What is a "Bad Link" in Google's eyes? Low DA?
-
Hi there,
I'm going through my link profile and I noticed I have a few links that are from <10 DA sites. One has a DA of 6. Should I remove these?
Aside from any referral traffic I receive from these links (I know there is none), are these links hurting me?
What should I look out for in a site I may guest post on?Thanks!
Travis -
That happens for 3 reasons
-
It is a low competitive keyword where EMD is very strong. Low profit (around £0,50-0,90 CPC)
-
He is using automated software like No Hands SEO or GSA which automatically generate relevant blog comments and split the links to follow and no follow so that they seem natural to Google. He will get penalised in the end as both of these tools are ok to use for web 2 properties but people dont know and use it on their web sites (penalty inc)
-
He is probably purchasing good follow links from a high DA and PA blog/PR network, there are plenty around for 100-200 a month.
All this make me conclude that your competitor has a money site or a Micro Niche Site meaning he wants to make a cash and dont care for long term goals (check for adsense and amazon affiliate links within the pages). If that is not the case then his SEO guy clearly needs to move forward!
Pure 2010 black hat practise.
-
-
I hate to say it, but I have a competitor ranking no.1 with around 500 nofollow links, and 19 dofollow links. These are mainly low quality blog comments from non relevant blogs. Its an EMD.
Its one of those things that make you throw your hands up in the air...
Of course it won't last for them... but its crazy.
-
It's actually natural to acquire low DA/PA links over time—not all websites have high DA/PA.
I wouldn't worry about a few low quality links. Google is looking for things like an excessive number of low quality links from historically spammy areas, e.g., article marketing, link directories, or excessive social bookmarking. And they ignore nofollow links altogether (so they say).
So technically, you could have 15,000 nofollow links from DA 0 websites and— at least according to Google's search quality team—they would be ignored altogether.
Contrary to what you might think, a link profile with only high DA links would actually look unnatural as well, because it would most likely be pruned and trimmed to be that way. Here's a good Moz post from a while back illustrating that concept: http://moz.com/blog/how-guest-bloggers-are-sleepwalking-their-way-into-penalties
-
All the anchor texts are pretty much our brand name or our website domain. No specific keywords. That should keep us safe, right? Thanks for your help!
-
Check the anchor texts first, PM me, I just dealt with some really bad negative SEO. I can help you if you like.
-
Yes but if the article was good enough that big names like Google or NYT wanted it... wouldn't it be pulling in the traffic from all the shares of it? And do you really want those sites outranking you for your own content? And wouldn't they likely NoFollow the link back to you anyway because of Google's current best practices concerning those sorts of links?
-
Hmm interesting. If Google or the NYT wanted to post an article you wrote on their home page with a link to your site, would you say no and put it on your 5k visitor/month site instead?
The exposure is worthwhile if no one will be able to find the content on your own site anyway.
-
Have you received an Unnatural Links warning or have you noticed pages losing steam after receiving links from these places? If not, I'd say don't have them removed because you may inadvertently hurt yourself. Just make sure that any links you work to create yourself are natural & relevant.
As for Guest Posting: "if you go to the time and effort of producing great content why would you want it to be on someone else’s site when it could be on yours." [See this thread: http://moz.com/community/q/in-2013-is-guest-blogging-a-worthwhile-activity]
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
-
If I nofollow outbound external links to minimize link juice loss > is it a good/bad thing?
OK, imagine you have a blog, and you want to make each blog post authoritative so you link out to authority relevant websites for reference. In this case it is two external links per blog post, one to an authority website for reference and one to flickr for photo credit. And one internal link to another part of the website like the buy-now page or a related internal blog post. Now tell me if this is a good or bad idea. What if you nofollow the external links and leave the internal link untouched so all internal links are dofollow. The thinking is this minimizes loss of link juice from external links and keeps it flowing through internal links to pages within the website. Would it be a good idea to lay off the nofollow tag and leave all as do follow? or would this be a good way to link out to authority sites but keep the link juice internal? Your thoughts are welcome. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rich_Coffman0 -
Where the "fudge-nuggets" are my internal links?
Ok, so... Google Webmaster Tools Internal Links are not showing any links to my site's homepage. I only link to the homepage by wrapping the logo with the link throughout the site. Does Google need these to be text links to show them? [/](<a class=)" title="Kona Coffee">![](<a class=)http://1s93mbet6ccj5zkm31703gqj8.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/kona-coffee-1.png" alt="Kona Coffee"/> Site is here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AhlerManagement
http://goo.gl/4C8GKc Could CDN image source be affecting it? Lost... please help!0 -
- Truth ? ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates''
I need SEO. A SEO consultant said: ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates'' they mention: ''Therefore we would be undertaking a range of promotional exercises such as blog postings, social book marking, press release, etc that are more effective for ensuring best possible rankings for the website.'' Do you agree? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2051 -
Google webmaster tools showing "no data available" for links to site, why?
In my google webmaster account I'm seeing all the data in other categories except links to my site. When I click links to my site I get a "no data available" message. Does anyone know why this is happening? And if so, what to do to fix it? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Nicktaylor10 -
Doubts with URL's structure
Hi guys i have some doubts with the correct URL structure for a new site. The question is about how show the city, the district and also the filters. I would do that: www.domain.com/category/city/disctict but maybe is better do that: **www.domain.com/category/city-district ** I also have 3 filters that are "individual/colective" "indoor/outdoor" and "young/adult" but that are not really interesting for the querys so where and how i put this filtters? At the end of the url showing these: **www.domain.com/cateogry/city/district#adult#outdoor#colective ** ? Well really i don't know what to do with the filters. Check if you could help me with that please. I also have a lof of interest in knowing if maybe is better use this combination **www.domain.com/category-city or domain.com/category/city **and know about the diference. Thank you very much!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | omarmoscatt0 -
Brackets vs Encoded URLs: The "Same" in Google's eyes, or dup content?
Hello, This is the first time I've asked a question here, but I would really appreciate the advice of the community - thank you, thank you! Scenario: Internal linking is pointing to two different versions of a URL, one with brackets [] and the other version with the brackets encoded as %5B%5D Version 1: http://www.site.com/test?hello**[]=all&howdy[]=all&ciao[]=all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile
Version 2: http://www.site.com/test?hello%5B%5D**=all&howdy**%5B%5D**=all&ciao**%5B%5D**=all Question: Will search engines view these as duplicate content? Technically there is a difference in characters, but it's only because one version encodes the brackets, and the other does not (See: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_urlencode.asp) We are asking the developer to encode ALL URLs because this seems cleaner but they are telling us that Google will see zero difference. We aren't sure if this is true, since engines can get so _hung up on even one single difference in character. _ We don't want to unnecessarily fracture the internal link structure of the site, so again - any feedback is welcome, thank you. 🙂0 -
How are pages ranked when using Google's "site:" operator?
Hi, If you perform a Google search like site:seomoz.org, how are the pages displayed sorted/ranked? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | anthematic0 -
Google Said "Repeat the search with the omitted results included."
We have some pages targeting the different countries but with the Near to Similar content/products, just distinguished with the country name etc. one of the page was assigned to me for optimizing. two or three Similar pages are ranked with in top 50 for the main keyword. I updated some on page content to make it more distinguish from others. After some link building, I found that this page still not showing in Google result, even I found the following message on the google. "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 698 already displayed.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alexgray
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included." I clicked to repeat omitted result and found that my targeted url on 450th place in google (before link building this was not) My questions are Is google consider this page low quality or duplicate content? Is there any role of internal linking to give importance a page on other (when they are near to similar)? Like these pages can hurt the whole site rankings? How to handle this issue?0