Reciprocal links with guest posts bad?
-
I'm curious do you think Google would fault you or you'd get less link power if you made a page (on your website) of your guest posts from across the net and linked out to them?
-
A viable solution, but I don't want to be too covert about it.
-
Ben, can you host the page somewhere else and call it in an iframe maybe. Or a Javascript Modal window the contents of which are stored in a folder which is denied in robots.txt or Just deny the bots access to this file. If I were you, I would post it anywhere but on the same domain.
Just my 2c. Think about it.
-
Solid answer, I didn't even consider no-indexing the page, it'd primarily be for users anyway.
-
I like your idea of posting them on a Facebook page. I think that's a great compromise in this situation.
-
I know there are 5 other responses so far and mine is the 6th one. Honestly, I would not link out to them. I would not create a connection between all your guest posts and you...it does sort of a web-ring which used to exist over a decade ago. These will clearly get seen as reciprocal links. If I were you and I had domain authority, I would not do it. If you want to, why not share them on your Facebook page. Tweet them. Whatever else makes sense...except linking directly from the site where all those guest posts are linking to.
Some people may disagree....but I would rather have those links be as one-way links instead of reciprocal links.
-
Okay, so my response may have seemed flippant, but really, after everything we've learned in the last year I can't believe the discussion still is all about "what Google likes" and no one is talking about "what my readers like."
Ben, I went and looked at your blog and I think it's awesome. It's full of great content. If you have loyal followers, and they like your content, why on earth would it be a bad thing to say "Hey guys, I know you like my content, so here are some links where you can read some of the posts of written elsewhere." I think that's a cool idea. If you want to, make them "no follow" - I don't think it matters. Google is smart enough to see that you are an author referencing your other work. Readers love that. What's the first thing you see when you open up a book? You see a list of other books by the same author. Is that only self-promotion? I don't think so. You are making it easier for people who like your stuff to find more of it.
-
I would not link out to the pages you are getting links from! Let Google try to figure out that you are doing guest blogging to get incoming links and boost your rank for keywords, why make it easier on them?
-
As the current state of Google lies right now, I'd say no, it wouldn't hurt you. I (ashamedly) admit that up until a few days ago, I still had a page that had a long list of links from link exchanges--I know; I know--bad. But my point is, even with that in place, every algorithm update thus far has benefited us. Considering the fact that the next Penguin refresh is supposed to be major, impactful, and "jarring", I've since removed this page of links, even though it means some of those sites will find out and remove their links to us as a result. OK, I realized I've done nothing to answer your question and have just provided you with a random anecdote, so I guess my question is: why do you want to have this list of guest posts? Is it for the purpose of displaying your work so others can read it?
I do like Oleg's suggestion of noindexing the page. Then you won't even have to worry about what Google thinks of it.
-
Great question.
I think for powerful sites, you don't need to worry about it. If you are a new site, this could be seen as a reciprocal linking scheme. I'd recommend linking to them with a nofollow to be on the safe side. Once your site is well established, remove the nofollows.
To danatanseo's point, if you visitors would like it, you should definitely do it. But if you are really worried about G's interpretation of the page, you can always noindex the page and/or nofollow the links.
-
Forget about Google. Would your readers like it? I bet they would.
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
-
Can you regain any SERPs / link juice of links that have 404'd?
We have a client whose 301 redirects disappeared and have been gone for about 6 months now. We are going to be putting the 301 redirects back in place. Will we be able to regain any of the previous SERPs or link juice from old links or is all lost? Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | SavvyPanda0 -
Internal Links
In OSE, it is reporting that i don't have any internal links to my homepage. In the header on every page is my logo in the top left hand corner which links back to my homepage. Shouldn't this mean then that every page should link to the home page? Similarly, internal pages which link from my main nav aren't showing up as having any internal links in OSE. Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | Santaur0 -
Number of links you should have on a taxonomy term??
According to SeoMoz, my taxonomy terms contain more than 100 links (links to articles in my case) and it tells me that I should reduce it. I have seen a video by Matt Cutts, the google software engineer, and in that video he said that Google's engine has dramatically improved ever since and 100 is not the limit anymore. What do you guys think is the best practice here? To clarify the subject even more: I want to learn this from link juice perspective, does it effect how link juice is distributed? Let's say I have 5 taxonomy terms and all of them have 200 articles and these 5 terms are listed on the home page of a PR7 website. In this case some of the PR will be passed to these 5 taxonomy terms. However, if I increase taxonomy terms to 10, then i will reduce links to 100, but the PR will be distributed even more. This means each taxonomy term will have even less PR value. Am I wrong? Any ideas?
