The rules of link building aren't always black and white, and getting it wrong can sometimes result in frustrating consequences. But where's the benefit in following rules that don't actually exist? In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand addresses eight of the big link building myths making their rounds across the web.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about some of the weird and crazy myths that have popped up around link building. We've actually been seeing them in the comments of some of our blog posts and Whiteboard Fridays and Q&A. So I figured, hey, let's try and set the record straight here.
1. Never get links from sites with a lower domain authority than your own
What? No, that is a terrible idea. Domain authority, just to be totally clear, it's a machine learning system that we built here at Moz. It takes and looks at all the metrics. It builds the best correlation it can against Google's rankings across a broad set of keywords, similar to the MozCast 10K. Then it's trying to represent, all other things being equal and just based on raw link authority, how well would this site perform against other sites in Google's rankings for a random keyword? That does not in any way suggest whether it is a quality website that gives good editorial links, that Google is likely to count, that are going to give you great ranking ability, that are going to send good traffic to you. None of those things are taken into account with domain authority.
So when you're doing link building, I think DA can be a decent sorting function, just like Spam Score can. But those two metrics don't mean that something is necessarily a terrible place or a great place to get a link from. Yes, it tends to be the case that links from 80- or 90-plus DA sites tend to be very good, because those sites tend to give a lot of authority. It tends to be the case that links from sub-10 or 20 tend to not add that much value and maybe fail to have a high Spam Score. You might want to look more closely at them before deciding whether you should get a link.
But new websites that have just popped up or sites that have very few links or local links, that is just fine. If they are high-quality sites that give out links editorially and they link to other good places, you shouldn't fret or worry that just because their DA is low, they're going to provide no value or low value or hurt you. None of those things are the case.
2. Never get links from any directories
I know where this one comes from. We have talked a bunch about how low-quality directories, SEO-focused directories, paid link directories tend to be very bad places to get links from. Google has penalized not just a lot of those directories, but many of the sites whose link profiles come heavily from those types of domains.
However, lots and lots of resource lists, link lists, and directories are also of great quality. For example, I searched for a list of Portland bars — Portland, Oregon, of course known for their amazing watering holes. I found PDX Monthly's list of Portland's best bars and taverns. What do you know? It's a directory. It's a total directory of bars and taverns in Portland. Would you not want to be on there if you were a bar in Portland? Of course, you would want to be on there. You definitely want those. There's no question. Give me that link, man. That is a great freaking link. I totally want it.
This is really about using your good judgment and about saying there's a difference between SEO and paid link directories and a directory that lists good, authentic sites because it's a resource. You should definitely get links from the latter, not so much from the former.
3. Don't get links too fast or you'll get penalized
Let's try and think about this. Like Google has some sort of penalty line where they look at, "Oh, well, look at that. We see in August, Rand got 17 links. He was under at 15 in July, but then he got 17 links in August. That is too fast. We're going to penalize him."
No, this is definitely not the case. I think what is the case, and Google has filed some patent applications around this in the past with spam, is that a pattern of low-quality links or spammy-looking links that are coming at a certain pace may trigger Google to take a more close look at a site's link profile or at their link practices and could trigger a penalty.
Yes. If you are doing sketchy, grey hat/black hat link building with your private networks, your link buys, and your swapping schemes, and all these kinds of things, yeah, it's probably the case that if you get them too fast, you'll trip over some sort of filter that Google has got. But if you're doing the kind of link building that we generally recommend here on Whiteboard Friday and at Moz more broadly, you don't have risk here. I would not stress about this at all. So long as your links are coming from good places, don't worry about the pace of them. There's no such thing as too fast.
4. Don't link out to other sites, or you'll leak link equity, or link juice, or PageRank
...or whatever it is. I really like this illustration of the guys who are like, "My link juice. No!" This is just crap.
All right, again, it's a myth rooted in some fact. Historically, a long time ago, PageRank used to flow in a certain way, and it was the case that if a page had lots of links pointing out from it, that if I had four links, that a quarter each of the PageRank that this page could pass would go to each of them. So if I added one more, oh, now that's one-fifth, then that becomes one-fifth, and that becomes one-fifth. This is old, old, old-school SEO. This is not the way things are anymore.
PageRank is not the only piece of ranking algorithmic goodness that Google is using in their systems. You should not be afraid of linking out. You should not be afraid of linking out without a "nofollow" link. You, in fact, should link out. Linking out is not only correlated with higher rankings. There have also been a bunch of studies and research suggesting that there's something causal going on, because when followed links were added to pages, those pages actually outranked their non-link-carrying brethren in a bunch of tests. I'll try and link to that test in the Whiteboard Friday. But regardless to say, don't stress about this.
5. Variations in anchor text should be kept to precise proportions
So this idea that essentially there's some magic formula for how many of your keyword anchor text, anchor phrases should be branded, partially branded, keyword match links that are carrying anchor text that's specifically for the keywords you're trying to rank for, and random assorted anchor texts and that you need some numbers like these, also a crazy idea.
Again, rooted in some fact, the fact being if you are doing sketchy forms of link building of any kind, it's probably the case that Google will take a look at the anchor text. If they see that lots of things are kind of keyword-matchy and very few things contain your brand, that might be a trigger for them to look more closely. Or it might be a trigger for them to say, "Hey, there's some kind of problem. We need to do a manual review on this site."
So yes, if you are in the grey/black hat world of link acquisition, sure, maybe you should pay some attention to how the anchor text looks. But again, if you're following the advice that you get here on Whiteboard Friday and at Moz, this is not a concern.
6. Never ask for a link directly or you risk penalties
This one I understand, because there have been a bunch of cases where folks or organizations have sent out emails, for example, to their customers saying, "Hey, if you link to us from your website, we'll give you a discount," or, "Hey, we'd like you to link to this resource, and in exchange this thing will happen," something or other. I get that those penalties and that press around those types of activities has made certain people sketched out. I also get that a lot of folks use it as kind of blackmail against someone. That sucks.
Google may take action against people who engage in manipulative link practices. But for example, let's say the press writes about you, but they don't link to you. Is asking for a link from that piece a bad practice? Absolutely not. Let's say there's a directory like the PDX Monthly, and they have a list of bars and you've just opened a new one. Is asking them for a link directly against the rules? No, certainly not. So there are a lot of good ways that you can directly ask for links and it is just fine. When it's appropriate and when you think there's a match, and when there's no sort of bribery or paid involvement, you're good. You're fine. Don't stress about it.
7. More than one link from the same website is useless
This one is rooted in the idea that, essentially, diversity of linking domains is an important metric. It tends to be the case that sites that have more unique domains linking to them tend to outrank their peers who have only a few sites linking to them, even if lots of pages on those individual sites are providing those links.
