Backlink Question
-
I have a backlink on a very popular sports news site PR5 this is a sitewide link. The link is near the top on righthand side. As you scroll down, the page keeps loading more and more information. According to my Google webmaster tools the link is on the site over 21,400 pages. As the stories being submitted are new most of the pages have no PR however there are around 30-40 categories that have PR ranging from 0-4.
According to my AHREFS account on a daily basis it picks up between 100-200 new links with on average around 10-20 being lost as the stories are being removed.
Would anyone advise I just ask for my link to be on the category pages only or should I leave it as it is?
Many Thanks in Advance for any Feedback.
-
I wouldn't worry about the fact that you are seeing hundreds of thousands of links from one site. It's not the number of links that make a link unnatural, but rather, whether the link is there primarily for SEO reasons. It sounds like this link is bringing you good traffic. It's probably a good one. Provided it's not a paid link or one that is there in exchange for something, I'd keep it as is.
-
Hi there
As this is one link that just keeps getting recounted, I wouldn't see this as an issue.
You could also ask for the link to have a more permanent position on a static page that's relevant to your site.
My suggestion is just from the perspective of having a link that's recounted and seen thousands of times.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
ATP
Thank you for replies. I have looked into our Google analythics and it appears iwe had the following visits:
38 referrals from 5th June to 5th July
20 of those were from there homepage
13 from category pages
5 from individual storiesI have contacted the company who we advertise with and they have agreed to place our link on the home page and the highest traffic category pages.
Thank you to all who have taken the time to help me out not only with this question but all of my previous questions. You are helping a small business stay afloat against some very big competition.
-
Patrick you may know more than me here but to follow up.
I understand that nofollow link wont hurt his site in anyway, and its a great link to confirm that.
However, he would be loosing the "juice" from the high authority main page and all the cateogry pages. Whilst the nofollow links wont hurt him, loosing this surly could?
-
Hi there
While I can't say "rankings will drop", Matt Cutts has stated that this will not hurt your rankings. You can read more on that here.
Hope this helps!
-
Patrick
Thank you for your answer, being new to link building would my rankings drop if i nofollowed this link?
John
-
This isn't as simple as just looking at your backlink profile and wanting only high PR links.
There is a diminishing returns effect on anything over 2-3 links from a single website. Google recognises they are all from the same root domain and acts accordingly. I do believe in a penguin update many web hosting companies were affected as many had link profiles with this due to "created by" footer links. However, links like this from a single website shouldnt be enough to arrouse suspicion on their own, it your website isn't spammy and the website linking to you isnt spammy then dont worry too much.
Ideally yes, you would normally aim for only a couple of links from the highest PR pages on their website but there is a big BUT!
Do you get much referral traffic from these links? If so does this traffic come from the category pages of their site or the news pages? Don't shoot a your own referral traffic in the foot by trying to optimise your back-link profile.
If you have good traffic being driven from this collection of pages.... leave them be and focus on getting more good quality links elseware.
If they dont provide any traffic then look at the rest of your link profile, if this is an isolated case and eveything else meets good SEO standard and isnt spammy. I wouldnt personally worry about it until google gave me a reason to.
EDIT: My terrible english lol
-
Hi there
I would see if I could get this link nofollowed. Now, that will probably sound counterproductive, but remember, you're not link building for rankings - you're link building to provide a relevant and quality experience - you want to add to the conversation, not distort it. Plus, brand mentions are a great thing.
I'd rather have the link and have it nofollowed than have the link followed thousands of times and it ultimately be considered counterproductive or spammy. That's just me though - it's upto you to research and weigh your actions!
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Does Google checks the author name of the articles with backlinks to a website?
Hi, This may sound a little too suspicious; but just want to take your suggestions and experience in this. We are trying to create articles on third party websites to increase backlinks, our brand popularity and awareness about our features. If the same author is mentioned in multiple or tens of articles with backlinks to same website; will Google monitor the author name? Is there anything wrong in creating too many external articles with same author name? Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Building backlinks in a very niche industry, what to do when squeezed between brick walls?
