Navigating linking practices can be a treacherous process. Sometimes it feels like a penalty is lurking around every corner. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand talks about the ins and outs of linking internally and externally, identifying pitfalls and opportunities both.
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about linking externally and linking internally, and some of the risks and rewards that are involved.
So some of you probably have seen April 11th, Google made this big move. They sent out a bunch of penalties to, well, a noticeably large number of websites — it was covered on a bunch of the SEO forums and in the SEO news — basically saying, this is Google sending out these warnings saying, "You are linking to unnatural looking sites or in unnatural patterns, and we've noticed and we think that those links shouldn't be there. We may be penalizing your site, or we may not be passing PageRank or other types of link mechanisms, link value through your website anymore."
This isn't the first time Google has done this. They've done it many, many times over the last 10, 15 years. We've seen plenty of this. This was just another explosion in that.
It is also the case that we've seen some other cool things on the other side of the aisle, which is Google rewarding internal links in a way we had not seen previously. In fact, some cool experiments were done recently — hopefully they'll be made public soon, and then we can link over to them — around internal links and the power that internal links still have.
So we know that it still matters and it's still important to consider who we link to and what we link to from our sites and pages. So I thought maybe we'd talk through a few of those scenarios.
Let's say I've got my mobile phones compared website here. It is actually a very positive thing to link out to places like the official website of maybe Samsung's S7, or to link out to the Engadget review if I'm collecting a bunch of reviews and aggregating that data there to give the reference point. This is positive.
However, if I'm linking, let's say I'm getting some affiliate value or someone's paid me to link, or I'm linking to the site because it turns out that I own it or someone connected to me owns it and I'm getting some benefit from it, this "mobile info 4 UR life," maybe that could be a little suspicious.
It is the case, it is true and we've seen plenty of evidence to support this. I think ever since Marshall Simmonds from Define came in here many years ago and did his Whiteboard Friday about how The New York Times saw so much benefit from linking out, lots of folks have been investigating that and seen that benefit repeated over and over. So good external pointing links can give a boost to your site's relevance, to how search engines consider you, and even to your rankings. Linking out is a positive thing.
It's also the case that sites and pages that link out tend to earn more links back in, which seems obvious. They're more helpful and relevant to people, they can serve as better resources, and it's also the case that often that's a very direct correlation because linking out might drive traffic to other websites who then notice it and say, "Oh yeah, I'd like to check you out. I might link to you."
Engadget might see my link and say, "Oh, you guys do a great job of that comparison stuff. Maybe we'll link to one of those in a future blog post that we do." Or Samsung might see our comparison and say, "Hey, that's some pretty cool data you've got. Do you think we could partner with you on a future research project and maybe we'd link to you from that project?" Very cool things.
That said, manipulative linking is dangerous. This is sort of the inverse of what we classically think of as link penalties, where we've gotten links that have pushed us up in the rankings, and they are from bad places, linking out to bad places or to good places for bad reasons, bad reasons being manipulative reasons, someone's paid you, you're getting some benefit from it. Google recently, a few months ago, made this announcement around how if bloggers are receiving free items from companies, and then they're linking back to those products, that could be penalized or could be perceived as violating FTC rules if there's not an advertisement or advertorial sponsor message on there. So all kinds of things here.
All right. Let's move over to internal links. On internal links, we've got a little bit of the same story but with some caveats. So again, my mobile phones compared page is here.
I could be linking off to my own review. I could be linking off to my video category, maybe if I've got a video at the bottom of this page. I'm providing navigation. I'm helping visitors go where they want to go. This is a very positive thing. It cannot only help to get those pages indexed and crawled, it may also help them rank higher with a few caveats. So the right internal links, good ones, can have a large positive impact across a big website.
Internal links that tend to perform the best, the ones that help the most tend to be the ones that drive real traffic, and they sort of continue a visitor's journey. They help people find what they're looking for, and it's also the case that the ones that don't drive traffic, that aren't perceived as helpful seem to have less of an impact on the pages they link to.
Now, I will point this out. If you're worried about like, "Oh, should I add one more link on here to another category page, or should I reference another page from here," you generally don't need to worry about that. As long as you think that some small portion, even a small portion of your audience would be potentially interested in that and it makes sense from a usability perspective, you should go ahead and add the link. I don't tend to worry at all about like, "Well, the difference between 52 links on a page and 53 links is those 52 links will get a little bit less PageRank or a little bit less link energy, whatever it is, voting power than the 53rd link." I would not sweat that at all. Those days are long since gone.
But it is true that internal links tend to have the largest impact on already authoritative sites. If you've already got a lot of authority on your site, you can help many of the pages deep in your site structure to get crawled and indexed and to rank better by linking to them. We've seen this pretty substantially with some very big websites lately where they've gone through these redesigns and had remarkable results.
That said, manipulative links, for example, let's say I went through and I just wrote a little bot that crawled my entire website, found every instance of the word "LG," the manufacturer, the phone manufacturer and linked to my LG page. It gets a little manipulative. There's probably some places where it makes great sense, but every single time the word is mentioned — you've probably seen some websites like these, although fewer of them in the last three or four years than in the five years before that when this tactic was really prevalent and Google wasn't penalizing for it.
