Natural Link Profile - Ranking Signal?
-
Hi,
Is a natural link profile a ranking signal? What is the value in a natural link profile?
What is a (natural?) link graph? Is Majestic SEO the only company capable of visualizing a link graph?
(I know the answers to these questions but I want to hear what SEOMoz has to say in the quasi-official standards of SEOMoz Q/A)
Regards,
-
I think that Daniel and Gianluca are on track here, but I just wanted to try to structure it a bit. Google has over 200 ranking factors now, and we use "natural" link profile to cover a pretty big chunk of them. Generally, I think natural means:
(1) From a diversity of sources (blogs, forums, PR, etc.)
(2) Using a diversity of tactics (comments, contextual links, etc.)
(3) Having a diversity of anchor text, including keyword-targeted and brand-targeted. This is probably one of the easier cues for "unnatural" links. If you're SEO'ing for "medium blue widgets" and 99% of your anchor text is "medium blue widgets", it's not natural.
(4) From topically relevant sites. This is a nice-to-have, but it's not clear how well Google can measure relevance. General authority and "trust" may be more important, although I think relevance will matter more over time.
(5) Not from paid sources. Technically, ads should be nofollow'ed, and some paid placements are a lot easier to spot. If you're right under a "Sponsors" banner, in a box with 10 links from wildly irrelevant and disconnected sites, or in a sitewide footer, your link is going to look unnatural).
-
Errata corrige: the link to OpenSiteExplorer I gave is wrong. Here it is http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
-
Ciao
If you mean as natural link profile an X number of links which have different anchor text (and sometimes that means the Brand name and/or the URL as anchor), from different kind of websites and with a certain % also of nofollowed link... well, it is not properly a ranking signal, but the metrics of those links surely are.
Majestic SEO is a wonderful tool, but being a PRO member you can use http://www.opensitexplorer.com
It is based on Linkscape and it offers you a very strong portrait of your (and your competitors) link profile and from some hints Rand gave in several posts, it is going to be revamped in the next months.
-
Is a natural link profile a ranking signal? No. You don't get better rankings because your link profile looks "more natural" than another website. It's more of a spam signal. If your link profile looks unnatural, you could get penalized. But there's no scale for being more or less natural, there's just natural or unnatural.
A natural link profile has a variety of backlinks. Those links come from a variety of sources. Those links have varied anchor texts. Those links have varied placements on the different pages. Those links are pointing to a variety of your internal pages. The links come from different types of websites.
As far as showing link totals and growth in a graph, Majestic SEO is great, but it's easy to do yourself in Excel. I do it that way because Majestic goes back 4 or 5 years and sometimes I'm more interested in just seeing progress over the last few months.
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
-
Should I disavow these links?
Hi all, I have a ski website that I am currently performing a toxic backlink audit on. I have noted that a lot of the links being flagged as toxic/spammy by the tool I am using seem to be the same/similar sites with different URLs. The sites are vaguely related to skiing (relating to helicopter travel options for travelling to ski resorts) but it is concerning me that there are so many of them and they are being flagged as so toxic.
Link Building | | SolveWebMedia
Do you think it is worth disavowing these? Or contacting the owner to ask them to remove the link? I have included an example of some of the links below. https://www.cannes-helicopters.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://nice-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5 Slightly different site but same favicon icon:
https://monaco-helicopter.co.uk/index.php?menuopen=21&showcontent=5
https://www.whitetracks-holidays.com/Helicopter_Transfers_Villars_Switzerland.htm Thanks in advance for any advice / help!0 -
Link from a directory
Hi, im submitting a clients website to some directories. They are a dental practice and I'm adding them to this website http://goo.gl/Tvyabd Once i added the business to its directory it asked me to add a link (in so many words) back to its website from my clients website. Is this ok to do or is it seen as spam? Im confused about this as sometimes directories are free and sometimes they ask for a fee for it to be fast tracked to put it on the website. I always check the Domain authority of the websites and make sure they are relevant to the industry that I'm working in but again not sure if this would be seen as "paying" for links. Thanks Ade
Link Building | | popcreativeltd0 -
Links to deep pages good for Homepage ranking?
Hello Moz community. My question today is: if I got great backlinks with anchor text "abc" coming to a deep resource page in my site, will these links help my homepage rank for keyword "xyz"? In other words, are all links (regarless of anchor text) coming to a site helpful for the homepage to rank for its main keyword? Thanks.
Link Building | | EduardoRuiz0 -
Link Ratio
Hello, When Building backlinks is there a specific ratio I should try to follow to avoid any issues with google? Thank you!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Why do internal, fake profiles on revebnation sit so high in their linking profile?
I was researching the link profile of Reverbnation to understand where they get most of their links from and a number of these fake reverbnation profiles showed up that seem to be about drugs- is this spam? Here are some examples: http://www.reverbnation.com/fan/tramadolfordepression http://www.reverbnation.com/page_object/page_object_bio/fan_1340318 There are about a dozen of these on their site. Super curious and would love any feedback or knowledge that may be out there! Thanks
Link Building | | Kendi0 -
Advetorial links
How do you scientifically value advertorial links. I have a site who is willing to buy advertorial in large online sites which will contain links. (I would prefer they invested in content on their own site). The DA on these sites is universally extremely strong. the PA of the examples I've seen is pretty low. The site has strong DA matching it's main competition and is performing pretty well in terms of ranking. Question: how do you value this kind of link in terms of the amount of £ the publications want to charge. Anybody have a formula or a logical process which would provide solid advice rather than don't infringe Google's T&C's which I've already mentioned to them. Any thoughts appreciated.
Link Building | | Shivvyt0 -
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 -
Building Links
Hi everyone, I am new to SEO and in the process of building links the clean way. Any suggestions on how exactly I can find websites that are linking out to quality websites already? I went thru most of my competitors link building strategy - and 90% of their links are done either thru link exchange or paid links. So looking at my competitors strategy does not really help. So I need to find websites/blogs/forums that are ready to link to me if I can show them some useful content. How do I find these websites first? Please help! Cheers! Arjun
Link Building | | ArjunRajkumar0