Do you believe TLD distribution effects rankings in Google?
-
I have noticed that when looking at TLD distribution of backlinks for many websites that have grown organically, the TLD distribution is somewhat consistent depending on the style of website (I am using MajesticSEO to find this distribution data). Do you feel deviating from this TLD distribution depending on the style of website you have would cause negative effects with Google? Has there been any testing of this that you know of that you can point me to (ex: building all backlinks from .info TLDs and seeing if you rank well for given keywords)? I ask because my companies website has seen some big deviations from this and although I don't see any negative effects currently I want to make sure we create a site that stays consistent with what Google is looking for.
For example, if I look at news sites such as New York Times and Los Angeles Times, I see TLD distributions as such:
nytimes.com
.com = 59%
.gov = 14%
.org = 12%
.uk = 2%
.edu = 2%latimes.com
.com = 59%
.org = 13%
.gov = 11%
.edu = 4%
.net = 2%
.uk = 2%From that, if you are a news site, my assumption would be to try to stay consistent with around 55-65% of your links coming from .com domains, around 9-15% from .org, etc etc .
Now, looking at large blog styles sites I see this distribution:
naturalnews.com
.com = 70%
.org = 11%
.edu = 3%
.net = 2%
.gov = 1%techcrunch.com
.com = 71%
.org = 10%
.edu = 4%
.net = 3%
.gov = 1%Any input or links to tests of this would be much appreciated.
-
My pleasure. While I'm still thinking about backlink profiles, there's a post by John Doherty about analyzing your backlink profile vs. competitors based upon Domain Authority. I think this is a more worthwhile way to analyze your own backlink profile for spam. I won't speculate if Google is doing anything similar.
You can find the article here: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/three-phenomenal-excel-spreadsheets-for-link-analysis/
Also read this follow up post about what a bad backlink DA profile will look like: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/paid-links-backlink-profile-visualized/
-
Thank you for taking the time to respond. Your response seems consistent to what I would have concluded. We'll see if anyone is able to chime in with any links to testing that was done in regards to this question.
-
Good question and good answers, I would like to add, that I dont think that any one thing will get you flaged, as it is posible that something in a story about africa may be funny or important to China and may go viral, but mixed with other suss signals it well could be a reason to flag
-
I agree. I would argue that tld distribution is partly determined by link sources (i.e. what country the page is located in) and the targeted pages language/country. So a strong deviation from that will probably red flag a domain. Exampel: a page hosted in Germany, about Africa recieving tons of links from china might be fishy. A page in Poland about Germany getting links from Poland (or Germany) might be totally relevant, but with differently tld distribution.
EDIT: So the best rule of thumb is to ask yourself "If a human QA rep would look at the page and it's links, what would he think?"
-
I don't believe that it directly affects rankings, but it's certainly a reasonable method to red flag a domain for unnatural looking link profiles. It would also be natural to compare them to similar sites as you pointed out. News vs News, Gov vs Gov, Video site vs Video site, etc.
"From that, if you are a news site, my assumption would be to try to stay consistent with around 55-65% of your links coming from .com domains, around 9-15% from .org, etc etc ."
No way - I'd attempt to build all of the quality links I could - to hell with what's 'typical', doing what's typical will only get you typical results. You have to outperform to rank better, and trying to stay within a natural profile as determined by your competitors' efforts is not what makes you shine.
So, I definitely don't think going outside the typical profile would automatically have a negative affect, but I definitely think accumulating an extreme number of .info links looks spammy, and if I ran a search engine it would definitely be one method I would use for red flagging sites for manual reviews. Going outside the natural link profile might get you looked at by the webspam team, if they ever get around to it, but if you're playing by their link quality rules I don't think you need to worry. Eventually the TLD landscape is going to change from where it is now, and Google is fully aware of that and unlikely to punish you unless the links suck.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What is the reason my ranking down?
Hey Guys, My name is Niraj Jaiswal from India! My website is that Rakhi Bazaar and my lots of keywords like send rakhi to the USA, send Rakhi to Canada, send Rakhi to the UK, send Rakhi to Dubai my previous ranking is better than now ranking. I do not understand what's going wrong. My domain name is "https://www.rakhibazaar.com/". What I do??
Link Building | | Packersmove1 -
Ranking for multiple cities
My current method is creating a post/page for each city a client wishes to rank for with unique content. Is this really the best way? Is it best practice? If not. What is?
Link Building | | RickyShockley0 -
Ranking question
I have a question about the organic listing vs local listings my website ranks 1st for the local listings but I'm worried that since there's a site that is over the local the local listings im loosing traffic. I have a seo company working on my website. should I create a page my www.website/keyword vs building links to website.com. If it is the 1st way should I blog create links to that new page? my site is www.greensidelawncare.com my keyword is st Charles lawn care
Link Building | | gslc0 -
Ex-Googler: “To Please Google With Your SEO, Forget About SEO”
Lets discuss, Ex-Googler (Search Quality/Webspam team) talking about SEO. http://searchengineland.com/ex-googler-to-please-google-with-your-seo-forget-about-seo-136800 The bit that got me thinking was 'title tag over optimisation' so what we looking at, shorter title tags with a max of 2 keywords? And the PR quote, does relevance come above PR/DA/PA? Thoughts?
Link Building | | activitysuper0 -
Regarding Google Reconsideration
Hi Webmaster, Our website recent affected after the panda update. We got the mail from Google webmaster tools regarding the unnatural backlinks for our website. Due do this update we have edited most of the backlinks with natural way. Our question is we had submitted more free directories, from free directories we are getting more backlinks, like from a single domain we are getting more than 50+links, those are coming from the tags pages, also those are one way links, so we can’t edit that. Is it good for the website? After that edit we had sent couple of Google reconsideration report. But we got the reply like still you have the bad neighborhood links. Previously it was ranking well before the Google panda update. Could you please help me? Thanks
Link Building | | zco_seo0 -
How Is It Possible That I Rank O Above Large Competitors?
Hello! Ive noticed that on some terms I am ranking above my competitors who are much larger, older, and have many more links. How is this possible? Thx!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
What is white hat seo for google penguin and google panda?
Hi, This is my 1st question to some experts. I need advice on link building. Are following good and white hat seo? 1: Bookmarkings on top sites 2: Top directory submission, or directories that seomoz recommended? 3: Top article directories, yahoo voices, ezine etc.. 4: Top web 2.0, wordpress, blogger, tumblr 5: Guest posts on quality blogs. I was use to with black hat methods (by mistake) , that i was not aware, Some are pure blackhat, that i never did. some time it hard to judge which are black hat. In past google like some links, now most are devalue or got penalty. Now i want to do quality seo work and slow process. any advice will be great regarding quality seo. Thanks.
Link Building | | chsajid110 -
How long google & roger need to notice backlinks
Hello, It is three weeks I have begun link building to a client website through partnerships and neither Google (link:mysite.com) nor Roger are seing any of these backlinks Any idea what is the time commonly needed for small and new websites (no trafic at the moment) to see domain authority growing ? Loïc
Link Building | | mandinga0