We've actually seen examples where people removed that, and they made it much more subtle. They only did it on the first instance of the word on a page, and they only did it on category-level pages or blog-level pages, not deeply index pages or paginated versions of things, that kind of stuff. In fact, they saw their rankings rise. I love this. They saw their rankings rise like almost immediately. There was a really a cool example a few years back. I think I might have done a Whiteboard Friday about that (correction: I didn't do a WB Friday on this topic after all - apologies!).
So with manipulative internal links, especially ones that are stuffed into footers or jammed into every word instance or those kinds of things, Google tends to perceive that as manipulative, which in fact it really is. You're not doing that for visitor's benefit. You're hoping that it helps you with your rankings, and in fact it's probably doing the opposite.
General rule of thumb: If you can't find any way to justify how something that you're doing for SEO also benefits a visitor, maybe you should reconsider it, with a few exceptions. XML sitemaps might be a reasonable one.
It's the case that oftentimes the ones that are in footers or in structured template areas of a website that tend not to get clicked by people, sometimes a sidebar can do it, sometimes top nav can do it, sometimes even in-content stuff that's wrapped around can do it, that tends to be the most dangerous places, but it's not the only kind that gets penalized. In fact, it's not even always bad.
We've seen instances again on very big websites where they've done very significant footers and linked off to all their properties that the site or the company owns and controls. We've seen it where they use it to get greater indexation, and in fact it's positive because the footer is well done, because it tends to link to good places, because it's clearly a high-quality one, and it's not anchor text stuff. Anchor text is again a big risk here with internal linking.
So this is a very fine line, and it's a fine meandering line. I can't give you a clear-cut "never do this, always do this." It's a considered process. That's true for internal linking, and it's true, maybe a little less true for external linking.
If you've got great advice that you'd like to share, or some experiences, or you want us to take a look at some of your internal or external linking practices, feel free to leave a comment. We'll check them out, and I'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
I always say SEO is like a rainbow. You think you come to an end but it always go further and further.
Nothing to add about linking to external sources: you said it all :-).
Regarding internal linking, that is a field that, albeit being a classic topic since the beginning of SEO - has been under considered lately.
Using Screaming Frog, downloading the InLinks report and use it with Fusion Tables in order to visualize what URLs represent the most relevant nodes, hence using that nodes as places (if justified) for placing those internal links that can help a page you want to be more often crawled and to earn more PA via link equity redistribution.
Nice tip! Sort of related - when creating a new page and targeting new keywords, googling (keyword Site:yoursite.com) can help you find relevant pages to build some internal links to your new page.
I have a question: how can Google determine if a blogger got a free product in exchange for a link? What if the blogger went and purchased the product themselves, and then wrote something about it and linked out to a relevant web page - why should that be punished?
That wouldn't be punished, but if Google finds that a number of bloggers/sites all received a product for free and then wrote about/linked to it, without the nofollow, they've said they may take action. The FTC has said that it's a violation of their rules (which may have legal consequences) to take the product and not specify you've done so. Thus, if you're staying legal and in line with the FTC, but not using nofollow, Google might hit you.
Thanks for the reply, appreciate it :) It seems to me that it would be hard to determine without a manual review who has gotten something for free and who hasn't. I would be curious to see who got the penalties and what their blogs look like.
"If you see this message on the Manual Actions page, it means that Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links. Buying links or participating in link schemes in order to manipulate PageRank is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
As a result, Google has applied a manual spam action to the affected portions of your site. Actions that affect your whole site are listed under Site-wide matches. Actions that affect only part of your site and/or some incoming links to your site are listed under Partial matches."
In doubt for the accused.
I could imagine that you are likely to write in an unnatural way about a product and a company wicht payd or send you the product as a gift - for a Link. I think I should ask my bro - psychologist.
But a company which is paying for product-reviews with links - money or gifts - wont do it one time - they do it more often. They don't ask one guy they ask a lot more people.
There is a difference between natural and unnatural and it is visible, if you think more about it. The blogger wicht really bought the product and than reviewes it with a link to a relevant page he wouldn't be punished hard for that.
depends from anchor.but this seems like agreement. something for something so PAID in this or other way.
If you're wondering algorithmically how Google would detect this, there are most likely some automated signals. For instance, if Father's Day is coming around and suddenly hundreds of bloggers are talking about this one product for fathers, and it seems like a free sample, that could be a signal. Especially if that product is not receiving the same amount of sentiment from trusted news or authoritative sites, etc. Generally new product launches or seasonal products that get natural or pr-driven press get picked up by both the mainline media, niche authoritative sites, and amateur bloggers in some consistent fashion. If, however, a bunch of newish or low authority blogs are suddenly all at once talking about this new e-cigar that would be perfect for fathers, that can be a red flag.
Hi Rand, many thanks for sharing.
I did quite a few tests with internal linking, some of them on the more "greyish side":) -that included adding nofollow to the logo to rank better for searchable terms with the homepage for example (just to test:) or playing with tailored to a blog post page sidebar widgets so I do not create sidewide links etc.