But again, I'm delighted with my animation here of the guys like, "No, don't link to me a second time. Oh, my god, Smashing Magazine." If Smashing Magazine is going to link to you from 10 pages or 50 pages or 100 pages, you should be thrilled about that. Moz has several links from Smashing Magazine, because folks have written nice articles there and pointed to our tools and resources. That is great. I love it, and I also want more of those.
You should definitely not be saying "no." You shouldn't be stopping your link efforts around a site, especially if it's providing great traffic and high-quality visits from those links pointing to you. It's not just the case that links are there for SEO. They're also there for the direct traffic that they pass, and so you should definitely be investing in those.
8. Links from non-relevant sites or sites or pages or content that's outside your niche won't help you rank better
This one, I think, is rooted in that idea that Google is essentially looking and saying like, "Hey, we want to see that there's relevance and a real reason for Site A to link to Site B." But if a link is editorial, if it's coming from a high-quality place, if there's a reason for it to exist beyond just, "Hey, this looks like some sort of sketchy SEO ploy to boost rankings," Googlebot is probably going to count that link and count it well.
I would not be worried about the fact that if I'm coffeekin.com and I'm selling coffee online or have a bunch of coffee resources and corvettecollectors.com wants to link to me or they happen to link to me, I'm not going to be scared about that. In fact, I would say that, the vast majority of the time, off-topic links from places that have nothing to do with your website are actually very, very helpful. They tend to be hard for your competitors to get. They're almost always editorially given, especially when they're earned links rather than sort of cajoled or bought links or manipulative links. So I like them a lot, and I would not urge you to avoid those.
So with that in mind, if you have other link ideas, link myths, or link facts that you think you've heard and you want to verify them, please, I invite you to leave them in the comments below. I'll jump in there, a bunch of our associates will jump in there, folks from the community will jump in, and we'll try and sort out what's myth versus reality in the link building world.
Take care. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday.
Video transcription by Speechpad.com
Feeling inspired by reality? Start building quality links with OSE.
Howdy gang!
Thanks for checking out WB Friday this week. My big questions for y'all:
I can say for me, the most pernicious in my early career was always the mistaken and frustrating belief that linking out would hurt your site's ranking ability. I had to deal with that for years, and it made earning links or asking for links all that much harder.
As for my belief about links that's not yet confirmed... I think Google's using some measure of click/engagement/dwell data, and links that tend to send lots of high engagement traffic (whatever the specific ways they're measuring - Chrome, Android, Wifi, buying clickstream data, etc) also have some positive impact on their weighting in the rankings, while links that send very few visits or visits that immediately leave tend not to produce much value. That said, I'd say this is still very nascent, because a lot of spammy and manipulative links that don't send much traffic do actually still seem to work (at least sometimes, in some sectors). My opinion is that won't last, but that new Penguin update should be out soon, and we'll learn a lot then.
hi Rand, I tend to think it's better to have a few sacrificial links as well as one to my site when others want to link to me as I was told a while ago this is more natural to google. What are your thoughts?
Rand, once again you've proven to be a thought leader in the SEO world. Great WB Friday! You have validated all the White-Hat SEO tactics that my team and I use to build links. Something that I hear from clients a lot is about Web 2.0's...they're scared of them. I've had clients tell me that they want to build comment backlinks...and to avoid placing comments on Web 2.0 sites. I actually started a web 2.0 site about all things IT a couple years ago, the domain authority is high, the content is all original, I've got a few backlinks, and rank for a few keywords, I think that a backlink from my web 2.0 site would be of some value to a website, but with all this negative talk about web 2.0's I'm not sure.
Thanks again,
Andrew Macia
This was one of the best Whiteboard Fridays on link building, very tactical, and a great resource to point to!
1. I think domain diversity vs multiple links from the same domain has been a particular thorn in my side. Rather than trying to continuously build a relationship with the same site and focusing on visits, in the past I've tended to get the link and move on to the next site. It's a waste to forget about a site that you now have a relationship with!
2. This has been talked about in the past in one form or the other, but it seems that widget/embedded links are still a very scalable and strong way to build links for the right brand. Whether it's Zapier, Houzz, or Active Campaign - their widgetized links seem do be doing wonders for them. It seems that in general we've been told this doesn't work, but it still seems to be a viable tactic.
Great vid/article, and thanks joe aswell Houzz... a nice easy directory listing for trades websites, added to the list:)
I keep hearing stupid conspiracy theories about having Google Analytics installed either helping or hurting your SEO.
My clients don't care if I say its good or bad, but no one likes when I say that it is completely irrelevant.
Hi Rand,
This is one of the best video on link building I have come across. Such a good resource!
It can be a challenge to interpret Google's conservative and sparse updates about the value of link building so it's great you are debunking silly myths.
I would say another big myth (related to your 2nd point) is to never pay for links, for example from a directory. I see this advice in generic articles, and it is a total myth. Like you said, you have to make a judgement call instead of blindly following generic advice.
Thanks for another great Whiteboard Friday.
I think so too. Editorial is above payed.
First off, great WBF. I'm loving this borderline passive aggressive, "let's talk about where you're just plain wrong" WBF series. One of my friends in the industry was already able to settle an argument with her boss using last week's video, and I'm sure she's not alone. :)
1. You can quantify a link's value
One of the hardest discussions for me to have in SEO, especially when it comes to link building that takes some real investment, is when a client or decision maker wants to put a dollar value on a link. Especially in local SEO, I get to work with a lot of small business owners who don't have much discretionary marketing budget, which means they always want to know how much that new link opportunity is "worth."
Questions like "should I join the chamber of commerce?" are easy enough, but when they're stuck between sponsoring a charity they like on a moral level (which has nearly zero SEO benefit) and one with a massive SEO benefit (that they're less passionate about), then we have to discuss how much each link would be worth.
Sometimes we get to talk about technical issues, like why one link is nofollowed or why the outbound page isn't being indexed. I can't blame my clients (plumbers, contractors, and other small business owners) for sometimes having a hard time with those concepts.
Other times we get to talk about marginal ROI, like "how many leads should we get from sponsoring that golf tournament?" Naturally, a lot of small business owners want to focus on marginal ROI and pretty much disregard customer lifetime value, so my options are to either:
Frankly, all of those options suck.
But the worst scenario is, every once in a while, I'll get to talk with someone who understands what "PR4 web 2.0 contextual manual dofollow" means, but doesn't understand why that's not a reasonable proxy for a link's dollar value. Then I have to try and explain why modern metrics, like page authority and domain authority, don't tell the whole story either. Nobody wants to hear "everything you know is wrong, but I don't have all the answers either."
P.S. Please, please, please make more videos like this - the kind we can forward on to support our positions. Better yet, if you ever made some minute long videos to explain high-level SEO concepts (like "What makes a good link?") that I could send on to my clients and prospective clients, that would be like Christmas morning.
