Natural Link Profile - Ranking Signal?
-
Hi,
Is a natural link profile a ranking signal? What is the value in a natural link profile?
What is a (natural?) link graph? Is Majestic SEO the only company capable of visualizing a link graph?
(I know the answers to these questions but I want to hear what SEOMoz has to say in the quasi-official standards of SEOMoz Q/A)
Regards,
-
I think that Daniel and Gianluca are on track here, but I just wanted to try to structure it a bit. Google has over 200 ranking factors now, and we use "natural" link profile to cover a pretty big chunk of them. Generally, I think natural means:
(1) From a diversity of sources (blogs, forums, PR, etc.)
(2) Using a diversity of tactics (comments, contextual links, etc.)
(3) Having a diversity of anchor text, including keyword-targeted and brand-targeted. This is probably one of the easier cues for "unnatural" links. If you're SEO'ing for "medium blue widgets" and 99% of your anchor text is "medium blue widgets", it's not natural.
(4) From topically relevant sites. This is a nice-to-have, but it's not clear how well Google can measure relevance. General authority and "trust" may be more important, although I think relevance will matter more over time.
(5) Not from paid sources. Technically, ads should be nofollow'ed, and some paid placements are a lot easier to spot. If you're right under a "Sponsors" banner, in a box with 10 links from wildly irrelevant and disconnected sites, or in a sitewide footer, your link is going to look unnatural).
-
Errata corrige: the link to OpenSiteExplorer I gave is wrong. Here it is http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/
-
Ciao
If you mean as natural link profile an X number of links which have different anchor text (and sometimes that means the Brand name and/or the URL as anchor), from different kind of websites and with a certain % also of nofollowed link... well, it is not properly a ranking signal, but the metrics of those links surely are.
Majestic SEO is a wonderful tool, but being a PRO member you can use http://www.opensitexplorer.com
It is based on Linkscape and it offers you a very strong portrait of your (and your competitors) link profile and from some hints Rand gave in several posts, it is going to be revamped in the next months.
-
Is a natural link profile a ranking signal? No. You don't get better rankings because your link profile looks "more natural" than another website. It's more of a spam signal. If your link profile looks unnatural, you could get penalized. But there's no scale for being more or less natural, there's just natural or unnatural.
A natural link profile has a variety of backlinks. Those links come from a variety of sources. Those links have varied anchor texts. Those links have varied placements on the different pages. Those links are pointing to a variety of your internal pages. The links come from different types of websites.
As far as showing link totals and growth in a graph, Majestic SEO is great, but it's easy to do yourself in Excel. I do it that way because Majestic goes back 4 or 5 years and sometimes I'm more interested in just seeing progress over the last few months.
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
-
Will links from startup/tech blogs help a site rank for *money* keywords?
If a startup has a tech blog (say, domain.com/tech) and a startup journey blog (on domain.com/journey — think groovehq.com/blog), will garnering high PA/DA links to those pages help the root domain rank for keywords related to the startup's services? For example, continuing the Groove example, will quality links to their aforementioned startup blog help them rank the homepage for Online Help Desk Software? Even when those links are from non-helpdesk content on non-helpdesk sites? My theory is that links from high DA sites won't be a bad thing — as long as they're not from spammy pages and done naturally. In some niches, where it's hard to get organic product-related links, this might be a worthwhile strategy. Am I right? Or sadly misguided...? 🙂 EDIT: BTW. The niche I have in mind is fairly uncompetitive, and it'd be easier to garner links from the startup/tech community than the niche community itself.
Link Building | | brandrsn1 -
Should I ask sites that link to me to update links that redirect?
I have found some links to my site that go through a single 301 redirect to get to my site. Should I contact these websites to ask them to update the link, or is that not worth the time?
Link Building | | RCF0 -
Total Links vs Ext. Followed Links
Hi I'm fairly new to SEO and SEOMOZ. I've created a campaign for my own site and I've added 3 competitor sites. There are 1,385 total links to my site and a massive 49,450 links to one of my competitor's site. However under "Ext. Followed Links", there are 1,045 to my site and only 911 to the same competitor site. Am I correct that it is the "Ext. Followed Links" which are more important from an SEO point of view as the other links have the "no follow" attribute set? Or have I got this wrong? Thanks James
Link Building | | avecsys0 -
When searching for high quality links, in a niche area such as real estate, does page rank factor into a search or is page / domain authority the most important factor?
After having employed many different methods for finding good link partners I am now finding it more difficult to reach out and identify good quality links for a niche area such as real estate. Does page rank factor into the search much or is it better to focus on page / domain authority as a major factor?
Link Building | | casper4340 -
SEOs and web developers frequently leave links to their site in the footer of their clients' sites. Does this negatively impact the site with the links?
Does this provide any SEO value to the receiving site? Has anyone experienced problems doing this?
Link Building | | KatMouse2 -
Link building and directory links to a new site
I have three new sites all hosted on the same server in the same public html folder and each site is in a different folder inside the public html folder. These sites are a listing of live music venues in different cities in Texas. Should I link these sites together to increase page rank to each other and also put key search phrases in the anchor text and place these links in the text in the center of each page of each site to make the links more effective? Also, because the sites are about a year old they don't have many inlinks yet. If i submit them to about 50 directories will Google not like this because there are way more directory links than natural links? I've been told that it is trouble to have more than about 50% directory links compared to natural links. Thanks in advance for your answers! Take care,
Link Building | | Ron10
Ron0 -
Value of Inbound Links to Pages With a lot of Outbound Links
Suppose you have a resource page of the Top 50 Awesome Sites in your niche. Since there are about 50 outbound links, then I would think there will be less Page Rank being passed to internal pages from internal links on the resource page. Since you are getting less PR passed to internal pages, are there other ways the inbound links can be beneficial, such as increasing the diversity of links of your domain? Sites like SEO Optimise seem to create a lot of Top 30 Resources lists and I have read that they think it is a strong tactic.
Link Building | | SparkplugDigital0 -
Linking articles to each other
I've been using white-hat article marketing to post original content about my niche to credible article directories (yes, I realize many of them were recently devalued). My question is: Is it a good or bad idea to have future articles link to older articles, as a way to increase the chances of having the older articles indexed, or increasing the amount of link juice they pass to my site (since they point to my site)? I get 2 links per article and was thinking of using 1 to point to a prior (related) article, and the other to point to my site.
Link Building | | scanlin0