What I have learnt is that if you have a user-friendly internal linking structure (that truly adds value to the user- no spammy anchor text; but using terms in anchor text that explain what the linking-to page is about AND using terms that makes sense on the page of its placement) you can rank for searchable keywords WITHOUT having a single inbound link to a website. If you back it up with great social engagement, it is more than enough to rank for searchable, less competitive terms. and that's relevant to both internal and external links.
In other words, as "one famous person" said:) - "the objective is not to “make your links appear natural”, the objective is that your links are natural"and that's relevant to both internal and external links.
Very well said, and very cool that you experimented with this. Thanks for sharing Mags!
I was working on a project where the homepage was the page ranking for their main services, instead of the landing page for that services (I see this all the time in the SERPS). I needed to re-target the landing page so that it would be seen as the authoritative page on the website for the service instead of the homepage. This was needing to be done to get on the same level as the competitors as it was their service page which was ranking and not their homepage for the particular term.
I used internal linking, in blog posts and such with different descriptive terms which speak to the audience as anchor text pointing to the landing page. Optimised a few offsite links (changing links from pointing to the homepage instead of the service landing page). By doing this, very quickly (not even a month) the service page became the authoritative page on the website for the service, and in turn the page was able to better compete in the SERPS... In time that page gained in ranking where the homepage could not, and we saw very positive results not only in rank, but impressions and clicks.
I am in the same boat with Rand, internal links can be very powerful!
I think I forgot internals somewhere in 2009 and just did what I allways did. Highly under considered - last years they came back because I build a page, got to internal links and thought Linkjuice - than I though: Hey its 2015 and I should think more about the user. Googled a lot and found pages targeted that topic.
I read a lot about it in really good SEO Blogs and Forums and thought: hey that couldn't be true. They still write something like (you mentioned it) pagerank here, link juice there, don't link x-times on one page to on site... Bull... This was my start - There was a pretty good reason to link several times to the same page - so I did and it helped a lot. A lot of people never tested it really, heard (and hopefully thinked) about it - believed.
I am testing a lot with internal links, guess I do it since a few month (5-8).
I had an older Page with a lot internal links in footer - you know, the "SEO Footer" like it was done in 2008. I killed a lot of them, took some main categories in it, depending on pages I added a sidebar with relevant internals later - everything worked better. Amazing how these Old-SEO-Stuff could kill your rankings. Really rankings.
I am highly interested in the results.
Yeah - we've seen the same. Internal links still matter and can make a big difference for SEO. The more authority the site already has, and the worse the existing internal link structure, the more it seems to help.
But yes, definitely also dangerous to do the old-school style SEO footers stuffed with anchor text links.
Thanks for sharing your experience Andreas!
Yeah, footer links like that are old school because it used to work, but now I think footer links don't hold as much weight anymore. Not only that, they are much riskier, as they can trigger spam signals. As Rand says, you shouldn't keyword stuff the internal link's anchor text in the footer. Also, if a web developer, for instance, I think too many outbound follow links on your client's sites (back to your site) could be dangerous as well. Some will likely help, but as with anything it's all about balance.
Definitely agree that linking out to other sites, when appropriate, can be helpful to SEO efforts. One thing that I like to do, is after a few months of having a site live, analyze what pages are currently ranking well. Then, go see if there are any internal linking opportunities I might have missed. Obviously, not spamming this but making sure that if anyone was looking for more information, they could find it easier.
I'm super interested to hear more about that data you mentioned!
This line is the one that resonated with me the most: "If you can't find any way to justify how something that you're doing for SEO also benefits a visitor, maybe you should reconsider it."
Great vid, Rand. Thanks for sharing.
I got just one simple rule for our websites and outgoing links: nofollow = no problem.
Maybe you should place an internal link in the transcript where it says "I think I might have done a Whiteboard Friday about that." It would probably be the most appropriate use of an internal link (despite the lack of anchor text) for UX and relevance.
That's a pretty good idea :-) Sadly, it turns out I didn't do a WB Friday on that topic; must have misremembered. My apologies!
Hey Rand, it would be great if you can share, I did notice Baklino jump from #5 to #2 with minor internal modification with the co-citation it received just 20 days prior.
Breadcrumbs can be a fine way to go with internal links, especially if your visitors find them useful.
Great post Rand. Just last night I was hosting a meet up with local bloggers to talk about SEO and this was a highly debated topic throughout.... so perfect timing!
The main topic of debate was the rather old school tactic of blog commenting. As bloggers they are more interesting in just raising awareness of their blog as opposed to driving SEO benefit, yet by leaving genuine comments on other relevant content on blogs they are potentially digging themselves a dangerous hole.
The blogging network as a whole uses comments to promote their own content to hopefully drive some referral traffic and gain new readers, but do you thing the potential benefits of this are outweighed by the risks of dropping links in blog comments back to their own sites and the penalties this may incrue?
Most (or most 'good') sites that have comments sections automatically have "nofollow" added to any links posted. You can see an example in the Moz Blog itself, like the comment posted by Rand here (and indeed the link I posted to it... will be nofollowed!).
Well I have to admit that I may have had some linking tactics that were not so natural in the past, but that is why being apart of this community ROCKS!!! I have always approached internal linking to relevant pages that pertain to the subject/product but sometimes the same links are on every page, and from this WBF could be perceived as manipulative. The footer was another fantastic point as years back a footer with a crazy amount of links to various parts of the site would work but now is penalized, so instead I try to approach the footer as an area that can be a final tool for the user putting main links and not every single page.