2. For local SEO, local links should be prioritized over industry links
#8 on your list really hit home for me. I'm a firm believer that, after you've built a solid baseline of industry related links, your time should be spent trying to get more links to locally-relevant assets than to industry-related assets.
If you're a plumber, trying to build links to your "ultimate guide to tankless water heaters" just doesn't work. Almost every topic angle has been done to death, and unless you're prepared to put your entire year's budget into a single piece of skyscraper content and promote it with an unusually strong outreach team, you're gonna have a bad time.
On the other hand, you'll get a loss less friction if you're building links to the "9 best parks for birthday parties in Austin" or "What will Tracy look like in 2030?" You'll also get better social engagement, more engagement from potential (local) customers, and more topical relevancy for other cities in your service area.
Rand, oh man! this post you must have written by secretly reading my mind while I was watching your WB Friday video someday! Are you a sorcerer or something!
Low DA, one than one link from a single domain, links from non-relevant sites are some criteria that were in my head. Thanks for clearing those doubts.
Hey Rand thanks for the post.
For me the greatest myth is “Links on High DA sites are the only ones that matter”. I have researched on this and didn’t have any proper conclusion by SEO experts.
I feel CTR’s and user engagements have great ranking impact, although yet not been confirmed. But many researches like by Larry Kim has proved this that it plays an important role.
Hi rand,
I was penalized last month for some kw like seosite and seowebsites, etc in Persian Language.These words are سئو سایت and سئو in Persian. Because of one Big mistake.And that mistake was that we all focused at those kw by team in sidebar of our websites .Google Penalized us so hardly.We are about 30 persons with 30 Website.Google Penalized us one by one.Our SERPs changed from 20 to 264.
Side bar link transfering in a group is my bad experience in Linkbuilding
Could you please talk about Group penalizing in next whiteboard Fridays?
[link removed by editor]
"What are some of the rules you do generally believe to be true about links, even if others are skeptical of them or if they SEO world hasn't yet confirmed/proven them?"
I tried placing a link in WordPress and I swear, my site's rank dropped in just a day.
I changed the URL of one of the pages in my site and the page from another website linking to it dropped in ranking in the SERP.
Conspiracy or discovery?
for the second thing you made the old link not work anymore - dead broken links will drop rank ?
wrong spot :(
Rand,
This is one of my favourite topics which you have discussed in today’s whiteboard Friday.
I have some myths about link building which I have presented below.
1. No-follow links:
As a marketer, I must say that the SEOs are very crazy about the do-follow links but I’d say people should not care about no-follow links if the site is high authority. I loved the survey done by Johnf Doherty on his blog.
2. Forum Links:
The links from forum are always consider as a old school technique. But, few days ago, I earned a link from forum and have good conversion and quality traffic. You can see the screen shot here.
And last, I have long list but due to time constraints, I have to stop it here! ;)
Rand,
Great post, many valid points.
Most of these “myths” in SEO are due to the fact that this is a white hat perspective. I totally agree with you, since I am on the white hat spectrum. However, to a grey/black hat SEO, some of these are rooted in (a black hat's) truth.
It's funny how many black hat techniques get addressed by google and then the white hats become fearful of getting close to that black hat technique. The black hats are doing something at scale, which is where they get into trouble.
However, if you are a white hat and not doing it at scale, it is perfectly fine to:
Its a spectrum: In essence, the closer you are to the end of the white hat scale, the more you can call these "myths", myths. As you start sliding down to the grey/ black hat end, the more you can consider these myths as black hat common knowledge; well at least some of these, such as anchor text distribution.
Anchor text distribution: For example, if you are building links unnaturally, yeah you should focus on having a natural, good looking anchor text profile. This is even more the case on sites that have had penalties in the past. For example, you don't want all your anchor text be "blue widget" to avoid an over-optimization penalty.
But when getting most of your links naturally, naturally, it will be natural :) So no need to worry about over-optimization on your link profile.
Hey Rand your shirt is just too good and again this was really an helpful video for those who believe in these link building myths. The only thing I didn't get from this post is fifth point "Variations in anchor text should be kept to precise proportions". Can you please elaborate it in brief.
Thanks for another good session of whiteboard Friday.
Your views reiterate our longstanding Perspective about link building. We believe a low quality link building strategy is of no use, it's better to not have any links than having a low quality links. We also believe that high domain authority or page authority link of use only if they provide you target traffic, it is in your Niche and you are doing genuine link building instead of just spamming a high authority website.
Hi Moz/Rand,
Great post again! We are very busy with seo in a competitive market. Our platform matches companies to specific products. That's why we have many pages. So now we are trying to make the most out of our internal and external lnikbuilding. That's why I have a few questions. Maybe you can help?
1. The above means we also have productpages per product group. We would really like to know how we can optimize for internal lnikbuilding. At the moment we use breadcrumbs, but there's no internal linking between the product group (landing)pages. Do you recommend putting in manual links between product groups that are related or would you recommend a site wide area (on every productpage) with links to our most important product groups? And if it's the latter, would you recommend using the footer or is the body better?
2. We also have a few other websites, which we hardly ever use. How should we use them for the most optimal link structure/strategy? We could do footer links or create a blog page and write articles. But these websites hardly get any visitors.
Curious about you answers!
Greetings.
Marcel
would also love an answer on this
Hey Rand - great WBF today, really enjoyable with some super geeky laugh-out-loud moments.
On point #7 - how do you feel about sitewide links (i.e in headers footers) from reputable sources? In the past we've asked for these to nofollow in order for it not to appear as "spammy" links - is that necessary? (We're talking 100s of links from every single page of another site.)
Following
This should be very easy to deal with programmatically from googs end so they should clearly see this is more like how websites are built. I mean its not usually malicious and if it IS done to get a quick load of links then goog can just ignore all but one of the links and this would work I would think. If you remove the gain you remove the incentive and therefore the practise. BUT if you were to take a stats view of the anchor text and see its all the same for this particular anchor it would skew the data. I think goog are way more advanced than that so I would not worry myself. Agree in that I would like an experts opinion :)
A really interesting WBF, thanks!
One thing that seems to be bought up a lot in our team discussions is link velocity - anecdotally, we've seen that when there is a drop in amount of links we are getting, we also see drops in rankings (but this could have been purely coincidental!) Have you any thoughts whether or not link velocity is something we should be concerned about?
Hi Rand,
I'd like to challenge one of your points. You say that PageRank doesn't flow in a way where it is split evenly between all links on a page, so linking out more doesn't diminish value passed.
I'd agree it probably isn't numerically split between all links in such a rigid fashion anymore, but I'd always want to take a link from a page with 4-5 links rather than dozens. Wouldn't you?
