords related to their products - e.g. 'cardboard boxes'. This should be fairly straightforward for Australian based (.com.au) searchers, but they also supply their products to South Africa, and so want their results to show up also for South African based (.co.za) searchers. Also consider: it is not typical for searchers for these products to use geomodifiers in their search terms there is no unique content for the South African market versus the Australian... the product information is essentially identical. What should we do to ensure their results show up equally for those in South Africa as well as Australia? I am considering building a completely separate site, hosted in South Africa and specifically for the S.A market, but will the duplicate content effect be an issue? Also, this would essentially mean double the SEO effort, is there no way I could achieve our goals more efficiently? many thanks to any help
International SEO | | dnaynay0 -
Google UK picking up USA Site
I have a site with two subfolders one is .../uk and one is .../us Part of the content on the two sites is the same and part is unique. The US site's language is set to en and the UK site's language is set to en_gb. I have setup geo-targeting in webmaster tools. The problem is that the home page is a GEO-IP redirect and it seems to be picking up information from the US site even on google uk. I'm not concerned too much about getting the uk site crawled as we submit a sitemap for that anyway. But my concern is that if I setup the geo-ip redirect as a 301 will my UK site loose all of it's ranking? Also am I likely to be penalised for duplicate content?
International SEO | | matthewdolman0 -
How to replace my .co.uk site with my .com site in the US Google results
My customer and I are based in the UK. My customer's site, www.blindbolt.co.uk has been around for years. Last year we launched their American site, www.blindboltusa.com. Searching on google.com (tested both via proxy and using the gl=us querystring trick), a search for blind bolt on the US Google returns our www.blindbolt.co.uk site. We would like it to show our www.blindboltusa.com website in US searches. Webmaster tools has the Geographic Target set correctly for each site. Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions please? Thanks.
International SEO | | OffSightIT0