I was wondering on the benefits of linking to major brands a company may use and the benefits which was provided in the phone research breakdown at the beginning.
Always a great information explosion with the MOZ WBF .
Hey there! Could you expand on the pitfalls of anchor text with internal linking?
Really great whiteboard Friday--I have to say that I look forward to watching these videos every week!
Sure - basically, if you have internal links that are heavily anchor-text focused, there's lots of them, they're often sitewide, and they live in nav elements or in the footer, and add little to no value for users (they're just trying to pump up your rankings in Google), then Google might take action against your site. We've seen plenty of examples of this, and when the manipulative internal link blocks are removed, rankings suddenly go back up. It seems Google has a pretty smart and pretty immediate filter for this type of thing.
Sorry for the late reply--that is very helpful Rand! Thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question!
I have a question for you guys regarding nofollowing external links.
I agree that you should follow a handful of links to relevant, preferably mainstream sites, as it is helpful to users & signals relevancy to google.
Should you nofollow links when you have a lot on one page?
What would you recommend in a scenario where you have a page that links to a TON of other sources (curation)?
For example - I recently wrote a blog post on my site about "65 free keyword research tools." Since I was linking out to 65 different sites, I nofollowed many links. I only followed sites that I fully trust (like to the Moz SEO toolbar page). I didn't want to possibly trigger any spam signals by following a ton of links on one page, leaking juice, or possibly linking to a 'bad neighborhood' as some of the tools are new/ not very well established.
Would you recommend no-following in this manner? Or would you have just followed all sites?
There are plenty of resource and directory sites out there that are not being penalized and some of them have hundreds of links on a page. Most of those directories do "follow" their links, which I can see by checking out my AHREFs account. dexknows.com is one of those we sometimes see hundreds of follow links to a website, and it's a directory with widespread use.
Use the "nofollow" for its intended purpose. It's like a soft "noindex". You're telling Google not to go there and check it out (which they've said they may ignore). In your case you've been creating a resource directory for people that could be very useful to the end user. I would think you'd want Google to see what you're linking to - and I don't think you'll be penalized for it either.
Always pleasure to read whiteboard Friday. My Question is "as an webdesign and development agency many of us giving site-wide linking in footer (i.e.Web design and developed by example.com) and for growing business it is somewhat needed. So how this will impact? should we use nofollow? or we should not use site-wide linking?
and how the anchor text will impact? should we use keywords for anchor links? or just example.com?
It's a dangerous thing that Google's penalized in the past. If you're going to link from the footers of your client sites, Google's suggested that A) you should nofollow and B) you shouldn't use manipulative anchor text, just the name of the business. My suggestion is that rather than sitewide footers, have a credits/recommendations page on the site, and ask your client if they'd feel comfortable endorsing your work there. If they do, you can kill the nofollow and have the single link (which will still provide value and won't have the risk).
I don’t know why Google is not doing the same thing for itself and providing many links in head and Footer. I think the days are near when Google will penalize the sites that uses Dofollow.
Linking to home page (external linking) is good/not?
What will be a good link density in a webpage and making keyword rich linking will harm in any way or not?
Sorry I am late for this post but thanks it’s another wonderful WBF.
Very Good Improvement done by Google. I salute Google to handle such situations. Many people try to manipulate search ranking through external and internal linking. One more great step by Google to make their search engine spam free.
Google taking these precautionary measures and penalizing websites just to keep the web spam free. I agree with what Rand has explained and after reading this I need to sit back and re-think about the internal links I have done on my blog.
I doubt they ever would if the links are providing true navigation value.
Great strategies. I am new to the scene. I will be implementing these tomorrow. Thanks!
Hi Rand, great white board Friday as always!
I work for a recruitment specialist and we develop careers site for some of our clients. I currently link from some anchor text in the footer of the sites as they are related to our site via the industry. Following your comments, do you think that we should reconsider this?
It really depends. If you're doing it in a way that provides value for site users who might actually click on it and find the link relationship useful, you're probably OK. If you're doing it mostly for SEO purposes and have made the anchor text something you want to rank for but that would sound unnatural or illogical to a user, you're probably in trouble.
Hey Rand, how will make sure that Google will not treat it as manipulative link cos I do for right/wrong its just a anchor link that may or may not help visitors.
What about nofollowed affiliate links? E.g. if a review site posting a review which contains relative outbound links along with affiliate links (let's say to Amazon or another store) but affiliate links are all nofollow. May Google consider these links spammy?
It is always recommended to nofollow all affiliate links. However, I believe if you have way too many affiliate links (even nofollow), it can hurt your rankings.
I haven't seen the "way too many nofollowed affiliate links" issue, but am inclined to agree with Jeffrey. If you have a few, nofollow is totally fine.
Oh this was really cool! I was really wondering how this works... I've seen examples where internal linking helped and examples where they really made rankings drop... Now it's kind of more clear to me how we should procade with our strategy! Thanks!
Great advices. I still have a little doubt ... Is it dangerous to make a web farm links to other websites, even with high PA? Can Google penalize this?
Yeah, especially if it's just to boost link equity/rankings and not for any user purpose, it's trouble.
Oh, and one more question, Rand.
What do you think about "Resources" page on site? Usually it contains a lot of (usually relevant) outbound links, but these links rarely drive traffic from your site outside.
We always learn new things with your post, SEO is something alive so we can never say ... I'm done!
Isn't it obvious that the PageRank sculpting is deemed as a bad practice to allow the natural flow of link juice across all those pages linked internally? Also, how exactly Google knows whether a link is in exchange of some free gift, money, personal contacts etc? The jobs of SEOs are becoming difficult only because of such guidelines which don't do enough justice to what's natural and what's not in most cases.
In case of penalty, should we have to make a reconsideration request saying we haven't received any free items, payment from the owners of the linking to sites and the links are natural even if Google may thinks otherwise? That doesn't make any sense.
I also wonder how Google differentiate between the so called 'free gift' links and links as 'Video transcription by Speechpad.com' which uses the exact anchor and tend to be a 'do-follow' at the bottom of this article. I mean a link in exchange of a (paid) service?
Great post again. The internal linking and external linking information is on point. It seems footer links is quite a gray issue though. As long as you make it useful for the user you are pretty safe. How does Google assess this though? If the links are never clicked does Google assume they are not usefull and you run the risk of footer links harming rankings?
nice,thank you. Seo is an ocean, We cant learn so easily. nice information about the linking sites.
I used a money keyword in anchor text, in breadcrumbs and breadcrumbs is on all pages, linking to my homepage that is ranking for that keyword.
I didnt have any problem by now, but I would like to risk it to much.
What about Call To Action links that go to the same page (like a Quote Request page as a sample destination) and are placed in duplicity throughout many pages on a site? We do many service industry web builds - landscapers, construction, etc - where there is a page dedicated to each service they offer, however there is a bit of a cookie cutter link heading back to a CTA destination.
In some cases, the link is in a sidebar widget, some cases a full width banner above the footer, and in other cases, included in the in-line body text.
Should these links, using your notes in the WBF, all be rel="nofollow"?
--- Also - thank you to you Sir and the Moz team for spending the time producing these WBF's. Not only is the content useful and thorough, but also short and well produced.
That is what I really love about SEO and Google that it never says anything clear about any activity. There are never clear Dos and Don't for any activity from Google, there is always an excitement after everything you do. It is always confusing. Everything will help your website if you are doing it in a right manner or you will be in the list of spam sites suddenly even you are doing right things in a wrong way. There are always terms and conditions for each task you perform.
Great post Rand, like many others I am also very much concerned about product or service review or giveaway. However, reading all above comments and your answers, all I get is better to have no links or have nofollow links from this kind of activities.
Nice article! i always follow your article.
We have two website with similar name in different language or we can says that Country Specific Domains. Now days we discuses to merge into one website. both language in one website. we want to know it affect SEO Ranking or SEO strategy or not.if we merge into one then it bad or good for SEO?
Thank you Mr. Fishkin! This episode came to me right at the time I needed it. I am redesigning my site, and I have a question for you based upon this episode.
I'm a professional photographer with 30 years of experience. Over this time I have developed two strong suits, Wedding Photography and Business Headshots, both of which are talked about on one site solarisstudios.com. The two disciplines are opposite ends of the spectrum, and because of this I want to separate them into two different websites. One dedicated to business headshots and executive portraiture, and the other dedicated to my wedding photography.
My thought was to create an initial site called arichoek.com, possibly focusing on the search term Houston Photographer. On this site would be an "about me" and links pointing to my other two sites, houstonheadshots.com and solarisstudios.com, the later of which is much older and contained both disciplines.
What are your thoughts on this? Do you think I will be penalized for this structure? Do you have any alternate suggestions?
I love White Board Friday! Thank you so very much.
Can I use no follow like for Manipulating liking?
Links from Quora are nofollow so there is no direct seo impact, but You can benefit indirectly if Quora users find Your answers usefull and visit Your website for more info about product/services You are promoting/selling.
Thank you for your reply ..I really needed reply ASAP .
I am linking my website on other websites(some of them same niche) do you think i will be punished for this ?
www.penpaland.com is the my website how can i see my pagerank ?
It would be interesting to understand how much incremental (or decremental) value occurs when sites add new site sections that are similar to prior site sections in order to target a slightly different theme/keyword area and then feel it necessary to create links between all the other legacy categories to that page. In some cases, this could be really valuable, but in others not.
For instance: If I had a page for every city in North Dakota and with each page listing out every hotel, motel and B&B and then created a new set of pages later for every hotel, motel and B&B with a pool and then created links between the two cities pages, I would think that there is a multiplier decrement going on here. But if I broke out hotel/motels from B&Bs which are fundamentally different, it might make sense.
Any rule of thumb on this?
It would make sense in my book. You would optimise each for long tail and local search.
Essentially, you would be doing what booking.com and tripadvisor did, and they did a solid job.
Thanks for this Whiteboard Friday. Can you tell me if Mozs' "large number of external links" spam flag only counts dofollow links?
I believe it should, but will double-check with the team.
Only If our clients could understand this much complicity in this task, they could have believed in our work more what we are facing in day to day business hours to take them on the top of the search results.
Thank you Rand for a good read today.
Hi Rand, will you do a Whiteboard Friday about the cool example from a few years ago? I'd love to see it.
@Rand - any thoughts on if linking out would be assessed at the site level or page level?
For example, product pages on an ecommerce site would be a bad place to link to other sources, even the manufacture since you'd lose conversions so close to the sale. But a blog or other mid-funnel areas of the site would be a great place to do so.
Likewise, sites like NerdWallet or other content-driven affiliate sites do write good content, but have almost all links in the review pages as affiliate links, while their more general blog posts might link to authoritative sites in a non-affiliate way.
Could be an important distinction.
Could you elaborate on this statement - "because it's clearly a high-quality one, and it's not anchor text stuff. Anchor text is again a big risk here with internal linking.". Why is anchor text a big risk with internal linking? Like if I use a fair anchor text to internal link to a correct page with regards to that anchor text?
And also ranking my hoodie printing page in the top few search results on page 1 of google for the search term "hoodie printing singapore"(This is good and what I want). But unfortunately my tshirt printing page is ranking badly or not even ranking for the search term "cheap tshirt printing singapore" when my hoodie printing page is wrongly ranking for it. What could i do about this?
If the anchor text is descriptive and sounds/seems natural to visitors, you're probably safe. If, however, that anchor text appears manipulative -- designed more to enable search rankings than to help visitors figure out your content, you're probably in trouble. I realize that's subjective, but it's the reality and Google's good at detecting it.
Regarding outbound links in a blog post... Say my post focus keyword is "Atlantic Ocean" and I link the anchor text "Atlantic Ocean" in my article to a wikipedia page about the Atlantic Ocean, is this a bad thing?
I know it will be handy for my readers, but, Yoast SEO says linking to a page that's ranking for the same keyword can affect my ability to rank for the same keyword.
The link itself isn't a bad thing, but linking out with the anchor text of the keyword you're trying to rank for does send some authority and inherently creates harder competition for you on that keyword. I'd probably still link, but change the anchor text up.
The video was informative but also pretty broad. Don't get me wrong, I understand the reasoning, but I've been finding it difficult to locate answers to basic internal link questions. I've never paid much attention to internal links so I'm hoping someone has some insight for me.
1) Footer Links: I've never used the footer to keyword stuff (as some mentioned in previous comments), but I can see how they could generate a penalty. Afterall, it is the same links on every page. I guess I've always looked at them as helpful for quick navigation. So what is the best method for handling footer links? Get rid of them altogether? Add a 'nofollow' since they are redundant to links in the main navigation?
2) Title Attribute: Should internal links have a link title? I've read numerous guides and blogs, some say 'yes' and others 'no', it's hard to get straightforward response.
3) Sitemap Links: Should HTML sitemap links have 'nofollow'? Since the XML sitemap is for the robots, it makes me wonder how I should treat the HTML version.
1) No, I wouldn't eliminate, nor would I nofollow. I'd keep them, use them to help guide people to the right places on your site, and just be careful not to use overly keyword-stuffed anchor text or to link externally in manipulative-SEO kinds of ways (like rich anchor text pointing to a provider or another site you own).
2) We've never seen convincing data that it makes any difference or has a positive impact on usability or SEO. If you think it might someday, no reason not to use, though it can take up a very small amount of extra bandwidth/speed.
3) No. HTML sitemaps should use followed links unless you're specifically linking to content you don't trust/endorse (which would be odd on your own site). If you have a very large domain with hundreds of thousands or millions of pages, there may be some areas where you'd use nofollow to help guide crawlers, but even then, I'd generally advise alternate solutions in most cases (not all, just most), as crawlers, including Google, don't always fully respect the nofollow and it can still cost you bandwidth. Nofollow is most useful for user-generated content and links out to external sites/pages that you, as the editorial owner/controller of the site don't intend to endorse.
Awesome! I appreciate the straightforward response, it was really helpful!
Great post! Love the focus on do-the-right-thing for the users.
We have run into an issue with linking that we are completely puzzled by. We syndicate our content to various clients, and we have worked hard to ensure that we have followed all the best practices that Google recommends for syndicating content. But recently, we noticed Google Webmaster report links from ClientA to ClientB, and we cannot figure out why it thinks that way. We have never created not have we found the links that Google Webmaster claims are there.
It is important for us to keep our clients isolated. Has anyone seen such behavior? Any ideas/pointers/hunches would be very much appreciated.
We even asked on the Google Webmaster Forum (https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/QkGF7-HZHTY;context-place=forum/webmasters), but thought this might be a better place to get expert advice.
Thanks, Matt. Just posted it on Q&A forum.
Wow, great post thank you!
Thanks for sharing such knowledgeable post, I've one doubt, in case of eCommerce if we include relevant category link (Internal linking) on products pages, so what will be the possibility? Will it harm? or help to boost SERP?
Hi Rand - thanks for another very helpful Whiteboard Friday.
I had a question on External Links. I run a Cashback & Coupon site. We sometimes get Links from sites where the Links sits in the Footer. These sites are ecommerce sites that link to us and telling their users where they can find Coupons from.
What we have seen is that we are not getting 1000s of Links for a single site due to its presence on the Footer. For a user experience point this is great, since a user can access us everywhere on the ecommerce site, but how should we handle this. These sites are often newer players so their PA / DA is lower.
It's a minefield! Albeit a very interesting one. I don't think anyone who ever says they know everything about SEO is being 100% honest. You blink and something has changed. Everything seems to boil down to the same things though - if it would benefit your users, the search engines will usually appreciate it too.
What is your suggestion for website designers who add an anchor text backlink pointing to their company website? Are those external links penalized? What should be done to prevent a penalty?
You should be worried about the optimization of your clients' sites above your own, when working on their sites. This harms your clients so should not be done.
Thanks so much for this post. We are in the process of creating our blog and I want to start it off on the right foot and understand how to properly link etc. Are you able to post some examples of ecommerce sites with a great blog/ linking? Essentially, I'd love to see blogs that actually practice (well) what is preached above. Thanks!
Regarding anchor text and internal links, what do you or readers feel is the positive or negative value of using your core product keyword instead of "Home" in site navigation and breadcrumbs? For instance, my company is Joe's Aqua Homes. I sell fish tanks. So I use "Fish Tanks" instead of "Home" in my site nav and breadcrumb. Good or bad for users and SEO? Could Google consider this keyword stuffing? Or is there even value in "Home" in site nav?
The video keeps failing to load. I am stuck at the 2 minute mark. It is really frustrating. The video hosting needs to be resolved.
Thanks for this post. I still see some of the websites with bunch of links (with keywords) in the footer pointing to a network site such companies being acquired by another company - and these websites are doing good when it comes to search engine rankings.
Good article. Links are always controversial.
When Google sends out manual SPAM actions it makes sites want to remove all external links and disavow most links coming in. After a bad experience like that website owners are afraid to link to anywhere.
The best course of action is to link to sites that are good resources that support your material.
As mentioned above the external links really should be natural.
Wordpress blogs take care of most internal linking issues. I guess we can assume that Google preferes blocgs and their linking structure.
Excellent WBF - loved it. Been looking for more quantifying information (sounds like you've seen some data Rand) on out going link impact. As you stated - we need to understand SEO science at the same time not losing site of audience value. being a simple guy I try to stay on (not ahead) of the SEO curve and when in doubt if it "aint bringing value to our audience - don't do it gomer"
I have seen that the community is growing, though I was a bit out of the community for few days but now I am back again.
"Focus more and more on your website optimization, rather than linking to other websites."
Does all of this same thinking apply to Bing? And other search engines?
Hi Rand, Great Post. Links are always a contentious and controversial issue in modern SEO. Linking to the right Websites is always a difficult question to answer. I have used governing bodies, awards or partner sites does add value for outbound linking, again not for the for the sake of it, but it ads value to the user.
I familiar with internal linking but have doubt about external linking for the site.
Thank you very much for the information! I will be brief: Have you ever seen a penalty because of having too many external links? Bearing in mind that these are quality external links.
Currently doing a big review/audit of internal linking on one of the sites I work on. Something I've struggled to get a definitive answer on is: template links (e.g. those that appear site-wide, as they're part of the navigation or the site footer etc.) should I nofollow those, or not?
Is the general rule of thumb: If they're useful for a user on that page, then no. If they're not, then nofollow?
Generally, you don't need to nofollow internal links, only certain outbound links.
But isn't this 'link juice shepherding'? E.g. if I had 30 links on a popular page on my site but 10 of them were 'furniture' footer links... if I "nofollow" those, wouldn't there be more 'link juice' from my popular page passed to the remaining 20 links?
Excellent information on link building. Since Google always throwing us a curve ball, and almost on a daily basis, I totally appreciate your expertise and research in these matters in keeping us up to date. Thank you so much.
Do the external links have to be do-follow for Google to associate any value to them?
Are no-follow links treated like they are not even there?
It appears to me that nofollow links don't boost rankings the way followed ones can, but I've only seen very light testing on this.
Really enjoyed my first Whiteboard Friday!
Yes - you're welcome to use the image with credit back to this post. Thanks!
Anchor tagd "Internal Linking" ;-)? Follow, Nofollow or just what I like to do?
I created my own blog as an experiment in inbound marketing. The blog is unrelated to SEO and front-end development, two fields which I studied for a few years, so I wanted to do a blog without any on-page or off-page SEO, and zero design: A simple Wordpress with a basic template.
It was a lovely experience. No more worrying about links at all. No more worrying about copycats or copyright. No more trying to wrangle in internal links. Not looking at competitors' SEO efforts. No ad placement to worry about. No A/B tests. Just writing content about a rather new and fast-moving field -- content I would want to read myself.
I made it a goal to link out to as much reputable and relevant resources as possible. Given two sites with equal authority and information relevance, I myself always prefer the site where I can click on links to get me to reputable sources. Usually this is not Wikipedia (but links that a good Wikipedia article is linking to are good candidates). I did not worry about pagerank. I also made it a goal to highlight the successes of others. For instance, when I was to talk about external linking I would try to put in a quote by Rand Fishkin on a finding or whiteboard friday he did.
Things were going really well. Flattering people with references and links to their work really works (people love tweeting an article that references their work, even people with lots of clout/authority). As my articles were getting better and more resourceful, people started posting links to my blog on social sites. Linking to good resources increases people's reputation, so with good content everyone seems to win.
A technical audience is hard to deceive with cheap marketing tactics. SEO's see hyper-optimized content for what it is: A glib car salesman. There are probably 10k articles written on internal and external linking, and this whiteboard Friday deserves to be top 10 (at least for this month). A lot of effort, but effort spend well (and likely, partly a labor of love, not all marketing).
I took the old CRO-article "Split-testing 101: A quick-start guide to conversion rate optimization" as a template for a new blog post: Try to write the best damn article you can on a specific subject. It worked. It worked really really well. It worked in ways that would never have worked had I try to do cheap outbound marketing. The article is doing over 100k views, with no sign of stopping. CEO's and CTO's of Fortune 500 companies send me job offers. The way I see Google visiting my site now, is when Google employees actually visits my site. Somebody added my site as a link to a major Wikipedia article. Numerous .edu sites legit link to resources I've written. The site now appears on Google Scholar and Google Books.
Don't want to come of as a brag, but it is strange: Write something you truly love writing about, use common sense, don't force any SEO, treat your users as kings and queens, and you too can reach the top of your field. I know this does not work doing SEO for a site that sells, say, toilet seats -- you are going to need some links one way or the other. But maybe your client really _is_ one of the most knowledgeable people on earth on toilet seats... Would be a shame to obscure that.
My vision for the future of SEO, is a future where people can not make money anymore, writing fluff about toilet seats to fill website categories. Either the page really _is_ relevant, user-friendly and authoritative, and it deserves to be top 10 based on those merits, or it is not: No matter how much money you spend on SEO companies. Just start blogging twice a week on stuff you know and within a year you will have 100 good articles to rank for. Don't need any SEO's or even in-links for that.
during the last few yers, ive been picky to choose wich sections or wich links i put in the homepage. People want to read and choose less and less!!
Have you ever seen site with strong position in G without links?
So, effectively I'm only linking out to one domain. The pages that I am linking to are very relevant, though. Do you think my blog could be penalized for this? Or miss positive SEO-effects of relevant external linking? Thanks!
Great WBF! A couple of things about links always remain true regardless of algorithmic shifts. As an SEO professional, I've always considered the linking practices as safe after the penguin was set free by Google.
#1: Don't use a keyword anchor text to link externally no matter what. If you must link out, invest in building context within the your content piece first. Basically, the greater the context, the safer an external link is. You're still better off not using a keyword anchor text.
#2: Google may not be as fussy about long-tail keywords (e.g. SEO companies in Bhubaneswar) used as anchor text, especially when they are used with a strong context within your content piece. Again, building context is imperative before linking out. I'd be happy to stand corrected though. Anybody?
#3: As Rand pointed out, using the same anchor text for internal linking on the same page multiple times, especially to the same external URL is asking for trouble. No amount of context building would help here IMHO. A lot of websites are still doing it though, believe it or not. Talk about Old-school SEO's!
#4: When it comes to internal linking, I'd rather use ID's to link to a specific part of the content piece to improve usability.
#5: There's a general perception that merely linking out to authority websites would help bolster authority of the content piece. Once again, at best, this might an exercise in futility if done without building any context to the destination URL.
In short, linking, internally or externally, helps only the context is strong enough. Context is King!
Great points, but I've never seen any evidence to show that using anchor text to link externally is a damnable offense no matter what. It's often of great benefit to the user and improves the composition of the webpage by eliminating blocky transition elements that say something like: click here for a great resource on running barefoot [[URL]]. I think it would be more appropriate to follow the simple rule of thumb laid out on the WBF - if it's done for manipulative purposes, it's a problem. If it's to help the end user, it's probably okay.
I have used anchor text to link externally on client sites and they're doing great. So my reference point is experience, which is completely subjective, so if anyone can provide some real evidence to the contrary I'll keep an open mind.
Thanks Brad for another excellent post.
Links handling is really a sensitive thing that every website owner should be aware of. Thanks to your post there is no more excuse for us to learn how to use both external and internal links the right way. Thanks again for the clarifications.
This article is very informative thank you.
I love how toptal.com structured their internal linking from blog posts to topical pages, that also serve as the landing page for a particular search phrase cluster.
https://www.toptal.com/android/top-10-most-common-... The blog post's primirary topic is Android, so it is in the adequate category and content silo, and the blog links to all related topical (landing) pages via the Related Technologies aside.
Now try searching for Top [technology] freelance developers :) ... always in the top 3, or top fold at least.
Article very interesting. Thanks for share it.
How does Google know if external links are part of a paid arrangement between two companies or not?
My 2 cents "Niche" Google has a few computers and some smart folks that create web crawler algorithms that are really intelligent (dare I say AI) and can see patterns (because they're paying others) and see the links that are not natural . Just like I can tell the difference between a natural fireplace vs gas - there's something. Just. Not. Right. While it's true we can skirt or even go against optimum practices to get extra SEO SERP JUICE love (too many adjectives or keyword stuffing? ;-) Google will update and place penalties or just drop you off the SERP chart.
Great post! Especially for me Linking to internal pages or other sites you own or control. Thank you!