I think in some form pagerank is still diluted by number of links on a page. Also, with regards to your speculation on clicked links providing more value...The fewer links there are on a page the more chance yours has of being clicked!
Would love to hear your thoughts.
Two things on that Pete:
1) I don't think classic "PageRank" is a big part of the ranking system anymore. Maybe it's 1 of 50 or 100 factors Google cares about in a link, but not the primary one. I think it's been years since PR alone was all that big in links ability to pass ranking impact.
2) I do agree with you that, if PR was the thing we really cared about, the link splitting thing would matter. However, I'm of the opinion that many pages that have hundreds of external links are vastly better pages to get links from than those with 2 or 3 external links. I wouldn't use raw link count of the page as much of a metric at all in deciding where to pursue links from.
Awesome to have your opinion on this as well, that had still been a lingering question of mine. Seems that the quality and authority of the page is more important than the number of links pointing out.
Hey Rand would love to hear your top 100 speculative Google factors in ranking. That would make for a great WBF! Cheers, Radi
I think what Rand is saying is PageRank is a somewhat antiquated concept. Google is light years ahead of relying solely on PageRank. It was their claim to fame back in the day, but not so much anymore.
Sure, PageRank is still likely used in their ranking analysis, and the concept of PageRank is still valid. However, PageRank is likely used to a much smaller extent than it used to be. Over the years, a multitude of new ranking factors has pushed PageRank to the side, and an evolved, more extensive ranking algorithm has emerged.
Also, PageRank is not something the public can even see any longer. The last update was in December 2013.
As a result, PageRank is an old school SEO concept; we shouldn't allow the idea of PageRank to prevent us from linking out to other valuable sites, nor should we get fixated on that metric (or any one metric).
Hello Rand,
There are so many link building strategies which SEO's are used for better ranking, but as per my opinion practically experience is more effective than theory. So many people are using anchor text such as "naked url with www and without www", "branded keywords", "keywords with brand name", and many more. Many of say, don't use the exact match keyword for link building - It harms: "I don't think so". Different Different experience, Different Different strategies. I believe only that anchors which is naturally built.
"Don't get links too fast or you'll get penalized" - the expressions you give on that, it makes me laugh.
Thanks for sharing.
Awesome pick Rand :)
Most of the myths are real time facing in normal SEO process. Below are few of them.
1) Title must contain exact keywords - I have run many experiment where i can see that it is all about context. Google has many other signals to rank your page. Having exact match keyword in title ranks you better is a myth.
2) Blog comments are suspicious - Blog comments are suspicious to build, i think doing it right way that matters. I found it works well with a proper approach.
There are many but above once are in my mind so just drop it here.
After reading an article earlier this year about how page titles are not critical ranking factors, I had the same thought as you. However, after thinking about it more, I think it depends.
Here's my opinion on keyword in titles
Jeffery,
Apparently, The Whiteboard Friday is all about link building myths. Do you think we're slightly on wrong track?
Thanks for your input though, Cheers! :~)
Hey, it happens! :) Some tangents are fun to talk about. I thought Hiren brought up some interested topics, related to SEO myths in general. No harm.
Jeffrey, Thanks for your input.
I know it is about link building but i have just drop the myth which was in mind with the context of SEO.
Hardik: BTW, i mention blog commenting there which is part of Link building i guess :)
Hello Hiren,
Yes of course, blog commenting is a part of link building and I ask my team to do some blog comments too together content marketing as it is a very good way to get unique C class IP's & drive traffic. Just need to make sure the comment sure be done in a natural way, on a relevant blog & and at a high authority website.
For example, we are discussing over link building on this blog in comment section, that's what blog commenting is guess.
And the same way, I got a few SEO clients too last year just by commenting on a blog on Moz. want to see ? Here is the screenshot .
My comment was helpful so I got some upvotes, a client visited my profile by then and emailed me directly.
So, I think forum comments, blog comments, directories (i-e - Dmoz.org) all works if done in a right way. Otherwise, all spam.
Thank you !
What would those factors be regarding ranking power for more competitive terms?
For competitive terms, I would still probably want to put the keyword in the (beginning of) title if possible, however I think focusing on CTR and other things (content, visuals, links, user engagement etc) would be more important, especially for the most competitive terms.
Thank you for sharing the information here. Its much informative and really i got some valid information. You had posted the amazing article.
Thanks for this useful piece of information once again.
Should I also ignore the myth that reciprocal linking (from somehow related pages) is hurting you more than helps you?
Hi Rand,
Thank you very much for this post. You have given a detailed explanation about the do's and don'ts for Link Building.
I have a doubt regarding the 3rd Myth that you have mentioned in your post. Don't get links too fast or else we will get penalized.
In that case, what should be the ideal number of backlinks that we must get for our client's website? Some of my clients ask for 20 backlinks every month.
Please share your thoughts regarding this.
Thanks and Regards,
Melissa Patterson
Hi Rand,
This was really a great article and I always love the way you represent your WBF videos. I have two question in my mind:
1. What about the links which we are getting from the comments of Articles. Do they help or not? How google treat these links as most of them where linked to sites home page with it's owner, CEO or manager's name as anchor text.
2. As Khurram was saying "how can a non relevant back link help us when every one is talking about to get links from only relevant websites.".
Would you please explain these a little? Thanks, and have a nice day. :)
Hi Rand,
I would also like to know more about the value of links in comments within relevant discussion threads. And does Google have a strategy to uncover more sophisticated comment spam, where the writer makes the effort to produce a logical and even insightful comment, but with the end goal of placing a link.
I was actually using a new link prospecting tool to find prospects for search phrases around the term "link building" and this blog post came up as a particularly juicy opportunity (came in second for opportunities in the tool's combined ranking factor mechanism :)
1: Article comment links: I think if you overdo article comments, it can hurt you. Also if you only seek out do-follow article comment links, think about who else is doing the same. It's not a good link if they are also linking out to other bad sites from comments.
The way to do article commenting is from a networking and value based perspective. Don't use keywords to link, just use your name and add value.
2. Topical Links: I think topical links are better than links from a website in a different industry. However, you should still embrace these links if you can get them. They will help you. However, in general links from sites in the same niche will probably help you more in terms of SEO and quality traffic.
Great topic for this WBF! As I understand it the bottom line is that if you are building good links, there should be no danger no matter how fast of from which sites it is happening. If your intentions are good, there should be no problem with Google!
Rand, I'm really torn here: I'm a web designer and it seems totally natural (to me) that each of my clients has a link in their footer to the effect of "Website by [us]". Do you think these hurt us, help us, or just get ignored from an SEO stand-point (skipping the good-for-referral-business point)? Would you mix up the anchor text or stay branded? Thank you and I LOVE WBF!
