Backlinks question: High Domain Authority, Lower Page Authority
-
We have a possibility of contributing guest blogs (with followed backlinks) to a site with very high domain authority (and highly trafficked), but when we've looked at the blog entires they already have, most of them have a much lower page authority.
How do relevant links from a page with a lower PA but on a domain with a really high DA end up impacting our overall backlink profile?
Can an expert or two give me some advice on what this may mean for us if we choose to go for it? In your opinion, does having lots of relevant links from a site with a much higher domain authority than ourselves (to give you an idea, our domain authority is in the low 60's, this site has a domain authority of almost 90) worth the time/effort/resources unto itself?
Thanks!
-
Consider if you should be guest posting or if you should instead be putting that same content exclusively on your own site.
If you can place a guest post on this other site and it will deliver 100,000 visitors then giving them your content is probably a good thing.
However, if you instead place that same content on your own site here is what might happen.
-
Let's say that article pulls in just ten or eleven visitors per day that will be about 4000 visitors per year.
-
Let's say that just one visitor out of a thousand buys something from your site then in each year it will product four sales.
-
Let's say that ten visitors out of that thousand tweet or FB share a link to your article. And those pull in another 500 visitors per year.
-
Let's say that just one visitor in 20,000 will link back to your site.
What will you have at the end of five years? You will have the same number of links that you had from giving your content away.... You will have made about 25 sales and that article is still on your site.
To me it makes an awful lot more sense to develop great content and place it on my own website. I am not going to build the site of my competitor.
On top of that... if you give an article about a productive keyword topic to your competitor and their site outranks yours then you are just handing your lunch over to them.
So, if you are a reasonably smart person who can make great content then don't give it away. Keep it for use exclusively on your own site. The only time that you should be giving it away is if you know that the traffic from the other site is going to be absolutely an astonishing number.
Guest posting is enormously popular so there are going to be lots of people who agree with me. That's OK. They can give me their great content and I will enjoy eating their lunch.
-
-
I appreciate your time and insight in to the matter! I'm still quite new at this and learning what matters vs. what doesn't. Thank you.
-
In my opinion DA and PA are metrics that you can use to track your progress over time.
They are not what determine your rankings on google or any other search engine. They don't produce more traffic. They don't increase conversions. (If you watch the questions on Q&A you will see almost daily people posting.... "WAH! my site has better DA and PA and they are beating me!" That should tell you that Google uses something else to rank websites.)
If you want to know how much respect Google has for a particular website, just go look at how that site is treated in the SERPs.
If you want to know what people think about the website just visit the site yourself and decide if YOU think they are doing a great job or if they are farting around. Don't you think that evidence is more robust than a couple of flat numbers?
You probably know a lot more about farms and gardens than Google or an algo that produces a couple of flat numbers.
If you are a reasonably smart person who knows an industry then shouldn't you bet on yourself rather than on calculations that know nothing?
And, if you have that expertise then maybe you should be keeping your valuable content for your own site instead of giving it away.... and this is more important that the DA/PA question.
-
I appreciate the brevity of your reply.
If you wouldn't mind, do you have any insight into the DA vs. PA question just for my personal knowledge moving forward?
-
(and highly trafficked)
There's your answer.
IMO further analysis is a waste of time.
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
-
Too many SEO changes needed on a page. Create a new page?
I've been doing some research on a keyword with Page Optimization. I'm finding there's a lot of changes suggested. I'm wondering that because of the amount of changes required is it better to create a new page entirely from scratch that has all the suggestions implemented OR change the current page? Thanks, Chris
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris29181 -
Home Page Authority
My site has several different homepage versions. I am running on the Volusion eCommerce. www.mydomain.com - Page Authority 44
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PartyStore
www.mydomain.com/Default.asp - Page Authority 33
www.mydomain.com/default.asp - Page Authority = 33 So here is the question, is it normal to have different page Authorities for each version? Is this diluting my SEO for the homepage? Any input on this would be appreciated.0 -
Is there a way to increase domain authority?
Dear all, when I see moz analytics for my blog irctcloginindia.co.in, it is legging behind only in terms of diomain authority when compared to my competitors. Because of which it is ranking low. Is there any short cut or fast method using which I can increase the authority for my domain.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | irctclogin0 -
Domain Authority: 23, Page Authority: 33, Can My Site Still Rank?
