Geographical Relevance of Back links - Important for SEO?
-
If I have an AU domain, will Google give more weight to back links from other AU domains in the Australian search results, or will quality links from anywhere in the world count much the same?
Intuitively, you would think that AU links would be more relevant for an AU site in the Australian SERPS and Google would therefore give these more weight, but are there any good articles/research/anecdotal accounts to show this?
Thanks!
-
Local links are a lot better then international. Lower quality local links can bring you higher position then other ones. We experienced that with our 10 websites.
-
Take it this way. You have a great website and you are targeting Australian audience. In that case, it is quote natural that your link profile should reflect that. Now, it will not be convincing to a human quality rater or to search engine algo if it finds that most of your links are coming from for say – Middle East or from Russia and they look unnatural. However, do not panic if you are getting links naturally from other English speaking countries, it is quote natural and will help your website gain global exposure.
The point is if you are building links via participating in communities, guest blog outreach, you need to make sure that you are focusing on your code audience i.e. Australian. Once you have a strong hold there, you can expand your presence in some other countries. There is no such problem with that.
-
Hey Tracy- I would say yes it absolutely carrys more weight to get links that are relavent to the country you are marketing for. Look at it this way, if you were marketing insurance for Australia but you only had .fr links do you think it would help or hurt you? As you said, intuitively, it makes sense. With all recent algorithm updates centered at improving relavency and trusted sources, I think you should follow your intuition here. I'm not saying just .com links don't carry weight but I think you will find .au link will be better for your strategy, especially if you are appealing to local customers instead of selling worldwide. Hope that helps, good luck! Mike
-
Normally that's true. Back links from local sites with .au top level domain is better. But in many cases still if you get a high quality say .co.uk link, it can still work pretty well.
Though Link from a site with another language other than English doesn't make much sense and Google see it as fishy/spam in many cases.
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
-
Links
Hi, im wondering if links that is not exact anchor links gives any boost for rankings? Example if lets say somebody links to my site http://domain.com/category/article with anchor: domainname or url link.
Link Building | | Rob_I0 -
Outbound links for SEO
A colleague of mine is arguing that having the right outbound links on your website is important for SEO. It seems to me that it would help Google and other SEs to categorize your site, but it wouldn't be a significant ranking factor in itself as anyone could do that. This is being used as an argument to keep links on our site linking to theirs. I've not done any experiments with it, however, and the site in question is ranking fairly well currently. I just don't think that's the main ranking factor as they have fairly good backlinks as well. Anyone have direct experience with this sort of argument? Thanks, Tom
Link Building | | TomBristol0 -
Do footer links pass less link juice?
One of my best inbound links for PA and DA happens to be a footer link, curious if it's less valuable or has any value at all.
Link Building | | Theskimonster0 -
Should I become a regular contributor to help my SEO link building?
I've been offered the opportunity to contribute to a blog as often as I want and have a link included at the bottom of each post. Will this be much help to me in my link building SEO campaign? As I understand it more links from different root domains are what really count? So 20 links each from a different site is more valuable that 20 links from one site? Should I take up this opportunity or are my efforts best spent elsewhere?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
When placing content on external sites, what are some best practices for back links?
Hi there, I am working on a content strategy that includes placing content (i.e. bylined articles, how-to's, guest blogs, etc.) on other web sites and embedding links back to our site. In some cases we're very limited to what we can do with our bank links (i.e. just a company url), and in other cases we are free to place multiple anchor links within the content. In cases where we have no limitations, what are some best practices for implementing back links? I understand it's important to link to deep pages (not just our home page), have diverse anchor text, and make the anchor links relevant to the surrounding content. Are there other things I should be thinking about in order to maximize the SEO value of such placements? For example, is it better to have just one anchor link per placement? Or should I aim to embed multiple anchor links within a single placement? Any advice would be much appreciated! Sincerely, Debra
Link Building | | Cherwell-Software0 -
Back linking: Relevance or Domain Authority?
For back linking, what is more important for increasing rank for organic searches on Google? I've noticed that linking on sites with high domain authority that have some or no relevance boost my keyword ranking. However, does back linking on relevant sites help if their domain authority is not so high?
Link Building | | Modbargains0 -
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 -
Links from any country?
My site is aimed primarily at the UK, 90% of the traffic is from the UK and most of my links are from other UK based and UK targetted websites. The content is actually fairly international (apart from certain terms like Plasterboard instead of Drywall, etc). My question is: Should I concentrate on gathering links from the UK, or should I widen my search and try to get links from US and European websites? Are there any particular advantages or disadvantages to keeping links "local"?
Link Building | | Jingo010