Link building - still effective ?
-
Hi, I know 70-80% of the links on Google have no-follow keyword. What I need to know is if link building by using guest posting and a combination of no-follow links through social media is still effective ? What would you suggest in terms of link building. I have read all the articles on moz and everything, but I need a personal touch on this matter.
Thanks,
Andrei -
Hey guys,
Thanks a lot for the valuable insight. It's definitely going to help me. I also had the impression that linking back to high quality domains by creating unique and valuable content is a great way of improving the SEO.
-
This can be very frustrating. I watched one of our competitors sling shot to to out rank us on many of the terms we were competing on. We had them here at Moz as a tracked competitor and when Panda / Penguin updates hit they tanked. That was satisfying
Just keep on doing things right, Google has the money as really is trying to stop these sorts of tactics.
-
Don is spot on here. Content and Link Building are the top of the SEO priority list. I strongly encourage you to do more research and ignore anyone who tells you that blog posts and any other form of content back linking is out dated. There are so many ways to build links, and the most important thing to remember is that they need to be organic and to quality sites.
Just because someone is ranking well and they appear to have really spammy links doesn't mean that 1. they aren't going down the road of punishment and 2. their link profile is why they are ranking well. There are 200 ranking factors, and about 17% of them are link related.
To touch on social media. It is growing in importance everyday. Social signals are extremely important and anyone who advises against social marketing is way outside of the best practice loop. Be very careful.
You don't want to build no follow links, they carry absolutely 0 link juice If you are building them in places where you will get referral traffic from them, then by all means, build away. Link building was originally devised as a way to drive traffic. It lost it's purpose because it became so manipulated, and now, with the help of penguin, it is starting to get back to its roots. Links have always been the highways and byways bringing traffic to your site, and if your links are driving traffic, they are doing their job. Whether it is from social, blogs or forums.
-
i want to say here that I have a competitor website who is ranking VERY well for spammy low ranking backlinks and he seems to continue to evade any penalties. Its very frustrating for those of us who try to adhere to preferred standards.
-
Hi Andrei,
Link building is important. How you go about it may have been evolved since you last looked at the subject.
When you break it down Link Building was and still is all about building associations on the web to your site. Evaluating a link, the Anchor Text on the link, how many other links are on the referring page, how popular the referring page is, and now if the referring page is part of a spam network determines exactly how valuable that association is.
Knowing that you can also surmise that if you get a link on a popular site it will have much more value than that of a low value site. The trick is how do you actually get that link? The answer really depends on the site.
Guest blogging gained popularity because anybody could write an article and generate a link to their own site or content. Now blogs are a little less forgiving about giving out links and many will nofollow all user generated links. However, you can still find your quality content linked by website authors with follow links. This in a sense is how it always should have worked.
The original vision of web authority remains; the web masters give credit with follow links to things they feel are relevant. In turn search engines recognize this and give more authority to the pages and domains. This method of ranking was well before Social Media even was a blip on the screen. Today the search engine factor in so many other things like social signals, viral content, ad-blocks, user engagement and much more. But the fact is that the underlying vision is still intact. The associations you build via links are important signals to your site.
My basic recommendation on link building is as follows. Know your market. Know where your customers are engaging their peers, and establish yourself as an authority at those spots. Create unique creative content on your site. When appropriate drop links to your content. As an authority on the subject you will find your audience more receptive and may find your links being picked up in other spots all on their own.
Rand hosted a whiteboard Friday about Content and SEO on 10/24/2014. I encourage everyone to read Jeff Ferguson's comment (first) about this white board. It is very informative and provides a different take on how and where link building is going.
Good luck,
Don
-
I would tend to stay away from these techniques, aim to build your links through quality content creation that people genuinely want to link to.
Guest blogging shouldn't really be used as an SEO technique.
If however you are guest blogging to increase your brand awareness, increase your community etc. This would be fine
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
-
Site Migration Question - Do I Need to Preserve Links in Main Menu to Preserve Traffic or Can I Simply Link to on Each Page?
Hi There We are currently redesigning the following site https://tinyurl.com/y37ndjpn The local pages links in the main menu do provide organic search traffic. In order to preserve this traffic, would be wise to preserve these links in the main menu? Or could we have a secondary menu list (perhaps in the header or footer), featured on every page, which links to these pages? Many Thanks In Advance for Responses
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ruislip180 -
Adding Video to Landing Pages-Beneficial SEO Effect in Terms of Links & Visitor Engagement?
I run a New York City commercial real estate in New York City. Lately, I have started to produce 30-second videos about property listings and neighborhoods. I have noticed that the engagement for these videos on Facebook is much higher that for text posts. Should adding these videos on our website (hosting them on Youtube) result in increased visitor engagement? Could there be a positive SEO effect such as more links and higher quality links? Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Can one back-link fluctuates ranking of website with thousands of back-links?
It happend to our website. We have seen major ranking fluctuations for our website because of one back-link. What kind of links those can be? Why Google is not stopping them even though they claim that such back-links will be taken care of?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
H3 Tags - Should I Link to my content Articles- ? And do I have to many H3 tags/ Links as it is ?
Hello All, On my ecommerce landing pages, I currently have links to my products as H3 Tags. I also have useful guides displayed on the page with links useful articles we have written (they currently go to my news section). I am wondering if I should put those article links as additional H3 tags as well for added seo benefit or do I have to many tags as it is ?. A link to my Landing Page I am talking about is - http://goo.gl/h838RW Screenshot of my h1-h6 tags - http://imgur.com/hLtX0n7 I enclose screenshot my guides and also of my H1-H6 tags. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Spam Links? -115 Domains Sharing the Same IP Address, to Remove or Not Remove Links
Out of 250 domains that link to my site about 115 are from low quality directories that are published by the same company and hosted on the same ip address. Examples of these directories are: -www.keydirectory.net -www.linkwind.com -www.sitepassage.com -www.ubdaily.com -www.linkyard.org A recent site audit from a reputable SEO firm identified 125 toxic links. I assume these are those toxic links. They also identified about another 80 suspicious domains linking to my site. They audit concluded that my site is suffering a partial Penguin penalty due to low quality links. My question is whether it is safe to remove these 125 links from the low quality directories. I am concerned that removing this quantity of links all at once will cause a drop in ranking because the link profile will be thin with only about 125 domains remaining that point to the site. Granted those 125 domains should be of somewhat better quality. I am playing with fire by having these removed. I URGENTLY NEED ADVICE AS THE WEBMASTER HAS INITIATED STEPS TO REMOVE THE 125 LINKS. Thanks everyone!!! Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Hyphen domain effect SEO?
Hi Guys, I am looking to buy some domain that have the keyword I want in - but my question is; Does using hypehns in a domain effect your SEO? Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Link Location Still Making That Much Difference?
I got to thinking earlier... I know obviously footer links are always going to be the bottom of the barrel but does the rest of block level analysis still mean as much... I mean, everybody went nuts with getting in-content links only so there's a billion and one badly written spammy blogs with useless content on just for the sake of getting in-content links instead of blogroll/sidebar links. I just wonder if maybe due to that, things might have levelled out a bit for link location and we hadn't noticed... or at least there's not been much discussion over it lately. Thoughts anyone?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SteveOllington0 -
Does a page on a site with high domain authority build page authority easier? i.e. less inbound links?
Is this also why people build backlinks to their BBB profiles, Yellowpages Profiles, etc. i.e. why do people build backlinks to other pages that link to them? Wouldn't it be more beneficial to just build that backlink directly to your target?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0