If I become a temporary preacher of the religion of shouldism I would say it should be good and ok to do this. Why do I think this ? The rooting of this issue was in the php or scripts even javascript can give a site thousands of links immediately with loops. This was a concern to google before they got good at seeing them for what they were. If they can now see them and differentiate honest footer style links such as designed by cambs.eu then they should be counted as a positive single link. But I am interested to hear from webmasters and others on this. I have not seen adverse reactions from goog.
I wounder what phrasing would than not trigger the footer link penalty.
Thank you so much for destroying the myth that outbound links are bad :D This is something I was trying to explain to my colleagues but they were pretty stubborn about it... Great video, such a lot of useful things!
Great post Rand and i've shared this with my team.
I've a question though, which has always bugged me.
Q. Never buy or offer contributions for links.
How do Google know what's been paid for and what's been earned naturally? I can understand the black hat link spam sites from 10 years ago, but links from bloggers that rate your products or services? How do Google know that this link was earned from some form or transaction?
Looking forward to next weeks!
Matthew
Hi Rand
Bundle of thanks for talking about these myths. I'm little confused about the number 8 how can a non relevant back link help us when every one is talking about to get links from only relevant websites. if you can explain it a little further for me that would be great.
Have a Great Day,
Really nice But One personal Thing From last 2 Friday you wearing same Shirt any reason behind this. Or you also going to same way as other CEO doing. Otherwise you share lovely thing which helpful for all Digital Marketer who want to convience cilent that Linkbuilding is not dead.
I often film multiple WB Fridays on the same day if I'm going to be traveling (as I was this week to Content Marketing World in Cleveland).
Figures you go to CMW the year after I leave Cleveland. Boo.
Really Thank you, for Replying to me related off topic comment.
Whoooa! Mindblown.
1 and 8 really shocked me.
However, a wise man I know often says that 'a link is a link', so getting them is a really great thing to do.
How about the one that pages are being ranked better if they have a lot of social signals? Larry Kim recently published a piece concerning this myth, if I may call it that way. Just consider the fact that the majority of people who hit the like button do not even bother to click on it or - God Forbid - read it.
Thank you for this great edition of WBF, Rand.
ATB,
PopArt Studio
It's certainly true that pages with high social shares correlate with higher rankings, but whether that's causal or not is a matter of debate. Personally, I don't think the share counts themselves mean anything, but I do think social is often indicative of high engagement and high user satisfaction/interest, which Google could measure other ways (e.g. through engagement metrics via Android/Chrome/Clickstream/Wifi/etc).
Thanks for a quick reply!
I see your point.
Higher engagement just says that the content (nice pictures etc.) are good, but there is not any other worth except in changing your content strategy.
ATB,
PopArt Studio
Absolutely perfect Rand.
There are so many myths about link building that get out of hand - then you get some dodgy company who doesn't have a clue, advise (incorrectly) an unsuspecting client who can only read what looks like what they have been told. Next thing, they are missing opportunities left, right and centre.
Top work :)
Thanks for bringing up this topic.
This is pretty much what I am preaching for past 4 years, but there is a lot of fear among clients. There is another myth that I would like to highlight, a lot of clients heavily focus on Home Page branded links, which I think is okay to certain extent, but linking to deeper pages, which have more information, works equally good, matter of fact this practice increases the probability of ranking strongly in search results for the reason that when you are linking to a resourceful blog post, a lot of other publications tend to notice that and also link out to same resourceful blog post from their pieces.
Yeah - I think getting only links to your homepage is A) an indication your link profile may be sketchy (real sites get links to all over) B) limits the ability of your internal pages to rank for other terms/phrases and C) means you're probably excluding a lot of high quality potential link opportunities.
Now I can give strong reply to a bunch of people who have given me long lectures on Anchor Text Variation in Link Building. Thanks a ton!
Great post, I'm agre with almost everything you said. Is true that google don't penalize the sites that do links so fast. The monster penalize the sites that do that with bad links.
Hello Rand!
Nice post. A lot of good points. There are a lot of myths around the following topics too
1. Links from article directories - This is similar to the link directories, but can be quite useful if used judiciously. Would be great if you can add on this too in a future post
2. Links from Directories: Some theories run that if google ads are running on Link directories then the Link directory is ok to link from. However, there a bunch of directories which are totally spamming but still run google ads. Google policy explicitly disallows ads on such spam sites containing adult content, but we still see them. Again, would be great if you can clarify this too.
Will be following for more posts for sure, Cheers !
Well youre right on the spot
Such a great webpage for accurate and latest update about SEO & Internet Marketing.
Thanks!
Always helpful!
Hi rand,
i was penalized last month for some kw like seosite and seowebsites, etc in Persian Language. Because of one mistake.And that mistake was that we all focused at those kw by team in sidebar of our website .Google Penalized us so hardly.We are about 30 persons with 30 Website.Google Penalized us one by one.Our SERPs changed from 20 to 264.
side bar link-transfering in a group is my bad experience in Linkbuilding
Could you please talk about Group penalizing in next whiteboard Fridays?
[links removed by editor]
Love this video - the most common one that we encounter are businesses wanting to automatically no follow all of the links on their website. As you said Rand, it is understandable that they would want to do this if based upon the archaic thinking that PR is the be all and end all, it just requires some gentle education as to how search has progressed and why associating yourself with awesome content/websites that is relevant to you can be beneficial.
I think what nofollow gives to goog is the indication that clearly this link is not paid for. That is a subtle indicator. To webmasters it allows us to control the flow of PR but not quite sure I would ever need to do that unless I wanted some resources to get more link juice than others on the page.
Thanks Rand,
I have a question.
Which is better ads: text ads or banner ads؟
Real Thanks For him,His Articles are All amazing.
Hi Asghar,
In my opinion, banner ads are better because they are more attractive to readers / viewers than text ones.
Awesome post Rand! As a newcomer to linkbuilding and SEO, I actually believed in these myths (gasp!). Thanks for clearing up my confusion. Now I know better :D
It is always comical to me the crazy SEO 'truths' that get thrown around out there. Mainly hear all the 'old-fashioned' thoughts on SEO coming from SEO client prospects.
The info you broke down is a great reminder for all of the misconceptions that exist. I think if more people just tested what works and what didn't instead of hanging on to old assumptions we'd all live in a better world! :p
Wow!! Learned a lot of things. Thanks!
What about that links from a web site that has another language than yours can harm you?
If its russian then yes its almost certainly spam :P
Thank god you had posted these and now I can send this WBF to people who believe in some of these things. Very Helpful when it comes from an authority like Moz.
Thanks Rand
Thanks for the post Rand! It is really helpful to have solid myth busting reference material when trying to apply some knowledge share to clients. Cheers.
