Do inbound links to download .exe files improve SEO?
-
The site, (http://www.bartenderbarcodesoftware.com/) sells barcode software. They also provide free printer drivers on their site. During a recent domain change (before I started helping them), they began looking at their inbound links and found quite a few external sites linking to these download files. However, when someone clicks on the link on one of these sites (i.e. http://vvs-motor.com.ua/barcode-printer-drivers) it immediately begins downloading the file (i.e. http://www.seagullscientific.com/downloads/drivers/archive/7.2/7.2.4/Unimark_7.2.4.exe) without taking the visitor to the site.
The owner would greatly prefer this traffic to engage with the site and is considering 301 redirecting those download links to an actual webpage. Question: Would this look suspicious to Google? Would this have a positive or negative effect on SEO?
The last factor to consider is that many of these sites will likely just recreate the list based on the new links at some future point.
Thanks for any help!
-
You're welcome. Anything else I could help with? (If not could you mark this as answered, please?).
Thanks,
Martin
-
Thanks for the info Martin. Your answer echos my hunch (albeit unsupported). If Google is moving more and more toward user interaction metrics, one would imagine that links to these .exe files would be beneficial for the overall site authority.
Thanks again,
James
-
Does the website owner mind hotlinks like this? I don't think 301-ing them to a real web page would be bad in the eyes of Google. I think if purposeful pages that better describe the downloads and are useful resources for the visitors then that may be a better way to harness the links for SEO. As for whether links to .exe's is good for SEO, the file itself won't rank, but it may help domain authority. I'm not wholly sure so I'd like another opinion on this. And as an aside, the .exe's shouldn't be directly downloadable due to secure reasons, best to zip the files anyway as some anti viruses may block .exe downloads. So if you create some new downloads in ZIP files, redirect the .exe URLs to useful pages then you should benefit from the links. I'd like to see if others have tested this out however.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
SEO value of links from international TLDs to local (.be/.nl) TLDs
I'm linkbuilding for a couple of websitew of mine with TLD's of .be and .nl. When i look at my competitors, i see they also have backlinks from .com, .cz,... But do those international backlink account for any value (link juice) being past on?
Link Building | | RoderickG0 -
Links from same server or not?
Hello, I make websites so every website I make has a backlink to my website. Currently all my websites are hosted on server A, but my OWN website is hosted on server B. I plan to move my website to server A too. This will indicate that all the backlinks I have currently are from a difference server, now all these links will come from the SAME server. Will this have any results on my positions? Is this something that you have to take into account? Jeroen
Link Building | | conversal0 -
Bearshare links?
I am doing competitor link research and so far 4 of the 4 have had links from search.bearshare.net What kind of site is this? I am sure it isn't valuable but I can't figure out how it is getting crawled.
Link Building | | EcommerceSite0 -
Pursuing Links on Sites You Have a Link From
Is it a bad idea to spend resources to get a second link from a site that already links to you? It seems like the marginal value of each additional link is much smaller than the first link.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Google Link Disavow and sites with extremely heavy but poor link metrics
Need help/opinions from the SEO's out there. I am working with a site that in the past hired an SEO company out of India. Over the course of their time together, this company submitted the clients url to tens of thousands of link exchanges and directories. Around the time of Penguin, the owners told me their inquiries dried up. Literally that same week they had a new website launched (designed by a local competitor) that really butchered the site. They were convinced the reduction in traffic/inquiries was due to the new site but I am convinced otherwise (suspect Penguin). Not only does the site need to be re-structured but their link portfolio needs to be diversified. Now on the plus side, the company caters and sponsors a number of events that earns them organic, relevant links. These are overshadowed by the tons of poor, irrelevant ones though. I read a few posts recently on the Google Link Disavow tool and to proceed slowly due to the unknown nature surrounding it. I have a good idea of what links are problematic and which ones are well served. However, the number of problematic links in my estimation is quite high (thousands). I am very hesitant to dive into Google Disavow and submit such a large number of requests. What are your thoughts? How would you proceed?
Link Building | | mattylac1 -
"gimme links" = easy to fill out profile/personal reputation links that offer a do-follow anchor text flexible link
I'm doing some SEO for small niche service sites...and aside from niche directories and some light article marketing and local search directories (yelp, etc) there really isn't a budget for content generation. I really only have a budget for profile/submission links. What are some sites where you can quite easily fill out a personal profile with an anchor text variable link that may not be THAT juicy but will stick (i.e. not a spam/fake profile type of link, but something like Linkedin). I'll start with giving away 1 www.istockphoto.com Any others that aren't obvious?
Link Building | | ilyaelbert0 -
Link values
I have an interesting question, it's more to see other peoples opinions than looking for an exact answer, as I know noone can give that. If you had a good link on harvard.edu.. how many very low quality links on low DA domains that are full of junk, would you need to match the harvard link... if all other factors were equal. I'm gonna go for 500.. I've had great results with a few high DA/trust links. I'm not looking for anyone to give me a definative answer, just curious as to the views of other SEOs 😄
Link Building | | PeterM220 -
Inbound links – does the traffic matter at all??
So we know that links from highly ranked websites, pages with high DA, PR etc, matter. What about the traffic on these links? Do Google and others look at the traffic on the links and factor that into the algorithm? What do people think about this? Just wondering about this as don’t see it talked about much….Thanks
Link Building | | inhouseninja0