How effective is leaving comment links?
-
Has anyone seen evidence of rankings improvement from leaving do-follow comment links or is it a waste of time?
-
I'll build on what Mike said in that comment links are less valuable than they used to be due to the proliferation of this as a spam tactic. And I expect they'll become even less valued as time marches on. For the most part the value is weak at best nowadays, and requires a lot more time and effort to get right given the attention this type of link has garnered from Google due to the spam issue.
-
I think comment links are more valuable for building relationships with other sites and for branding with targeted audiences. I think the links themselves are diluted as far as SEO value goes.
Google knows when links are comment links, and might even disregard them all together on certain sites. If the blog has an editorial policy (needs approval for comments, or deletes spammy ones) they might offer more value. Plus the links are generally at the bottom of the page, and may send less value. It really comes down to a case by case basis. I would use the same criteria for blog posts as I do for links in general:
-Page rank or moz rank?
-Regularly cached pages from the blog in the index?
-Good content? Is it related to your site?
I would say if it's good related blogs it's not a waste of time, but don't expect to climb up the rankings just because of those links. I also wouldn't differentiate too much between no follow and do follow links. Google still tracks the no follows and having some will look organic and would still give you some of the networking and branding benefits mentioned above.
Vinnie
-
You can't go crazy and do just that, or do 10,000 instances of that with no other types of link building. Yes, having comment links looks natural. Up to a point. And it depends if the links are on human moderated boards or on spam farms. The latter will produce no value. If you can get a link to pass moderation from a credible site then it has value. Your comment will need to add to the discussion and often the moderators won't allow links in comments or they will no-follow them to discourage spammers.
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
-
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Ran a backlink competitor analysis and found that the competitor has their links coming from various linkedin and youtube posts but my client does the same thing and im not seeing any links coming from those sources for them?
Link Building | | Stongex0 -
Is it a good practice to get link for your original page by shorter URL links
Hello Moz Community, I have a question regarding getting links on bitly, tiny, or an other url shortner, Is it a good practice to get link for your page by shorter url I mean lets suppose i am getting natural guest post link from content for my blog home page
Link Building | | JoeySolicitor
https://coupontoaster.com/blog/ ; and shorten it with bitly and then hyper link so is it a good practice am I getting the same power and SEO consideration as if i would have done this without url shortener. And what anchor texts shall i be using like rich anchor text or any other like click here, visit here, bitly or etc Please kindly help me with this thanks1 -
What are the possible effects of a small blog migration on an existing link profile?
Hi all, We're in the process of a small migration of blog content, and I'm interested to know how the change will affect our link profile. We currently have a small blog on a separate domain from our main business website. This small blog (with around 248 pages and a 14 DA) was originally set up many years ago to support the main business site, however we've reviewed our content strategy to start incorporating the posts from this site to our main business domain. As this small blog was set up as a support to the main domain, it contains many links to our main domain which will essentially disappear once the content has been migrated. We're following all best practices in this migration, however there is one questions which is still unclear with this process. Will this small migration of content and loss of hundreds of links from one domain have a negative effect on our existing link profile of our main business site?
Link Building | | JordanMcFadyen0 -
Getting links before launch
I'm lunching my site in a month and a half, should I start getting links for my domain? (I allready own it
Link Building | | amielsosa0 -
What are inbound links worth after Panda and Penguin, since a site ranks for the NATIONAL keyword "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS!?!?
ARE INBOUND LINKS TODAY ALMOST WORTHLESS??!!? After having been the KING of SEO, down to the toilet? Today I got a great sample from a fellow SEO professional showing a site, rockymountainfurniture.com rank for "outdoor furniture" with ONLY 7 INBOUND LINKS FROM 3 DOMAINS and a domain trust of 14!!!! ON A NATIONAL, VALUABLE, HIGH QUERY VOLUME KEYWORD!! I was stunned, but is this the "NEW SEO WORLD" we live in, so we should skip spending hundreds of hours on link building? There are over 32 different types of inbound links but this is much MORE than a radical change, this is turning SEO as it was up-side-down. Any input, thoughts, ideas?
Link Building | | yvonneq0 -
Where are all the sites that are linking to me?
I need to compile a list of all the siters linking to my site, but my open site explorer analysis shows very few links. I know for certain that there are many many more sites linking to it (it's an academic site and there are links to it from a lot of academic directories). What am I doing wrong?
Link Building | | michalseo0 -
Total Links vs Ext. Followed Links
Hi I'm fairly new to SEO and SEOMOZ. I've created a campaign for my own site and I've added 3 competitor sites. There are 1,385 total links to my site and a massive 49,450 links to one of my competitor's site. However under "Ext. Followed Links", there are 1,045 to my site and only 911 to the same competitor site. Am I correct that it is the "Ext. Followed Links" which are more important from an SEO point of view as the other links have the "no follow" attribute set? Or have I got this wrong? Thanks James
Link Building | | avecsys0 -
Link Building
I've been hearing about going after niche directories, and my question is most of them have a ton of links on any given page. Is it even worth taking the time to approach these sites knowing they won't pass a lot of link juice?
Link Building | | azguy0