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
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • 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
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • 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.

      • 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. Are Sidebar Backlinks worth for SEO?

    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.

    Are Sidebar Backlinks worth for SEO?

    Link Building
    4
    6
    2336
    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.
    • btqkelvin
      btqkelvin last edited by

      Hello!

      Let's use the following example:

      I have a blog (let's call it Blog A) and I find another blog in the same niche (this will be Blog B) that has higher DA and PA than mine. Will Google penalize me if the Blog B puts a link to my blog in their sidebar?

      Remember, the Blog A and Blog B are from the same niche.

      I ask this because Google says that links on sidebars appears in every page and in some pages the link may be useless. But if both blogs are from the same niche, there won't be pages where the links will be from different themes and with less relevance.

      So, is my thought correct: we can use sidebar links without caring about penalization ONLY if the blogs are from the same niche?

      Thanks in advance!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Corsiva
        Corsiva last edited by

        Hi Kelvin,

        Thank you for posting this question! I have recently look up into Moz Resources and these are some insights.
        1. Focus on "Natural" editorial links, those that are editorially given by other website owners. This would be much more efficient than having to contact someone and ask them to link to you. (Provide them a good reason for them to do so. Making them aware of that reason.) - Cons, it takes time but nevertheless is HIGHLY VALUED.

        2. Manual 'outreach' link building - most common which involves manually contacting website owners and bloggers to get linked.

        An important note from Moz Res: Google has been devaluing and even penalizing 'self-created, non-editorial links' which often fall in line with black-hat practices that aim to fool the search engines into thinking a piece of content is relevant and important when it isn't.

        Non-editorially given link, inherently carry less weight than other types of links. Focus on tactics that give you editorial links that add value to your website and business.

        **What you should do in my opinion:

        • Look out for blogs with great evergreen content (**with good rankings, good links, seeming decent traffic, etc) and link to a relevant page on your site.

        • Look out for more active sites(usually have better overall quality, search performance, and a more active audience) - with a more active audience, potentially increase your chance to attract more decent traffic to your page.

        Whether or not you succeed, it is crucial that you have a structure towards link building, which is very much dependent on a combination of your available assets and resources.

        Hope the above insights have answered to your question applying to all kind of links. Different kind of links brings different impact to your business (whether or not this bring awareness to the potential audience).

        You can visit my blog at https://www.corsivalab.com/blog and have reference to how I am actually backlinking the necessary stuff. Marketing is all about learning and sharing, the blog too has tips and ways you can better strategize and do links for marketing purposes.

        Let's learn more as a community!

        Cheers!

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • btqkelvin
          btqkelvin @Bryan_Loconto last edited by

          Thanks, Bryan!

          I am already looking for Guest Post opportunities to build more High Quality Backlinks. The articles recommendations are very good also! Thanks.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • Bryan_Loconto
            Bryan_Loconto @btqkelvin last edited by

            Hey there! I agree with Justen, sitewide links offer little to no value and could potentially do more harm than good. I would find somewhere else to place the link(s).

            Not sure if you've already read this but here is an article that can help you learn more about MozTrust & MozRank Score

            Although this article is from 2011, Dr. Pete does a great job explaining thin content.

            Hope these help!! Cheers 😃

            btqkelvin 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • btqkelvin
              btqkelvin @Justen_H last edited by

              Thanks for the answer, Justen! 😄

              I ask this because I've got a Spam Score 7/17. I will show the flags and what I am willing to do to remove them. We are an e-commerce and have a blog too.

              - **Low MozTrust or MozRank Score **(?????)

              - **Large Site with Few Links **(look for more partnerships to build a more consistently Linking Building strategy, one way I thought was Sidebar Backlinks that was a strategy used before)

              - **Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Subdomains **(maybe start using more nofollow in the links from our blog to the store?)

              - Ratio of Followed to Nofollowed Domains (since the beginning we only used Do Follow)

              **- Small Proportion of Branded Links **(here I think in using the brand's name in the anchor text when the bloggers post something about my store)

              - Thin Content (this doesn't makes sense to me)

              - Low Number of Pages Found (Google has almost every page indexed, so again, this doesn't makes sense to me)

              Are my actions correct? Is this the proper way to solve this Spam Score problem?