Akll good Rand :-)
As much as Google might have liked or expected links to be black and white in nature, it's rarely the case in the real world. If the website for a shoe store in Lower Manhattan has a link from the website of a cobbler in the East Village, Google can see real world industry connection, as well as geo-specificity. And thus the link looks 'natural'. As in, 'Oh, their businesses are close to each other and in the same industry, so chances are that's a 'real' link'.
If the same shoe store has a link from a faceless company website in China (for example) that link can appear 'spammy'. Even though in reality, that might be the very wholesaler who sells the shoe store in Lower Manhattan most of their stock.
The question then becomes, is Google smart enough to sort the wheat from the chaff when indexing a website's link profile?
The answer of course is a resounding, 'Yes'. But, that being said, I still suspect that it's better to err on the side of caution and aim to acquire your natural links from industry specific sites wherever possible, and sites that are geographically in the same city, or the same country as you are.
Hey Rand!
Funnily enough this subject came up the day you posted the article.
1. The number one myth - you nailed it with your first observation - low PR or Domain Authority means trash link. Young or not very well optimised sites (hey they may not even use Google Analytics) can send great traffic - look at a marketing qualified conversion. Many HIPPOs believe it's bad. It's hard to convince them about making the relationship in the first case.
Sometimes its a leap of faith in good content that makes or breaks you or the campaign. I agree with you... the only thing is keep an eye on these stats and perhaps help other sites get better.
What's that - help others to help you? Some relationships like this are long tail game changers. I've helped out sites and got the rewards.
2. Truths? MY THEOREM: NORMAL READING HABITS
I think its a mixture of CTR, time equity related to the 'average page reading time' recorded in Analytics.
Lets say, I take time reading article one from a certain industry (or my usual time per site e.g. 40 seconds).
I rarely click anyway, but when I do within an article. If I don't abandon the page (20-30 seconds there) - it's very similar to my 'NORMAL READING HABITS' vs. other users experience of that page.
For link building - its finding good sites that have content that match your average reading time. If you think my theorem. Basically, your content consumer matches their content.
Hi Rand,
I want to ask that. Can i share my Blogs on many different free blogs website. Because i heard that if you use same content in many website then google penalise the website. ?
Hey Rand thanks for the post.
Thanks Rand,
As an agency, we have always been concerned about the amount of irrelevant links we are receiving from web cam directories to our live surf and beach cams (https://foxxr.com/beachcamlive/). We put them up as a community service and now most of our website traffic (75%) is from the cams. Should we be concerned?
No, I wouldn't worry about those at all.
Links are tough and I really needed that video, thanks!
I have been trying to figure out whether it´s a good idea to provide our customers with badges/partner -images and let them link to our in depth page for the corresponding subject.
This is something they proudly will display on the their homepage (completely optionally) but I fear google could interpret as black-hat...paranoia?
Hey Rand,
I really like your whiteboard about Link building - Things to avoid
Acknowledged!
Hope to have some more information on Latest LB activities
Cheers!
Hi Rand, what about press releases send out to this free press portals. Some people send a ton of press releases to that portals just to get links back.
Thx
Martin
Thx Rand! Love it! So in summary, basically "Use Common Sense" :-)
I can't resist, Rand: You like lists of bars in Portland? I wrote an article about Portland bars that allow children (for my family law clients). It was a hit with many Facebook shares, but no bars have yet rewarded my link juice with hop juice or aged grape juice. Lol.
Thanks Rand for some very thought provoking material.
Myth 3 was particularly illuminating. I've always wondered why you would be penalised for generating great content that is then actively shared across the web!
I think the general takeaway is that if you're looking to link to actual relevant sites then you're good to go whilst trying to create links for links sake means you'll need to watch your back!
Very Informative Posts Sir Rand, Thanks for clearing all the confusions about Links. Keep up the Good Work.
Love this post. I'm teaching a friend/colleague the basics of SEO at the moment (slowly but surely) and a lot of these issues were questions that he was starting to ask.
Great WBF! Thanx a lot!
I think it is variable, if you combine social actions with linkbuilding may be a good strategy.
Thanks alot. Very good article. Before of this i think, links from irrelevant pages or websites is not good for seo
Link velocity is a term old black-hatters used to use back when spamming your website with 1000's of SAPE and xRumer links was the thing to do.
I agree with you that there's no such thing as link velocity anymore, unless you're still participating in those dodgy practices.
Also chances are google is going to index those links on different days so 'link velocity' won't be an issue.
As always this one is also spell bounding it made me to read the full post.
People have wrong myth about link building that they you get links from all sorts of sources whether they are relevant or not though.
Thanks!
Hi Rand.
it was interesting. I wanna ask some question. For instance, I have a blog in my commercial web-site. When I make creates backlinks from web 2.0 to my commercial pages - site.com/good1, a lot of links were deleted. But when I added information to my blogs - site.com/news1, the moderation is more tolerant. What do you think? Can I promote my commercial pages to create more backlinks to my blog?
Hi all, I work for an SEO based marketing agency in Yorkshire, in the UK. We have recently taken on a new client and I've come across a problem I've not seen before, and was hoping for some advice on how to proceed.
The client used to have 2 websites, an e-commerce site and general information site. Last year they closed the e-commerce site down and amalgamated it with the general information site. Now, the previous SEO agency my client was with handled this, and in all honesty I've no idea what they've done. It looks like, rather than putting a single re-direct on the homepage URL, they've done it with every single link on the website. So now my client has 1900 inbound links, 1700 or so of these are from a 0 rated, now defunct site. As you can imagine my clients website is sinking rapidly. Would best practice be to disavow all these links and re-direct properly? Or is there a better solution. Cheers for your help. Ewan.
You should ask this here: The Moz Q&A Forum
Hi Rand,
I always trust your words and genuinly i learned a lot from Moz, specially WBF is extremely helpful since always. I read your article thrice just to realize the things which can harm your ranking just because of link building, but i didn't get any. Earlier i ready many articles which said a lot about negative impacts of link building, links from lower DA, links from Directories an all. I just want to ask one thing - when we talk about negative side of link building, what should be those things? Please clarify me.. thanks
Thank you so much for sharing ideas and making simple things simpler. As everywhere the clue is too be reasonable. Which is so easy to understand and so hard to do. But really, how do you deal with sites like Quora? You're also quite active there, which means that thinking it's harmful is another myth?
Greats points which I've now bookmarked. I'll be sure to show this post to clients that need re-educating... .Keep up the good work!
This is great Rand, I've had many issues with the lower DA debacle..
If a site is totally relevant to a piece of content, there is no issue with DA right?
