How do I know if an inbound link offers value?
-
Is there a way to find out if inbound links that have been pointing to my site for a year or more are still offering value to my site.
I know the value decreases over time (especially press release and blog article links), but it would be nice to know how much value bring to a site.
-
No problem Everett. Thanks for the information.
-
Brad, sorry I didn't mean to imply that you were buying links. But to answer your question then, yes your links aren't going to be as strong once they drop off the home page of a blog. But that, technically, is not the same link as the one from the blog post page. Yes, you'll lose the power of the link when it's no longer on the page. It's the same as losing the link. But the link on the post page will retain its value, although that may not be much if nobody links to that blog entry.
I hope that helps. Sorry about the confusion.
Regards,
Everett
-
Hi Everett,
Good information, thanks! The reason I think they lose value is exactly what you said, they "drop off the home page" and get pushed back.
There are reasons for this quesiton other than paying for a link. For example, guest article links where you want to know if your efforts are working. Also, if you are asking for a link on a site, it would be nice to know that your link will count by looking at current links on the site.
-
Hi Brad
You should be able to look at the metrics provided by the SEO tools to see the authority of the page the link is from. If it is still a highly relevant site, with high domain authority then there would be no reason to suspect that the value would be lessened by the passing of time.
If the site or page that the link was from was devalued then this reduction of value may occur but this would be because of this rather than because time has passed.
-
Hello Brad,
Where did you hear that links lose value over time? My experience has always been the exact opposite. As for blog, PR and article distribution links, one reason it may "seem" like they lose value is because they drop off the home/index/category pages as new content is added. But in terms of a URL that has a link on it that is five years old and that same URL that has a link on it that is three weeks old - all other things being equal - I find more value in the aged link. But that wasn't your question so...
I'm assuming the only reason one would want to know this is if they are paying for links on a recurring basis. Otherwise why not just leave it up? SSCDavis is sort of correct, although I have seen sites that sell links stop passing page rank even though their toolbar Page Rank was never removed, meaning that just because a link is followable and the site has page-rank doesn't necessarily mean the links pass page rank.
The only real way (that I know of) to figure that out is to run anchor-text tests on the page. I wouldn't change the anchor text on your old links, but you could get a new link on that same page going to a different site and see what that does for your rankings for that query. It has to be anchor text that is already on your page though. So take a two or three word phrase from your page that doesn't get many searches (and that you're maybe below the #5 spot for) and get a link from the page you're testing into the page from which you took the text with that phrase. See how your ranking changes.
This, of course, won't help you determine if your old links on that page have lost any value but, like I said, my experience has been that older links are more valuable, not less.
PS: Rand does a better job of explaining this here than I just did above.
-
I agree with you about the value of links over time. I think an aged, older link from an older page is definitely stronger than the average link. I also think there is a temporal boost for a new link. So when you get a new link, it might be valued at a 7 on a scale of 1-10. After that initial window (whether it's weeks or months) it may drop to a 4 or 5, but then over time will work back up to a higher number. I think it's a bit more complex than that, but in general that's how I look at it.
I use the same criteria for looking at existing links as I do for new ones. Is the site relevant to yours? Does it have authority? Is it spammy? Does it link to bad neighborhoods? If not, I'd say it's always valuable.
-
**Is there a way to find out if inbound links that have been pointing to my site for a year or more are still offering value to my site. **
If they are followed links and the host site is still ranking and has not seen a PR reduction then they are probably passing value, especially if the topic of the site is related to the topic of the page that they are linking to. If any of these have been violated then all bets are off.... also if that site is selling links or doing other naughty things then the value of the links could have been turned off by Google and you will never know.
I know the value decreases over time (especially press release and blog article links), but it would be nice to know how much value bring to a site.
Some people think that the value of aged links is higher.
-
From a SEO standpoint if the link is on a page with good PA/DA and is not 'nofollowed' then it is still offering value.
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
-
INBOUND LINKS FROM OTHER OWNED BRANDS HARMING MY MAIN SITE?
Hey, I work for a company that owns 5 brands, all pretty large sites with 10,000s of pages. We have one primary site, that has inbound links from all the other owned sites (4) resulting in 950k backlinks pointing to the domain. For context, the primary domain has 781 referring domains (with 4 of them being the other owned sites). My question was, will this excess of linking be harming the primary domain? Will the ration of backlinks to referring domains be seen as a negative quality indicator? Charlie
Link Building | | charliehowes10 -
Self linking
There are 10 links on page that point to this page where they exist (link to the page itself). Does it influence on ranking?
Link Building | | templatemonster0 -
Does nofollow link has any effect on link building
I recently read some article on noflollow link and the author says that nofollow link does have some effect on page rank. Can anyone explain the effect of nofollow link on website ranking?
Link Building | | petwho0 -
Why are my inbound links not showing up?
According to Webmaster tools, I have about 150 linking to my web site. In the Open Site Explorer, none of them show up. Sorry, I am a newbie with SEOMoz. I sure appreciate someone helping me answer this question. Thank you. http://tampapaintingservices.com
Link Building | | combesinc0 -
Value of International Links
Does international link building make sense for US websites (.com domain)? The links we could acquire are from websites in the same niche, but I read on a forum that Google will disregard (devalue ?) international links. There is work involved in getting such a link, so it's quite important to find out whether they are worth the trouble.
Link Building | | propertyshark0 -
Do sites on the same c-block and same server count as seperate linking root domains when linking to each other?
Lets say there are 50 businesses who have their website on the same server and are on the same c-block but the owners of the individual sites are different (i.e. they are all completely different sites not relevant to each other). Each of those sites are linking to each other due to a feature on the sites. This obviously increases the number of total links to each site but does it also increase the number of linking root domains? Or does this just show up as one linking root domain due to all of them being on the same server and the sharing the same c-block?
Link Building | | cinternicola0 -
.edu links
Hi mozzers, I've had some great success reaching out to many .edu webmasters. Often they are professors and such. My question is, i'm guessing during the summer holiday period, reaching out to these webmasters won't be so fruitful. I'm not in the US and was wondering when the US Summer holidays are for universities over there? Also, does anyone have experience outreaching to these webmasters over the holidays? Peter
Link Building | | PeterM221 -
Panda Update: Isn't a link still a link?
I was doing some link building and some SEO's said that the Panda update affected many websites. I am going to use eZineArticles.com as my example. EzineArticles was affected by the Panda update and does not show up in the SERPs as much as before. But they still have doFollow Links coming from the articles I am submitting. QUESTION: Regardless if EzineArticles was affected by the Panda Update, isn't a "Follow Link" still a "Follow Link" OR am I completely wasting my time on this devalued website? Edit: Yes I know a PR 0 page is not as valuable as a PR 9 page. I am asking from the standpoint of the affected Panda Update domains overall.
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza0