Are paid links on your brand name considered bad by Google?
-
I've been intrigued recently by the penalty applied to a site we have just started working with. They were penalised back in summer last year as their previous link builder had built 60,000 links all with the same hard to get keyword anchor text....we're still sorting it out.
My question now is that if the client pays for inclusion on some relevant sites, such as niche directories and those sites automatically produce 'follow' links, would the client be penalised if they link on their own company name? For example if they manufacture blue widgets and the anchor text on the link is 'ABC Manufacturing' rather than 'Blue Widgets' would Google see that as a reasonable link?
I appreciate that if they linked back on the keyword anchor text 'Blue Widgets' it would be wrong but I'm seeking clarification on using the company name. Any thoughts?
-
Thanks so much, but without this pain we would never have got the client! We're the good guys, just trying to unravel a tangle of American .edu links and sitewide footers from other American sites for a business based firmly in the UK. What the last guy was thinking we've no idea...
Thanks for taking the time to contribute
-
Thanks again Irving; we're advising the client to stay away from directories anyway, and concentrating on providing a useful service for end users. Links, if they happen, will be a bonus we hope!
Thanks guys...;-)
-
in my experience, ALL paid links should be no-folow. Also they may have penalized you for having all the same few keywords. A good link building strategy Must look natural to Google. Otherwise it's just a matter of time before you get penalized.
Sorry this happened to you, i feel your pain!
-
The difference is naturally occurring links from regular non paid diversified sites vs paid links from directory type sites that Google has already flagged as being bad neighborhoods used for SEO, and these sites are most likely linking to a lot of penalized sites as well which makes you guilty by association.
So it has more to do with the places you are linked on than it does overusing your brand name in the anchor text, plus naturally occurring links will have their own keyword mix and match diversity.
brandname
visit brandname
visit brandname.com
go to brandname
some will be do follow, some will be no follow, some might be image links
-
Thanks Irving. Just wondering though, the client naturally attracts links anyway so surely that can't harm them? Or can it? There's no way to stop that. They regularly blog and get shared on social as they are an 'authority' and spent years on page one of the results so people in the industry know them and we don't want to diminish this activity which, irrespective of links, is what they are known for. Any further thoughts from anyone welcome here!
Thanks all....
-
if your brand name is your domain name then you should already rank for that. don't build links while trying to recover from a penalty.
-
Thanks, good advice. We're slowly trying to undo the harm already done and build good relevant backlinks, hence the question. I think that we will need to take almost everything off and start again with this one.....
-
If you are already penalised, I wouldn't touch paid links of any kind, especially directory ones
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
-
Bad Links to New Domain - Do I Disavow?
About 2 months ago a new client of mine bought a domain and we built him a nice new site; however, it appears the previous owner of the domain used some spammy SEO tactics. I've had to redirect about 30 pages and now I've found some spammy links. I've only discovered a few of them, but he doesn't have that many links yet so I'm wondering what kind of impact this will have. Is it worth disavowing a half dozen links? The sites are in Chinese and appear to be unmanaged link farms so getting the webmaster to remove them is unlikely. Also wondering what else is lurking out there that I haven't discovered yet... I suggested to the client we consider a different domain since the site is new, but he's become pretty attached to it. Any ideas?
Link Building | | Dino640 -
Does Google drop links from page rank N/A sources?
Hi Everyone,
Link Building | | AMA-DataSet
I've started doing some link analysis on one of my site that has over nearly 800 links in total (which I got from the webmaster tools downloading the latest links). When I go on to Google and use the "link:www.mysite.com" directive it will only display 12 links. Does this mean Google is only counting 12 links from the link profile? Iv checked the freshness of some the links it wasn't displaying within Google to check they hadn't all expired. Links from march 2013 still don't appear. This sites link profile has been untouched for at least a year now and is full of directories many of which have a page rank of N/A hence my question. (I'm surprised it hasn't been hit by penguin!) Thanks in advance.0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Footer Links And Link Juice
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register /privacy /terms /search /sitemap /disclaimer /blog /register So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together? This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
Google webmaster tools Who links the most updates?
Has anyone ever seen in the section in GWT "Who links the most" actually update. I have sites listed in there that had me on a blogroll so I had 93,000 links to me and they removed those links months ago but GWT still shows that number of links. Does anyone else actually see those numbers go down as links are removed?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
Changing domain names... Bad idea?
We are re-doing a clients e-commerce website. Before I had entered them on SEO moz we had decided to change their domain name to one with a keyword inside. I had not known that they had an online marketing company previous working for them. They have a domain authority of 42 right now. It would be a horrible idea to switch their domain right? I looked at some of the links, they all have a variety of good anchor text. But alot of the links are coming from sites or directory categories that are not relative. We are also planning on doing 301 re-directs for the links. But this will not transfer the domain authority to the new domain right? Any thoughts?
Link Building | | DTOSI0 -
There are penalties by Google for the purchase of links? If yes which are the penalties ?
There are penalties by Google for the purchase of links? If yes which are the penalties ? When we buy links how to see if the site is considered as salesman of link by Google? Thanks you
Link Building | | elitepronostic0 -
Are paid directories considered paid links?
I've only ever submitted my sites to tons of free directories, not the paid ones. I'm thinking of getting into a few paid directories now, but just wondering, anyone had experience with a paid directory link being treated like a paid links an penalized or anything? Has it helped you? My competitors has a lot of backlinks from paid directories, so I"m thinking of doing the same thing. But if Google thinks of paid directories as paid links, I would be better off just turning him in 🙂
Link Building | | DanDeceuster1