Great WBF, Rand! The #8 is a favorite of mine. If it was true, then nobody would ever want a link from the NY Times :-). I can perhaps see, however, some potential for Google to look at the linking page to see if it appears to be discussing similar topics as the linked TO page. So in your Corvettes & coffee example, maybe on the Corvette collector site the link is in some mention of where the club is meeting on Saturday morning...so you'd expect to see "coffee" or "breakfast" or the street name or something like that on the Corvette site, so there'd be some overlap between the relatively infrequently used terms on both pages. If Google was doing something like this, it would help weed out a lot of blogroll links, directories with no business descriptions, etc.
I have a new myth for you (except, I don't think it's a myth): the average DA of sites linking to you (or maybe the average PA of the pages) might be a ranking factor. I've got a couple of clients (criminal defense attorneys) with pretty new sites, 1-man-band shops, and just the usual local business directory links (via MozLocal submission), but each has 1-2 links from stories in their city newspaper. And they're KILLING it...both are the 1st organic result for actual law firms (i.e. not Avvo or Findlaw or Yelp) for "criminal defense attorney". And in the 3-pack. One's in a city with a 1 million population, with 80 sites in the local results for that term, the other about 200,000 population and 40 criminal defense attorney sites.
And I'm pretty sure it's a DA factor and not a PA or PageRank factor, else my travel site would be slaughtered by the 400K links I have from Pinterest, and most local business sites would similarly suffer from the 10's of thousands of links that multiply like Tribbles from yellowpages.com.
Well, a high quality editorial link, in the same local market, will beat a bunch of social media or yellow page links any day. You have to think about all factors, not just PA/DA/PR. Don't get caught up on any metric. Google doesn't, so why would you!
Hi Rand,
1. What about this scenario when a very low authority website copies your entire article or a big part of it and at the end links to the source? And sometimes copying, they preserve your article in-content links as well. What's your advice in this case? (I always write them asking to remove the content along with the links.)
2. As for point 6, lots of brands contact me asking for links in the articles about them, and I hate this, as they actually never interact, sharing the article on their social channels or expressing any gratitude for reviewing their brand and collections. When it comes to scoring links, they think they have the right to contact you and ask for this. I believe if they think my link is of importance for them, they should also consider the content worthy for sharing it with their followers (at least you'll feel kind of appreciated).
Thanks,
Edmond
Another great WBF! Thank you!
Hi Rand, Great WBF - Thanks. I have recently seen an increase in companies establishing a scholarship and then going to university websites and asking for links to their scholarship page. Here is an example of a page from a university for outside scholarships: https://www.tuskegee.edu/academics/academic_service...
Is this considered a gray/black hat tactic since money is involved, even though these companies are not directly paying for links?
Hey Rand,
Love you and thanks for all the stuff I've learned from you and Moz over the last few years.
What's your opinion on directory submission services like Moz local and yext? You mention low quality directories are bad And I'm wondering if those services are still effective for SEO
Many thanks!
Many of these myths have proven without good research, just theory without proof, most of them comes from unsuccessful experience.
In February month, I register website of my client in 40+ local directories. Before start, website have medium position around 50 (Data from google search console), after 3 month, website have medium position 10, same data source. Traffic increase up to 300% and continues grow without any additional links.
I think Google may dish out penalties on a statistical scale. Some things may hurt one site, but not another. Also, sure they will probably help you in the short term, but there is a higher degree of risk when engaging in linking practices that Google views as spammy.
Hi Rand,
Completely agree with your stats some of the points mentioned above are really good to execute but some of them made me re think again, getting links from higher DA and relevant industry websites are good, but for industries like software or b2b for them doing SEO is very hard because of the competition.
And their are only a few niche website where we can submit our links in this case i need to do research for new websites.
But the point is most of the seo's get frustrated in searching for new websites or if they don't get websites relevant to their industry.
Can you provide me any solution for this.
Hi Rand
The truth is that I agree completely with all but one that now make me doubt (The 2) and worry
Am I saying that you have links to business directories, even if they have a higher DA to me is not good?
Good Weekend
Hi Luis - I'm saying "if a directory/resource list is of high quality and it points to good places, don't ignore it." Not all directories are bad. And whether they have DA higher or lower than you shouldn't figure into it (as I noted in #1).
Love it Rand! This was a great eyeopener. I think SEO is one of those areas where we can all have a lot of 'assumptions' that go on unquestioned until we really think about them (or you force us to think about them!).
My biggest frustration is just convincing people that links are one of the biggest ranking factors out there, alongside good content. Sometimes we come up against the belief of 'if we already have some then getting more just isn't really that important, is it?' Arrgh!
I also agree that more on-site factors like engagement, bounce rate and dwell time should affect rankings, and as you say Google seems to be testing this at the moment (love the tests you've run too). There still seems to be some way to go before only the most useful and valued content gets offered up to users.
Hmm nice list, though I'd like to think SEO's have learned those a long time ago, call me optimistic ;-)
I saw many folks saying that keep posting links on social media and you will get better search ranking. So the problem arising is that SEOs make Fake profiles there and just keep spamming these social sites.
But I think this is a Myth, Just Posting on Social media websites for getting more ranking in Search is not true. But Social media sites can be used properly to get social traffic and reaching to wider audience and maybe someone find the content interesting and links to the content..
Hi Rand,
Thanks. That cleared up a couple for me.
Two questions, please:
Cheers,
Eric
1. ammm...what...? I have no idea who has pioneered this story which developed to myth, but this is really crazy... :) let's just engage a bit of common sense - what if some big, high quality site changed its domain and now its DA 1? "Oh. it's DA is not bigger them mine, so I'm just gonna skip it" What...? NO! That's a terrible idea, like you said Rand!
2. I think this myth became popular because a lot of people still don't know, or maybe better to say still didn't learn how to make a difference between high-quality sites and low-quality sites. You would be surprised how many times I heard an answer to my question on why would you add your site there - 'because the site looked good'(as in visuals)...?! Just because site has a neat design it doesn't mean it's a good place for your link! Other things, other metrics are the ones that count!
3. & 4. just made me laugh! :) 'you'll leak your link juice if you link out to other sites...' LOL..good one! :)
5. I agree that when it comes to anchor txt, if a lot of things look kinda keyword-matchy and very few things contain your brand, that might be a trigger for Google, yes!
6. Ok, yes, understandable. But like you said, when it's appropriate and when you think there's a match, you can go ahead and ask! Feel free to ask!
7. Definitely do not say "no" to this!
8. Yes, this one definitely came after Google pointed out at the importance of relevant content linking - people went crazy, mostly those who were doing old school SEO for a long time or black hat SEO.
Thank so much Rand! I'm in the middle of a big link building initiative myself, and it's helpful to have some clarity around some vague subjects!
Thanks Rank,
very useful and to the point!
One question I have would be about links from sponsored pages and to what extent they are far less valuable than if the word sponsored were not mentioned... Is that also a mith?
