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
-
Something happened within the last 2 weeks on our WordPress-hosted site that created "duplicates" by counting www.company.com/example and company.com/example (without the 'www.') as separate pages. Any idea what could have happened, and how to fix it?
Our website is running through WordPress. We've been running Moz for over a month now. Only recently, within the past 2 weeks, have we been alerted to over 100 duplicate pages. It appears something happened that created a duplicate of every single page on our site; "www.company.com/example" and "company.com/example." Again, according to our MOZ, this is a recent issue. I'm almost certain that prior to a couple of weeks ago, there existed both forms of the URL that directed to the same page without be counting as a duplicate. Thanks for you help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wzimmer0 -
How can a recruitment company get 'credit' from Google when syndicating job posts?
I'm working on an SEO strategy for a recruitment agency. Like many recruitment agencies, they write tons of great unique content each month and as agencies do, they post the job descriptions to job websites as well as their own. These job websites won't generally allow any linking back to the agency website from the post. What can we do to make Google realise that the originator of the post is the recruitment agency and they deserve the 'credit' for the content? The recruitment agency has a low domain authority and so we've very much at the start of the process. It would be a damn shamn if they produced so much great unique content but couldn't get Google to recognise it. Google's advice says: "Syndicate carefully: If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content." - But none of that can happen. Those big job websites just won't do it. A previous post here didn't get a sufficient answer. I'm starting to think there isn't an answer, other than having more authority than the websites we're syndicating to. Which isn't going to happen any time soon! Any thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Reynolds0 -
When Mobile and Desktop sites have the same page URLs, how should I handle the 'View Desktop Site' link on a mobile site to ensure a smooth crawl?
We're about to roll out a mobile site. The mobile and desktop URLs are the same. User Agent determines whether you see the desktop or mobile version of the site. At the bottom of the page is a 'View Desktop Site' link that will present the desktop version of the site to mobile user agents when clicked. I'm concerned that when the mobile crawler crawls our site it will crawl both our entire mobile site, then click 'View Desktop Site' and crawl our entire desktop site as well. Since mobile and desktop URLs are the same, the mobile crawler will end up crawling both mobile and desktop versions of each URL. Any tips on what we can do to make sure the mobile crawler either doesn't access the desktop site, or that we can let it know what is the mobile version of the page? We could simply not show the 'View Desktop Site' to the mobile crawler, but I'm interested to hear if others have encountered this issue and have any other recommended ways for handling it. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | merch_zzounds0 -
Chinese Sites Linking With Bizarre Keywords Creating 404's
Just ran a link profile, and have noticed for the first time many spammy Chinese sites linking to my site with spammy keywords such as "Buy Nike" or "Get Viagra". Making matters worse, they're linking to pages that are creating 404's. Can anybody explain what's going on, and what I can do?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | alrockn0 -
Change of URLs: "little by little" VS "all at once"
Hi guys, We're planning to change our URLs structure for our product pages (to make them more SEO friendly) and it's obviously something very sensitive regarding the 301 redirections that we have to take with... I'm having a doubt about Mister Google: if we slowly do that modification (area by area, to minimize the risk of problems in case of bad 301 redirection), would we lose rankings in the search engine? (I'm wondering if they might consider our website is not "coherent" -> not the same product page URLs structure for all the product pages during some time) Thanks for your kind opinion 😉
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kuantokusta0 -
How to get the 'show map of' tag/link in Google search results
I have 2 clients that have apparently random examples of the 'show map of' link in Google search results. The maps/addresses are accurate and for airports. They are both aggregators, they service the airports e.g. lax airport shuttle (not actual example) BUT DO NOT have Google Place listings for these pages either manually OR auto populated from Google, DO NOT have the map or address info on the pages that are returned in the search results with the map link. Does anyone know how this is the case? Its great that this happens for them but id like to know how/why so I can replicate across all their appropriate pages. My understanding was that for this to happen you HAD to have Google Place pages for the appropriate pages (which they cant do as they are aggregators). Thanks in advance, Andy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AndyMacLean0 -
Meeting Google's needs 100% with dynamic pages
We have bought into a really powerful search, very exciting We can define really detailed product based 'landing pages' by creating a search that pulles on required attributeseghttp://www.OURDOMAIN.com//search/index.php?sortprice=asc&followSearch=9673&q=red+coats+short-length Pop that in a link Short Red Coats on a previous page and wonderful, that gives a page of short red coats in price ascending order, one happy consumer, straight to a page that meets their needs Question 1 however unhappy Google right? Question 2 can we meet Google's needs 100% with a redirect permanent in an .htaccess file E.G redirect permanent /short-red-coats/ http://www.OURDOMAIN.com//search/index.php?sortprice=asc&followSearch=9673&q=red+coats+short-length
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GeezerG
Many thanks
CB0