Greetings: Our New York City commercial real estate site is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com. Key MOZ metric are as follows: Domain Authority: 23
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Page Authority: 33
28 Root Domains linking to the site
179 Total Links. In the last six months domain authority, page authority, domains linking to the site have declined. We have focused on removing duplicate content and low quality links which may have had a negative impact on the above metrics. Our ranking has dropped greatly in the last two months. Could it be due to the above metrics? These numbers seem pretty bad. How can I reverse without engaging in any black hat behavior that could work against me in the future? Ideas?
Thanks, Alan Rosinsky0 -
Redirecting thin content city pages to the state page, 404s or 301s?
I have a large number of thin content city-level pages (possibly 20,000+) that I recently removed from a site. Currently, I have it set up to send a 404 header when any of these removed city-level pages are accessed. But I'm not sending the visitor (or search engine) to a site-wide 404 page. Instead, I'm using PHP to redirect the visitor to the corresponding state-level page for that removed city-level page. Something like: if (this city page should be removed) { header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rriot
header("Location:http://example.com/state-level-page")
exit();
} Is it problematic to send a 404 header and still redirect to a category-level page like this? By doing this, I'm sending any visitors to removed pages to the next most relevant page. Does it make more sense to 301 all the removed city-level pages to the state-level page? Also, these removed city-level pages collectively have very little to none inbound links from other sites. I suspect that any inbound links to these removed pages are from low quality scraper-type sites anyway. Thanks in advance!2 -
Redirect ruined domain to new domain without passing link juice
A new client has a domain which has been hammered by bad links, updates etc and it's basically on its arse because of previous SEO guys. They have various domains for their business (brand.com, brand.co.uk) and want to use a fresh domain and take it from there. Their current domain is brand.com (the ruined one). They're not bothered about the rankings for brand.com but they want to redirect brand.com to brand.co.uk so that previous clients can find them easily. Would a 302 redirect work for this? I don't want to set up a 301 redirect as I don't want any of the crappy links pointing across. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
Sub Domain or New Domain?
Hi All, We have a client that has a business with three different services. 2 of these services compliment each other in a really obvious way, but the 3rd, while related is not such a obvious complimentary service. For this reason, service 3 kind of weakens the content of the website SEO wise for the two main services. Also, internally at the business it is run by an entirely different team so it feels culturally somewhat different. So, the client wants to pull all the content about service 3 and put it on a different website. Which would you chose as a domain for this new site: service3.existingdomain.co.uk or www.service3+brandname.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NoisyLittleMonkey0 -
Complicated Question: Removing Spam Backlinks that were Not Requested
I'm new and seeking help with the following scenario: 1. Main site: is a domain.com established authority type site 2. Second site: is a domain.org (has robots.txt to no index) but someone obviously not site owner has done negative seo campaign against the .org domain and built spammy links to it. In fact, that's all that exist on this second domain because it is used for development purposes only right now.) No one would link to this one normally as it is just secondary domain used to protect trademark and for development use.) When searching for it by domain name it does not appear on first page for search results. Checking link profile the only links that show for domain.org are spam links. Have contacted site/s where spam links were placed (no answer) Main site domain.com and domain.org have same whois and hosted on the same server as they are owned by same company Main site domain.com still appears first for its name but has lost some rankings. I am working to fix some technical issues ie: duplicate urls with CMS etc, but would like to find out what to do about the domain.org content that clearly has had someone target it with spammy non requested backlinks.) domain.com has Google webmaster tools account, no messages about unnatural liking in those reports 1. I'm not sure I should add domain.org to GWT to see if there is an unnatural link penalty applied or if this would further connect the two domains through association. If I could get some feedback/suggestions on what my options are with regards to making sure that the domain.org domain has a clean profile that would be most appreciated. Also because site owner has would like to begin using domain.org in the future for some unique content, but as it stands right now cannot because domain has been targed by poor backlinks. Anyone else run into situation where the .org or .net versions were targeted by spammy backlinks even though the domains were not actively used? What's the safest way to proceed? a) Concerned about possible co-penalty between main site domain.com and domain.org b) how to remove problems issues with domain.org so that owner can use it in future. Many thanks for your thoughts and help with this one. I appreciate any help or feedback.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | web0230