Thanks
Thank you very much for these sconejos. I think you explained very well when a exlace rate and when not. The truth that I at first I worried about acquiring links; but now I worry more qualityand generate content and links will come.
Thanks for a great Whiteboard!
On a side note, the info about DA was interesting. Is there anywhere I can learn more about it?
Hey guys. Great WBF! Questions - 1) Will using country specific domains (exampleunitedkingdom.com) allow for better rankings vs a subdirectory (example.com/unitedkingdom)? And 2) If we link between these URL's (not thousands of links though) as outbound and inbound (backlinks) will we be penalised?
Every site even subdomains is treated as a unique website by google. So miami.landed.at is a different website than newyork.landed.at is a different website. So from an seo perspective its not good to dilute your site into more smaller sites - at least this is my opinion. Using /unitedkingdom seems better to me or use /en-uk/ and also make that a language based version.
It makes sense not stop doing things that would occur naturally: to be linked from directories, from websites with less authority, from different posts in the same web , etc... All this things happens naturally and I think Google don't penalize us for them.
What about do-follow outlinks? Do you think we have to be cautious about them?
Regards,
Czd
Rand was saying to allow natural linking out to a quality resource. At the end of the day this was the original nature of the web 'surfing' from link to link. Mat Cutts has also stated to be generous with your links out !
What Happened : Goog for a time I think started to count outbound links and the myth started and what we got was a very selfish overnight web community. Gaining ONE WAY links was the holy grail - previous we would exchange links and that seemed fair and natural. Forums in particular got selfish webmasters going hey come and give us your content for free - but hey bro dont be mean and drop any links now !
Lets make the web a sharing and caring place again. Giving is receiving :)
I wish it were ok to have those 'link' pages that was web1 it was a sensible place to have them all and under control. We didn't need then to have a lot of gibberish junk content and I wouldn't need to have a fight with matthew woodward on his crappy black hat schemes of content tiers that would eventually burn but save the websites at the top of the pyramid.
I always read your posts for Google update not myths.
My favourite Whiteboard Friday to date; thanks for another excellent video and explanation. Your video confirmed and validated all of the link-building practices that myself and my Digital PR team follow on behalf of our clients. We all enjoyed your detailed break down of each point, looking at how those myths came around. Thought the unicorn and the dragon were nice touches too!
Awesome Rand, you always tell great things. Here, i applied everything as you mentioned here but still unable to get Google sitelinks. So can you specify that how much time it will take to provide me google sitelinks. I know it depends on Google but can we assume time ratio for it.
Thanks Rand. Great video and info and I totally agree!
We recently explored this approach and it has definitely expanded our reach & engagement in a big way. At <my company> (link removed by Rand) we provide a number of website services and products and we originally focused our blog on web design related topics.
But I wanted to reach out to people who were not interested in the details of web design and development. I wanted to reach out to other types of businesses and their managers, employees, and freelancers. I also wanted to reach out to work from home parents, health coaches, bloggers, small business owners, etc... So we hired several bloggers and expanded our topics to blogging, business strategies, design, freelancing, health hacks, inspiration, marketing, seo, military life, and more.
As a result the engagement on Social Media has increased and our new leads are much more diverse. I realize that many of our visitors may not necessarily be looking for a new website when they visit one of our posts. But if we can get them back a few times, they are becoming more and more aware of our brand.
As a new business I took a few hits from registering on welcome all directories. I noticed the hit right away so was able to rectify it but it is amazing how the wrong links can hurt a business. I am still not confident whether or not to register with any directories at all. Any tips on safe ones would be great.
I think a rule of thumb for a directory is if the directory has a theme that is quite specific then it should be viewed as ok - and if that directory ranks in google then that's also a good sign. But if the directory is ANYTHING then that would be a purpose of generating any links and content and as such I would not go for that.
Great post as always. I was following a myth "Do not link to Non Relevant site". and it's really surprising to know about this.
A very enjoyable WBF, with some great points around the myths in link building, it is great to see so many debunked. Hopefully, I will no longer hear numerous discussions on these myths which seem to hold so many people back.
Greetings Rand!
As usual, you've delivered a entertaining, informative, and helpful WBF.
1. Myths 3 & 6 were the most helpful for me. I was under the assumption that asking for a link directly in any capacity was frowned upon by Google. So it is very reassuring to hear that their are white hat ways to go about it. Also, I have no idea where exactly I heard it from, but I have always tried to spread out my link building efforts as to not gain them "too fast". I'm very happy to have that cleared up as well.
2. I've always been a huge believer in the power of outbound linking. I believe that it is not only useful for users on any website to point them towards other helpful resources, but can reflect positively on the quality of your content because you took the time and effort to seek out good external sources to link to in the first place.
Thanks again, can't wait for next Friday!
Thanks Rand for posting about link building myths. I was believing these:
* Never get links from sites with a lower domain authority than your own
* Never get links from any directories
* Don't get links too fast or you'll get penalized
* Variations in anchor text should be kept to precise proportions
Nice video, but actually does it mean calculating DA by Moz is just pointless :)
Interesting method , it is appreciated.
Thank very much for this blog i like and very undrestaning of your tech thank you so much Mr. Rand...
Hi Rand Fishkin,
i always Follow your Articles and i like to say thanks for sharing your experience every time with us. i want to ask you about Directory Submission as i am working on travel related site i went through so many directories sites with DA less than 30 but they are totally Travel Related directories what you say is it Good to get Back Link from this type of sites.
Things gonna change after reading this
Thanks Rand I will certainly follow your tips and friday whiteboarding. I like that I can learn about this stuff.
My very fist website has been manually actioned but I have little idea why I have removed and resubmitted for years now and you would think I can eventually find what is wrong. The issue is the google manual team will never say. You just get boilerplate link to their guidelines and guess what I thought I was following them all. Originally I was getting links from places before that now you wouldn't want them and they were taken care of and there was nothing black hat per se about them. The manual ban is supposed to be 'spammy pages' I cant get an example of this. I tried to get answers on their product forum and generally just found criticism and a lack of real knowledge so I am asking here to you and your readers. Maybe something will be real obvious.
I used to have a much nicer design having a carousel that I removed as I feared it had pages of thin content that exists for each carousel slider. Other design niceties were also removed. So now its a naked and thinned down site to try to find what it is that is wrong. The domain is landed.at.
It's only ever been a hobbyist website on travel as I used to backpack a lot and wanted to share that -pre facebook and trip advisor was around in its infancy before google bought it.
My next step will be a total rebuild and re content if I cant find the issue.
Thanks everyone for your guidance.
Great post Rand as usual! You have pointed out some real myths that should be ignored. I also wrote down a post on the same topic just 6 days back. Hope it will enhasne the post further.
https://www.kvrwebtech.com/24-greatest-seo-myths-a...