Technical SEO | | mertsevinc0 -
SEO Disasters - Links to Stories of Site Moves/Rebuilds Gone Bad?
Hello, everyone.. I am looking for some links to stories, articles, what have you describing medium to large complex sites that have moved, changed CMS, changed domains, etc, and ended up in a total SEO disaster. Really appreciate anything the community here has or can find! Thanks!
Technical SEO | | DuPont0 -
No results with Link Analysis
So I have been working with a domain since November last year that still shows no improvement in regards to the link analysis. I am baffled because we have gotten them onto the first page on Google for a few of the keywords we are optimizing. Any help with this is greatly appreciated and I am a noob so definitely open to learning. Thanks in advance to all of you. Domain in question - www.modernportablerefrigeration.com Domain is currently on a shared server if that makes any difference. Cordially, Todd Richard admin@richfinn.org
Technical SEO | | RichFinnSEO0 -
Reciprocal links / seo satellite
Hi guys, I am reasonably new to SEO. We operate a site. Lets call it brand.com. I would like to build up SEO juice and traffic for our site reasonably quickly, but with a view to not harming us in the long term. There are a large number of very small blogs in our space (> 100). Many of them are private blogs. I would like to gain links from these blogs. None of these blogs will send large amounts of traffic to our site on an individual basis, but in sum they provide both decent traffic and SEO juice. Leaving SEO out of mind I would offer them all returning links in exchange for linking to our blog (brand.com/blog) or our main domain (brand.com). They are decent quality sites that may be of interest to our users. They are not competitors and will not take any of our business away. Problem: I want to avoid being punished by Google for link exchange. In an ideal world I would event like to profit from these links from a SEO perspective. I have thought of a work around, but am not sure whether this will work at all. I will create 3 satellite pages: brand-partners.com, brand-tips.com and brand-blog-roll.com. I will feature links to these three sites prominently on my main site and my blog. This will provide these three sites with some SEO juice and trust from bloggers. In return for linking to my site, I will offer the small blogs links from these three "satellite" pages. I will try to diffuse the picture by adding some random links and obtaining some random links that I don't link back to. My approach is to always provide value to our users. Apart from the diffusing bit above I would say that creating these small hubs provides value (as we recommend valuable sites), while still enabling us to have some SEO effect. As I am reasonably new to SEO, I don't know whether the above is already a standard tactic employed or whether it contains some horrible pitfall that I should be aware of. I would be very thankful for any tips or feedback! Thank you and all the best, Daan
Technical SEO | | daan.loening0 -
Removing inbound Spam Links
Hello, Last February one of my clients websites was delisted. It turns out that some time ago that had attempted to launch a social network along time lines of ning. The project had fallen apart of the was still up. At some point spammers found it and started using it as part of a link farm. Once it was discovered, the subdomain it was posted on was removed and the website returned to search within 2 weeks. Last week, the website disappeared again OSE shows that in the last 2 months the website has got 2000 (There are about 16,000 total spam links) additional spam links now pointing and the root domain. On top of that, Google Webmaster Tools is reporting about 15,000 404 errors. I have blocked Google from crawling the path where the path were the spam pages used to be. If there a way to block the 1000s of inbound spam links?
Technical SEO | | Simple_Machines0 -
Javascript funtion as link? Why not show up?
We joined our Chamber of Commerce for the "link" as much as anything. After 9 months of having a link from our local chamber it has never showed up anywhere. You can see the link on my Chambers page, and you can click on it and it works. But it does not show up anywhere else....Not in any backlink checker, not in SEOmoz, not in Google Webmaster Tools. When I hover over our link on their page I see "javascript:encodeclick........my url" Is this link worth anything? What is a javascriptencodeclick? Does Google know it exists and give me credit for it? Our Chamber is clueless... they hire someone to do their website. Their webmasters response to my question was: Hi, These links look like this because this is just the way our system parses URLs that are entered into the membership directory so they can be clickable when displayed in the lister. These links will not have a negative effect on Google or SEO indexing purposes if that is what you are concerned about. They are not encoded or encrypted, this just happens to be the name of the Javascript function.
Technical SEO | | SCyardman0