              Bryan_Loconto 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Justen_H
                Justen_H last edited by

                You might want to consider having the link placed elsewhere. Linking from Blog A and Blog B in the same niche seems only natural because it's highly relevant. Sitewide outlinks however are not great. If it was my site, I would rather have the owner of Blog B mention me in one of his blogs. A page called "link partners" or something like that is also not great.

                Overall, I would say more relevance = higher value of the link.

                btqkelvin 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  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

                • arashsahraii

                  my website seo

                  seo link building

                  my web site is : sahraii and my category products descriptions are very long but not getting any results from google
                  any suggest?

                  Link Building | | arashsahraii
                  0
                • viveklazy

                  All backlinks not showing on my website

                  backling issue backlinks backlinkaudit

                  hey folks, i am fairly new to SEO and i have noticed that i have backlinks that tools like ubersuggest or SEM rush are nothshowing my product is lazyapply.com. -> It's an automated job search application can anyone suggest me what should id do ? PS - for example i have backlink from crunchbase.com but my website is not showing me that

                  Link Building | | viveklazy
                  0
                • bloomnation

                  Mat Release SEO Impact

                  How do Mat Releases affect SEO? Does google recognize that your are syndicating duplicate content even if the content is being syndicated across top media outlets? Do these back links still carry any authority or can we even be penalized for the duplicate content? I came across mat releases here: http://matrelease.com/ An example of article syndication outlets: Guaranteed Placement on 800+ Media Sites. Generate guaranteed article placement on more than 800 respected online media outlets. Our digital distribution network includes: The LA Times; The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (JS Online); Las Vegas Review Journal; Hearst media sites for the San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle and Connecticut Post and others; local TV news affiliate sites from ABC, CBS, FOX and others; and hundreds more trusted sites.

                  Link Building | | bloomnation
                  0
                • faisalnlm

                  Is there a relation between number of backlink and SERP?

                  I want to calculate that how many backlinks i need, in order to get in higher SERPs? is there a way to calculate? One is obvious that check number of backlinks of websites that are ranking in top 5 positions. But i guess it is not true any more... So please help

                  Link Building | | faisalnlm
                  0
                • eddie_olivas

                  Should I Use a Backlink Plugin

                  One of my clients recently asked me if he should use a Wordpress plugin to create backlinks to his website. He mentioned WP-Syndicator as an example. I just redesigned his website and I'd like to ensure that he gets a bit more traffic than he was before. Should I suggest that he purchase/use a Wordpress backlink plugin? If so does anyone know which is the best one? Not sure if it's necessary, but here is the website I'm referring to http://intouchhome.com

                  Link Building | | eddie_olivas
                  0
                • nyanainc

                  Does the complete url count as backlink?

                  Hi there, does the http://mysite.com count as a backlink if posted on a site? I post a press releae and the site only allows me to put urls like this. they get something or must be in anchor the url? Thanks

                  Link Building | | nyanainc
                  0
                • shaz_lhr

                  Should we BackLink to Guest Post ?

                  Hi, I have been actively doing guest blogging for last few weeks . But the page authority , moz Rank and moz Trust of my guest posts appear 0 as those posts have their own pages on blogs  with snippets of posts on home page.  I wanted to ask if i should backlink to my guest posts to increase the authority, mR and mT of pages. Those posts are already appearing as backlinks in webmaster tools but if i backlink to my posts to increase mR and mT, then will it also increase the juice passed by backlinks in those posts to landing pages on my site ? Thanks,

                  Link Building | | shaz_lhr
                  0
                • JessicaCox

                  SEO Triage - What matters most?

                  If you only had 8 hours to work on an SEO project... How would you spend your time to get the fastest results? On-page optimization, or link-building? Context: On-Page Optimization: "A" grade (SEOMOZ On-Page Report Card) Keywords: "moderately competitive" (SEOMOZ Keyword Difficulty Tool) Domain Authority: 33 (SEOMOZ Competitive Link Analysis)

                  Link Building | | JessicaCox
                  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.