Does the Referral Traffic from a Link Influence the SEO Value of that Link?
-
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO?
Say I have 1000 links on 500 sites with Domain Authority ranging from 35 to 80. Let's pretend that 900 of those links generate referral traffic. Let's assume that the remaining 100 links are spread between 10 domains of the 500, but nobody ever clicks on them. Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic?
Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links?
5343313-zelda-rogers-albums-zelda-pictures-duh-what-else-would-they-be-picture3672t-link-looks-so-lonely.jpg Sad%20little%20link.jpg
-
Haha brilliant! I'm totally with you on that. And since Matt doesn't tend to divulge much (and half of what he does is cryptic) that would put Rand as source number one, or I should say Rand & co... all the staff and associates, etc... on here are pretty much a fountain of knowledge. I'd be screwed if I didn't have SEOmoz to learn things from.
-
When I find conflicting expert opinions, I sort them out by date and source. For sources, I place Matt Cutts first, Rand second, then everyone else falls further down the line.
There are others in the SEO world who share Rand's level of experience and expertise, but there is something about seeing him bounce up and down on WBF videos, along with his intonations that just make viewers want to believe him.
-
Righty, I've been on a mission to clarify... it seems there's a lot of conflicting views on it. I mean I know there's conflicting views on pretty much everything but these views all seem to be from very good sources, so now I don't know what to think... I'm on the fence!
There's some discussion in here: http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4176006.htm
Along with this: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/backlink-age-seo-factor/9943/
It's a difficult one, but it doesn't appear to be in the ranking factor survey, which is a shame as it would be interesting to see what level of agreement there is.
Anyway, Rand's is more recent than Ann's so I guess it would make best sense to follow his
Thank you for pointing it out, I would have been none the wiser otherwise!
-
Ah, okay. I've heard it said a few times and assumed it to be correct but clearly I should have questioned it. Thanks, I've learnt something new from that
-
Thanks Steve!
You got me thinking about a related issue -- if links that sent referral traffic were VALUED more than links that didn't, one could easily game the system by sending mechanical turk traffic through a link, or something similar... so if that's a factor, it's likely an irrelevant one.
Kind regards!
-
Thanks for the great feedback and advice - in particular, for separating the facts from the speculation (which was also good stuff).
Now, I just have to find that perfect image of Link building (something).... the one I attached to this comment just doesn't work without explanation... hehe
-
"We know for example that the age of a link counts, and an older link can be worth more."
Steve, my understanding is that a link's age has no direct bearing on a link's value. Can you possibly elaborate on why you feel otherwise?
My understanding comes from a few sources. One example would be: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/age-of-site-and-old-links-whiteboard-friday
-
I'm pretty sure that links don't have to actually refer any traffic to pass value. You'll probably find that the majority of links that aren't on new/fresh content sites such as news sites, etc... don't refer much anyway. We know for example that the age of a link counts, and an older link can be worth more. When you think of some of those static sites out there that never change but still have good authority (especially for their niche) but don't get tonnes of traffic due to their industry, demographic, speciality, etc... They can pass some great link value even though some of those links will simply never get clicked.
If Google were to assign higher value to links that got clicked more, we'd only ever see sites at the top of the serps that had links from news sites, other sites that might well be most relevant would be held down.
Take a website or page about something obscure, an interest that somebody might have in an uncommon area of archaeology or something. Now let's say the site has great authority in its obscure niche, but of course gets very little traffic due to its obscurity. That site linking to another similar site would be excellent in terms of link value for the similar site.
Usage data might come into it beyond us clicking from the serps, and going into it with us clicking through as referrals too, but I wouldn't think it would have that much effect.
-
If a link exists, and nobody clicks on it, could it still be valuable for SEO? Are they still valuable? Should an SEO seek to earn more links like those, even though they don't earn referral traffic?
Yes, the link has value for merely existing. That value is determined by the SEO metrics of the page and domain of the site offering the link.
I wouldn't focus on obtaining more links without referrer traffic per se. My focus is obtaining quality links, which usually means they are visible and will receive traffic. If I was offered a link on a site with good DA and PA that would never get clicked, would I take it? Yes. It will help my site rank higher which can lead to more organic traffic from search even if the link itself did not offer any traffic. It's the reality of how the system works.
This process is why many black hat SEOs grab links from dead blog pages, asian sites, or try to stuff links into
<noscript>and other unseen tags.</p> <p><strong>Does Google take referral data into account in evaluating links?</strong></p> <p>Google reveals as little as possible about their algorithm other then to say they list over 200 metrics and constantly adjust their metrics.</p> <p>Those are the facts involved with your question. If I was to speculate, I would think Google either has determined, or will decide, that a link with zero referrer traffic should be devalued. The challenge as always is obtaining clean data that cannot easily be manipulated.</p> <p>PS. Love the attachments :)</p></noscript>
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
-
Are links still considered reciprocal if the link from one website is rel="nofollow" and the other isnt ?
