Too Many Non-Niche-Specific Links?
-
Something just occurred to me today.
I work in-house for an embroidered patch company, but I respond to a lot of HARO queries about Marketing, SEO, SEM, Web Design, ect. So, we have a lot of links from these types of sites. Additionally, I have done guest blogs on these topics because those are what I'm knowledgeable about.
We also have links from customers' personal blogs or websites stating they got their patches from us and are happy, blah, blah, blah.
On top of that, we hired someone who ended up getting tons of .edu links by spamming blogs. Oy.
I'd estimate only about 10% of our links come from embroidery, sewing, screen printing, promotional products, etc types of sites.
I guess it's not really known or documented how much weight Google places on niche-specific links--we just assume that it matters, and I'm sure it does.
Our rankings are fine now, but I'm looking for some opinions from other SEOs about how much they think this will matter in the future or how much it matters now. Could this hurt us in the future?
.
-
Agreed
-
Agreed. I didn't think our answers were contradictory, I agree with you totally. I just didn't feel she needed to spend time trying to get rid of the naturally built non-niche links and I don't think you thought so either.
Cheers!
-
Hi Marisa,
I think what me and Billy are both saying here is to put most of your focus toward building niche-specific links. The other links will come, and it is actually good to have non-niche related links so that it looks natural to Google.
What I was trying to say was this if, for example, 80% of your links all came from motor racing websites, and your website is about cats, this can be confusing. If only 20% come from there, 20% from dog websites, 10% from directories, etc, then this is good.
Make sure that you don't focus too much on building non-niche specific links though as the most powerful links are the related ones. Also, completely agree with Billy regarding getting rid of those spammy .edu links. They could come back to haunt you.
Hope this has cleared things up,
Matt.
-
Two very good answers, however they're rather contradictory to each other. I'm still not sure what to do about this.
-
I don't believe that non-specific YET naturally built links will ever hurt you. Obviously they will never help quite as much as industry specific links but the fact remains that they are not spam; they are real, honestly built relationships. I would not spend one second worrying about those links. I would also, however, not spend lots of energy or time building more if there are more relevant links that you could be spending your time trying to build.
I would probably do my best to dump those spammy .edu links though. But that's just me
Cheers!
-
If you think about the links to your website as a web of semantic data. If your website was about cats and you have lots of websites that also talk about cats linking to you then Google can identify that your website is, in fact, about cats. However, if your website is about cats and you have a lot of websites that link to you about motor racing, then this can confuse Google and actually maybe believe that your website is, in fact about motor racing.
Semantically similar information is becoming more and more important and is the basic fundamental of search. Having a lot of links pointing to your website can help with building authority to your website, but niche specific links are invaluable.
Hope this helps,
Matt.
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
-
Increase of non-relevant back-links drop page ranking?
Hi community, Let's say there is a page with 50 back-links where 40 are non-relevant back-links and only 10 are relevant in-terms of content around the link, etc....Will these non-relevant back-links impact the ranking of the page by diluting the back-link profile? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
More or less pages from Homepage? Linking 3rd hierarchy level pages from Homepage.
Hi Moz community, With the concept of preserving link juice, many websites stopped linking too many pages from homepage. We even removed our 3rd hierarchy level pages removed from our homepage. We didn't notice much change in rankings. Recently I have gone through some SEO articles where some experts suggested to link low level pages from homepage which indicates to Google the way we respect and prioritise those pages but not just homepage and very next level pages. This also works in internal linking it seems. Is this true? Can we add such low level pages from homepage? Which actually works Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google AMP (accelerated mobile pages), can it be used for non-Google news and Ecommerce Websites?
Mozzers, I've been doing a lot of research on Google's new Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/accelerated-mobile-pages-whiteboard-friday. From what I'm seeing, these AMP version websites are only for Google News-worthy websites such as New York Times, Cosmopolitan, and the BuzzFeeds of the world. But what about Ecommerce websites like Ebay or Amazon? Will AMP versions of "scotch tape" via OfficeDepot work in the SERP's on non-Google News cards?
Algorithm Updates | | Shawn1240 -
Our company is mentioned on some high-traffic, authoritative sites and some of our products are linked as well. If we link to those pages, does it affect our SEO? How can we take advantage of those mentions?
I heard that if you link to another site, when Google indexes your site, they crawl that page that is referenced. By whatever metrics they use, if that site has your name or a link to your site, Google would rank it higher. I am not sure how true that is, but what value does another site mentioned our site have on our SEO?
Algorithm Updates | | JonathonOhayon1 -
Optimized site-wide internal links in footer - a problem?
Hello all - I am looking at a website with 8 heavily keyword optimized site-wide links in the footer. Yes, there are only 8 but it looks a bit spammy and I'm tempted to remove them. I imagine there's some possibility of a Google penalty too? What would your advice be? Thanks, Luke
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
Spam Back Link Removal Problem.
I have just paid a lot of money to have spam back links removed from directories owned by the same person, the links were on pages that were set up for me without me knowing, at the end of each url is my domain name, the links have been removed on the page leaving a directory page with no other links on however the url is still there with my domain name at the end of the url and in each search box is my domain name, I have asked for the pages to be removed altogether as I did say before I paid the money I did not want my domain name on any of his directories, he has come back and said leaving my domain name in the urls is not a problem as far as Google is concerned, can anyone please advise, I can ask for a refund from PayPal, there are over 768 links on different sections of a number of directories. Thank you inadvance.
Algorithm Updates | | Palmbourne0 -
Should I link to competitors?
Hi, I was wondering: we work in an extremely competitive market. There are 6 companies, offering the same service in my country: price comparison in a niche market. The competitors have hundreds of different websites, using iframe-techniques. Would it be helpful for me to link to those 6 competitors, in a piece of content about our company strategies, USP's and overview of the market? From a transparency point of view, i would prefer telling my visitors there are other competitors, which are undoubtedly performing very well, but we perform better on several aspects of the price comparison. On the other hand, my competitors benefit from the backlinks as well. Is my gain bigger than the gain of my competitors do you think? Has anyone tested this once?
Algorithm Updates | | Beekhuizen1 -
Too Many On-Page Links
After running a site analysis on here it has come up and said that I have a lot o pages with too many on page links and that this might be why the site is being penalized. Thing is I am not sure how to remedy this as one page that says it has 116 links is this one : http://www.whosjack.org/10-films-with-some-crazy-bitches/ Although there is only one link in the body Then again our home page has 165 http://www.whosjack.org which again it says is too many. The thing is is that surely it doesn't count on links all over the page as other wise every news homepage would be penalised? For example what would happen here on this home page? : http://www.dazeddigital.com/ Can anyone help me see what I am missing? Are there possible hidden links anywhere I should be looking for etc? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | luwhosjack0