Links from Related Sites with Low PR or semi-related sites with High PR?
-
Is it better to get a link from a site with lower PR but related content or higher PR but semi-related or unrelated content?
For example, if I sell shoes, would a link from a PR1 or PR2 shoe or apparel site be better or a link from PR4 website that sells books be better?
I'm not talking about sites with completely unrelated content, but how relevant is PR in obtaining relevant links if I am trying to raise the PR and rankings of my own site?
-
Thanks for chiming in. This does clear up quite a bit for me. Ideally, I would like a balance of relevant links & general high authority links.
With that being said, can anyone suggest any high authority sites other than dmoz that I can add my site to that would help?
-
I'd like to be able to make a strong, white-hat argument against what Eppie is saying, but the data just doesn't back it up. Relevance doesn't have the impact we often think it should. His warning is important - lack of relevance can have an impact. If you're clearly getting a lot of irrelevant links, it's often a sign of deeper problems that could even lead to a penalty. On the other hand, getting a "highly relevant" link doesn't often have much SEO impact.
A couple of additional points, though:
(1) It's not just about SEO. Links drive traffic, ideally, and eventually conversion. Relevant links have more impact to human visitors, and they do matter, even if they won't impact ranking that much.
(2) There's a lot more to the value of a link than authority and relevance. Rand has an excellent article about that topic and how complex it gets:
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links
-
Links from more authoritative sites are more important for improving rankings than links from related sites. There are tons of examples of sites that rank well that have almost no relevant links. One such example that illustrates this is pitchingmachines.net, which currently ranks #1 for the term pitching machine.
While this site has the benefit of being an exact match domain, its link profile is full of links from sites that are unrelated. 70% of their live links come from a paid blog network where the sites cover a wide range of topics (but all have PR), 5% are from article submissions (again, sites that aren't topically related), 4% are blog comments and another 3% are blogroll listings (from unrelated sites). That's 82% of their links coming from sites that aren't topically relevant.
Another 6.5% of their links are forum profiles, web directory submissions, sidebar links, and links lists. That means that at best, roughly 10% of their links are legitimate contextual links from related sites. In reality, it's less than that, as most of those links appear to be from another blog network -- I just haven't been able to identify which one yet.
Is there risk in this approach? You bet. If Google decided to stop allowing the blog network they're getting links from to pass authority, the rankings would tank. Worse yet, if Google decided to penalize sites getting these types of links, they may never be able to recover their rankings. Other than the blog network links, though, I think the risk is minimal. Blog comments, directory submissions, blogroll links... those are all types of links legitimate sites might be expected to have.
So, don't stress out too much about obtaining relevant links. Tons of sites rank without 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
-
Am I better off with ten links from one site or one link from ten sites?
I am writing a series of linked-back articles for a highly-ranked web publisher, but wonder if I'd be better off sharing the articles across different sites. My goal is to grow our domain authority and SEO rankings.
Link Building | | Lysarden0 -
Spammy links redirecting to homepage of site -
Hey guys, I'm auditing a website at the moment and Moz is showing a few spammy links linking to it. The problem is these domains are all 301 redirecting to the domain I'm auditing. Let's say I'm auditing Site A. Site B is been flagged in Moz OSE with 12 spam flags. When I try to open Site B in a browser, it redirects back to Site A. What's the best thing to do, here? Disavowing domains redirecting to the site is surely a bad idea? Cheers.
Link Building | | BrianYork-AIM0 -
Relaunching a site that has had thousands of posts linking to the same 20 articles. How to properly setup internal linking?
I'm in the process of relaunching a music news site (www.prefixmag.com) that once did quite well in search (over a million monthly search visits in its prime). The site got crushed by Panda, etc. and we stopped updating it. I'm starting to do more research but one thing that I noticed was we have modules in the right rail (desktop) that are found on all of our article pages that point to the same posts. (Edit: Added attachment. The links in the right rail under Editor Picks, Features, News, Media, etc. are found on every page of the site). In other words, we have thousands of posts that all link to the same 20 or so articles. Should we not do this if we're not trying to emphasize these posts in Google? Assuming this is the case, what is the proper way to do internal linking? Do we simply setup a sitemap and link to it? I'm hoping to have the thousands of articles we've published over the years have a chance to rank in search again. Also, we have a number of posts that are thin in content should those pages not be submitted in the sitemap? Thanks in advance! 2KmX0
Link Building | | leggo0 -
Unable to view link from Apprentices gov.uk site
Hi, I've noticed that when some companies are advertising for apprentices on the https://apprenticeshipvacancymatchingservice.lsc.gov.uk website they gain a followed link from the site. When I then use opensiteexplorer the link doesn't show. Does anyone know the reason for Moz not picking this up? Am I not giving it long enough to show? Your help would be very much appreciated.
Link Building | | GoMetrics0 -
If i get link pointing to a specific page , will that link add up to the count of linking root domains too ?
If I create a fresh link pointing to specific page on my site, apart from adding a number to "page linking root domains" does it also add up to root domain linking ?
Link Building | | Techbate1 -
Guest Posts on Sites With Irrelevant Outbound Links
Suppose you came across a website in your niche with solid domain authority that accepts guest posts. However you notice some of the guest posts are linking out to somewhat off-topic sites. If you already have an article that you think would be accepted easily and all you have to do is spend 10 minutes to craft an email pitch, would you do it? Why?
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Page links vs. domain links
Hello all, I am trying to find out how Google weighs page inbound links vs. domain inbound links. I have a domain with about 100,000 inbound links and am adding a new page to my domain which at this time has 0 links. I will be trying to outrank a competitors page that has 6,000 inbound links to the competitors page, but only has 26,000 inbound links to my competitors domain . Is there a formula or a way to know how Google values a page link vs. a domain link?
Link Building | | digitalops0 -
What percentage of my links should be directory links
I feel a lot of my link building might be a bit heavy on the directory links side. Should I limit the percentage amount of links as a part of my overall link profile? If yes what percentage of links is ok to be directory links?
Link Building | | iSenseWebSolutions0