Im working on a site that has some press coverage due in the next couple of days from quite a big site in the niche. The press outlet has requested that we link back to the content they post about us, they said the link can be rel="nofollow" if we'd prefer. Id really like to get the full benefit of the link back to our website, obviously if i did a straight link back to the 3rd party press site the links would be reciprocal and cancel each other out in terms of "link juice", but i was wandering if we make our link back to the 3rd party rel="nofollow" will we still get the full benefit of their link to us in terms of link juice ? ie. having the link back to them, but nofollow wouldn't been seen as a reciprocal link. ? (Obviously either way there is still benefit of having the link even if it reciprocal as it will send traffic to our site, but just no "link juice") Note - Ive used the phrase"Link Juice" for lack of a better term, any ideas on how else to refer to this ?
Technical SEO | | Sam-P1 -
Javascript redirects -- what are the SEO pitfalls?
Q: Is it dangerous (SEO fallout) to use javascript redirects? Tech team built a browser side tool for me to easily redirect old/broken links. This is essentially a glorified 400 page -- pops a quick message that the page requested no longer exists and that we're automatically sending you to a page that has the content you are looking. Tech team does not have the bandwidth to handle this via apache and this tool is what they came up with for me to deliver a better customer experience. Back story: very large site and I'm dealing with thousands of pages that could/should/need to be redirected. My issue is incredibly similar to what Rand mentioned way back in a post from 2009: Are 404 Pages Always Bad for SEO? We've also decided to let these pages 404 and monitor for anything that needs an apache redirect. Tool mentioned above was tech's idea to give me "the power" to manage redirects. What do you think?
Technical SEO | | FR1230 -
Forms and link juice
On product listing page on e-commerce site We use POST forms as 'Add To Cart' buttons. Because of that We have dozens (~40-80) forms on any product listing page, and two questions regarding them: Does these forms affect link juice of other links on the page? Are there cases when forms are somehow counted by Google as links? Regards, Lucek
Technical SEO | | lucek0 -
Different links to to the same page
Hi, Based on the user's actions we post activity into users Facebook timeline. And each activity has link back to our particular page on our website. For example if original page was: www.Domain.com from Facebook timeline it would be like this: www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 Do you think this will have a negative effect on our page rankings as we will eded up having a lot of different URL's to the same page? www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=101508953168 www.Domain.com?Ffb_action_ids=456788765609 etc.. Thank you, Karen Bdoyan
Technical SEO | | showme0 -
Nofollow links if you have more than one link on a page to the same destination.
Hi, I am wondering if someone can confirm that its best practice to have nofollow on secondary links on a page. For instance the contact page may have a link in the navigation and in the the blurb down the page have another link to the contact page saying contact us here etc.. So in this instance i would put a nofollow on the secondary link in the blurb would this be the best way to impliment this. Many thanks Chris
Technical SEO | | InteractiveRed670 -
Advertising and negative impact on SEO
On one of my sites, I've been trying to get the word out by contacting blogs and asking them to share my site with their readers. This has resulted in some free publicity for my site, as well as quite a few paid reviews/sponsored posts. Note, however, that I've never paid for links, just reviews of my site... When I started this about 2 months ago, my site was a PR3 and getting fairly lowsy organic search traffic (i.e. 30-40 visits a day from Google). Then a few days ago, my PR dropped to 1. I didn't worry too much though, because my organic traffic was still around 30-40 visits a day. Now today, I checked and I only had 1 visitor the entire day from Google. Obviously I've been penalized. My most important question is, what can I do? Do I have an recourse, or do I need to just shut the domain down and move elsewhere? Second, wtf is Google penalizing this? I understand the argument against paid links, but should I not be allowed to advertise my site? Apparently I can buy links all day long through Google and they'll happily take my money, but the minute I pay some poor blogger to write an article about my site to their audience, I get penalized? Please help, I can't believe I just destroyed one of my sites like this!
Technical SEO | | dustin9990 -
Page that has no link is being crawled
http://www.povada.com/category/filters/metal:Silver/nstart/1/start/1.htm I have no idea how the above page was even found by google but it seems that it is being crawled and Im not sure where its being found from. Can anyone offer a solution?
Technical SEO | | 13375auc30 -
Internal Linking: Site-wide VS Content Links
I just watched this video in which Matt Cutts talks about the ancient 100 links per page limit. I often encounter websites which have massive navigation (elaborate main menu, side bar, footer, superfooter...etc) in addition to content area based links. My question is do you think Google passes votes (PageRank and anchor text) differently from template links such as navigation to the ones in the content area, if so have you done any testing to confirm?
Technical SEO | | Dan-Petrovic0