undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. Link Building
  4. Can indirect linking be valuable?

Moz Q&A is closed.

After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

Can indirect linking be valuable?

Link Building
3
4
1.2k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • Michael_Rock
    Michael_Rock Subscriber last edited by Jul 12, 2011, 11:17 PM

    I have a client who is using a SEO company (Hubshout, delete name if necessary) to boost traffic to their website.

    They are doing this by publishing articles and submitting them to article directories, then they use their own sites/blogs (which are valueless, PR and MozRank of zero) to point to these articles and they say that this helps boost there rankings.

    How? They are not linking to the clients websites, creating artificial links from their own websites to article directories instead of the clients website. Are they trying to boost the value of the article or trying to boost their own websites? How does this help out the client?

    It is similar to three way linking but is not.

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • Michael_Rock
      Michael_Rock Subscriber @RyanKent last edited by Jul 13, 2011, 12:18 AM Jul 13, 2011, 12:18 AM

      Just average articles with a link pointing back. The blogs/websites pointing to these article have very low rank though.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • DustinX
        DustinX last edited by Jul 13, 2011, 12:22 AM Jul 12, 2011, 11:48 PM

        The theory is that the "link juice" would flow like this:

        Private Blogs -> Article -> website

        It can be very effective to do this if the links are valuable - some people choose to do it for safety purposes, they believe that their website will not get put into Google's "sandbox" this way, in case too many links were made and various other reasons. For example, rather than create 1,000 links to the URL, make an article and then point 1,000 links to that article which would flow some of the power to the site.

        Not all of the power will be passed through to the main website, but depending on the linking methodologies some people have very good success doing this. There are really many variables here, but if done correctly I would say yes indirect links can be very beneficial.

        Those blogs do not sound very worthwhile - if the person is adding content and building links to the blogs, they would be much more beneficial. Google has updated their algorithm's and they are beginning to really weed out these low quality sites. At the end of the day, all you can come to is well educated speculation on the matter. If the website is very valuable it may be valuable to build the links indirectly while focusing on very high quality links only to the main website. If the site already has many links and is a decent age, the person may consider building a greater number of links to the actual URL.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • RyanKent
          RyanKent last edited by Jul 12, 2011, 11:28 PM Jul 12, 2011, 11:28 PM

          Where exactly is the value established in this system?

          Specifically, where is the links or mentions to your client? Do these articles contain text links in them?

          Are these articles extremely high quality? Or just "average" internet 500 word articles.

          Michael_Rock 1 Reply Last reply Jul 13, 2011, 12:18 AM Reply Quote 0
          • 1 / 1
          1 out of 4
          • First post
            1/4
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          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.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • LukeBTDT

            Disavowing Links

            I need some advice... I've noticed our link profile has increased with many comments links --- something I certainly have not pursued manually. I'm new to disavowing links. However, before I go ahead and disavow them, I'd like to ask how harmful these links are and would you recommend this is something I can do myself (relatively novice SEO) or if you'd recommend someone who could do this for a reasonable cost. In one instance, the link from this comment thread is with the anchor text, "porn"... Certainly not something we want to rank for, haha! I look forward to your advice

            Link Building | Feb 12, 2020, 8:43 PM | LukeBTDT
            0
          • JIMBO16

            Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.

            Hi,
            I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim

            Link Building | Jan 6, 2017, 7:06 AM | JIMBO16
            0
          • chaudhary0489

            Internal Linking - Post links vs Side Bar Links behaving differently

            Hi, I have a question regarding the internal linking behavior.  My website is www.hindimeaning.com  which is approx 3 years old. I have approx 450 posts. Now i have a widget on right sidebar "Popular posts". A widget below my posts "Related Posts". And a simple html CSS menu above the posts (I removed menu around 6 month before so currently it will not show.) I crawled my site with moz crawler (same are the result from google crawler as well) and it shows menus links as internal links. While sidebar widget "Popular posts" and "Related Posts" are not showing as internal links. If we talk theoretically what i learn till now is "every link on a page behaves as internal link". Then why the widget links are not showing as internal links. Thanks, Mahesh Kumar

            Link Building | Feb 12, 2015, 6:48 AM | chaudhary0489
            0
          • aronwp

            How can I find the best sites to guest post on while linking back to my article?

            Whats the best way to find sites to guest blog on. There are just so many and I don't want to make bad choices so my current rankings don't get hurt

            Link Building | Nov 23, 2013, 3:09 AM | aronwp
            0
          • careerealism

            How can I find and fix my broken links

            There are a number(110) links that SEOmoz has found to have 404 errors. I have been able to find and fix many of them but there are links that are coming from our home page that do not seem to exist. I cannot even find the links in our system in wordpress. Is there something obvious that I am missing? Is there a way to locate where the links are originating from?

            Link Building | Mar 23, 2013, 9:30 PM | careerealism
            0
          • littlesthobo

            Reciprocal links

            Are they worth anything, if they are from relevant sites?  I'm I better off avoiding linking back wherever possible?

            Link Building | Jul 26, 2016, 5:26 AM | littlesthobo
            0
          • CobraJones95

            Link Detox and Link Removal

            I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own.  But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png

            Link Building | Nov 19, 2018, 8:31 PM | CobraJones95
            0
          • tcolling

            Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?

            My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
            Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim

            Link Building | Jun 29, 2012, 6:22 PM | tcolling
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.