So I have a site that operates in a very niche industry, reading all I can about building backlink, I've come out of the walls of text with a few tidbits, however they're not very helpful still, since the playing field is so small. Looking at manufacturer's sites, finding broken links or typos even, pointing them out in hopes for backlinks only goes so far. Guest blogging seems to have reached it's climax and is slowly rounding the toilet. They're active in social media, but due to the niche market, a few likes is the best that can happen. So most efforts these days are around creating helpful resources for users related to the products they sell. What other ways would you suggest looking into for building meaningful backlinks with other sites? In these niche markets, it seems very daunting to say the least, while competitors use their own sister sites for some backlinks, this site doesn't have any sister sites. What has been some beneficial backlink tactics you've employed for niche market sites?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Deacyde0 -
Questionable backlinks...
One of our competitors (who are ranking top spot ) have this trend of building backlinks from websites build for the sole purpose of seo. (see example) When you see the website it's just a submission of articles from different companies trying to rank for a certain keyword most of the time poorly written. Our competitor seems to be doing this a lot...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Immanuel
What do you guys think, is it just a matter of time before Google cracks down on them or is this technique actually working for them? (even though it's rather grey hat) Or... could it be someone trying to build "poor" backlinks to them in an attempt to push them of the Google throne 😉1 -
Manual Penalty Question
Hello dear MoZ community, I have already communicated this problem before but now it reaches to a level I have to make some hard decisions and would like your help. One of our new accounts (1 month old) got a manual penalty notification few weeks ago from Google for unnatural link building. I went through the whole process, did link detox and analysis and indeed there were lots of blog networks existing purely for cross linking. I removed these and the links got decreased dramatically. The company had around 250,000 links and truth be told if I go by the book only 700-800 of them are really worth and provide value. They will end up with roughly 15000 -20000 left which I acknowledge are a lot but some are coming from web 2 properties such as blogger, wordpress etc. Because the penalty was in some of the pages and not the whole web site I removed the ones that I identified were harming the web site, brought the anchor text down to normal levels and filed a very detailed reconsideration request and disavow file. I do not have a response so far by webmasters but here is where my concerns begin: Should I go for a new domain? losing 230.000 links ? How can there even be a "reconsideration" request for a web site with 85% of its link profile being cross linking to self owned directories and web 2 properties? If I go for a new domain should I redirect? Should I keep the domain, keep cleaning and adding new quality links so I take it with a fresh new approach? Thanks everyone in advance!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | artdivision0 -
Spam backlinks
Hi there, through Open Site Explorer I've found 5838 links (across 1458 domains) with the anchor text 'new porn' pointing to a site I manage. Someone's been busy! Most (99.5%) appear to be created as Pingbacks with rel="nofollow" on them. As a precaution I submitted a file through the Google Disavow tool which has had the status "You successfully uploaded a disavow links file" for the last month. I'm wondering whether I should be concerned, or whether Google and other search engines will be clever enough to know this site is about electricity and not scantily clad people?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | originenergy0 -
Can image links help improve my backlinking profile?
I recently spent some time looking at the backlink profile of a leading UK food & clothing retailer and noticed that a high number of their backlinks for very competitive search phrase's consisted entirely of image backlinks. 50% of the links contained no alt text and other 50% contained a mix of just the targeted keyword or a phase containig one mention of the targeted keyword. Has anyone had any experiance of this type of marketing producing any positive effect on SEO or search engine rankings?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BigJonOne0 -
Ethical question about setting up a local business directory...
I've just launched a local business directory that allows the small businesses in my local area to get noticed by a very targeted audience. People such as self-employed builders, painters and decorators and the like. As well as helping them out, they'll be helping me out by testing the waters of local keywords and seeing just how difficult and how much traffic they'll get. Kind of like spreading myself across 100's of keywords without the need for domains etc. All the links on there are nofollow, but what are the ethics behind letting my clients have a dofollow link from it? I wouldn't use this directory as a marketing tool for my self and my business, but if I acquired a client from my website or other source, but they would benefit from a dofollow link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | jasonwdexter0 -
Question #1 - My Cherry's Popped!
I recently acquired rights to a URL that is one of our keywords. Instead of developing a landing page with that URL and then only linking it back to the company root, I was thinking about adding a link within the company's global nav that pushes to this new URL (and new page content of course). Are there any Pros or Cons to doing it that way? Thank you so much!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | GladdySEO0