Where do I start with cleaning up our link profile?
-
We have just taken the steps to start building links to www.towelsrus.co.uk, I am concerned about the state of external links to the site created by previous companies, i.e are they OK, or doing us harm, could I get more out f whats already in place or should we focus purely on getting new links?
We also have about 25 pages that have 302 errors and contain external links to the site. What should i do with these. try and get them re-directed to our site with appropriate anchor text or simply put a 301 re-direct in place?
In essence where I start, We want to build and increase traffic in particular for towels, bathrobes, dressing gowns and bolster our position as our positions are fluctuating a little but steadier than they have been.
Any help appreciated.
-
Hi Marcus,
OK I can tell you what I know as I only got involved on this the summer, some 12 months after the SEO contract finished with the old web provider, nothing actually happened thereafter.
I don't think we are working off a penalty, however we did have a lot of problems when the new site was launched last november with duplicate data 1000's of 301 redirects, 2500 pages 404'ing etc. This has only resolved it's self int he last 4 to 6 weeks after a lot of heart ache and dropped revenue. 404's are at 840ish and dropping daily now, duplicate content is down to 28 urls and dropping too. All because of bad advice hence why we are now looking after things in house.
Competition are your Amazons, Marks & Spencer, towels.co.uk, Christie Towels, Linens limited. I think we can better some of these for sure.
In terms of link build previously I have no idea how this was done. There was no blog, no social media (still none but looking at this) so I guess normal linking building routes.
There link profiles are massive in comparison to ours and i wonder how many we have lost because of all these bad 404 pages etc. So i would like to capture and re-direct anything that got value before the fall away for good.
I have tried signing up to link detective but they are not send a authorisation email so can;t gain access frustratingly.
Any more info i can provide let me know.
Thanks Craig
-
Thanks Irving you comment are much appreciated.
-
Hey Craig
The problem with any kind of question like this is that there are just so many moving parts so to provide any kind of valuable guidance we would at least want to know the following.
1. What is the history here? Are you working off a penalty?
2. What does the competition look like? Who are they?
3. What were the previous people doing with the link building?
There is some good data out there now about how your link profile should look and I have reviewed a lot of the best information at the link below:
http://www.bowlerhat.co.uk/blog/seo/anchor-text-ratios-and-link-building/
This does not take your competition into consideration though so you need to get an idea of what you need to do to move the dial. How many more links do your competitors have? What type of links? Can you do better? What types of links do you have?
If you have a pro account here then grab your link profile and run it through Link Detective and do the same with your competitors. Get a better idea of how they are ranking and build yourself a strategy around that.
Also, if you have penalty problems, make sure they are resolved and you have normalised things before just wading into link building. Again, there are a few good guides on how to diagnose and recover (or attempt to) from Penguin and Panda now so your time may be better spent there at the moment.
If you can answer the other questions maybe we can provide some more targeted advice.
Hope this helps!
Marcus -
Always look at your backlinks and try to remove bad ones. You sites link profile doesn't look too bad though at a quick glance.
301 the pages that are 302'ing to their most relevant pages.
I would go for longer tail keywords targeted on specific types of towels and robes IE "terry cloth towels"
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
-
So many links from single site?
this guy is ranking on all high volume keywords and has low quality content, he has 1600 ref domains check the attachment how did he get so many links from single site is he gonna be penalized YD2BvQ0
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SIMON-CULL0 -
Is there any ratio of dofollow and nofollow in back-links profile?
Hi, Is there any ratio between dofollow and nofollow back-links of a website? Do a website really need some nofollow back-links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
Link Brokers Yes or No?
We have a client who has asked us to talk to link brokers to speed up the back linking process. Although I've been aware of them for ages I have never openly discussed the possible use of 'buying' links or engaging in that part of the industry. Do they have a place in SEO and if so what is the MOZ communities thoughts?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wearehappymedia0 -
Links from cloud-based software
Hello fellow Mozzers! We've recently rewritten the content for a cloud-based project management tool, they then asked about what they could do to rank higher. As well as suggesting the usual content creation methods to help build links (which it looks like they'll need a LOT of - the field is either made up of terms that have no searches, or are extremely competitive), I wondered if there was any way of harnessing the fact they provide a cloud-based SaaS - a 'Powered by...' notice or somesuch? The only thing is they provide a project budget management tool, so I'm guessing the site itself wouldn't actually be coming into contact with the tool? Does anyone have any experience / advice working on a similar scenario where you've managed to leverage the tool for links where it's cloud-based? Thanks in advance for any help! Nick.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | themegroup0 -
To recover from Penguin update, shall i remove the links or disavow links?
Hi, One of our websites hit by Penguin update and I now know where the links are coming from. I have chance to remove the links from those incoming links but I am a little confused whether i should just remove the links from incoming links or disavow the links? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rubix0 -
How to build links to landing pages?
I have been using link baits like infographics to get quality links to my site and I have observed that these tactics are great to get links to the home page or that particular post page where infographic was originally posted. But we have various other important landing pages and we want to transfer some link equity to those pages. Whenever we publish an infographic we post it on out blog with an embed code carrying anchor text pointed to our site’s home page. People who share our infographic, normally links to the home page or to the post page where they find that particular item. So, what are the possible ways to get links to any other landing page? Can we post some bait on other landing pages as well. I need to know some more techniques to attract deep links. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shaz_lhr1 -
Removed Site-wide links
Hi there, I have recently removed quite a lot of site-wide links leaving the only link on homepage's of some websites, since doing this I have seen a dramatic drop on my keywords, going from position 2-3 to nowhere. Has anyone else experienced anything like this, should I expect to see a return on these keywords? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul780 -
Too many links?
I've recently taken over a site from another agency, which has hundreds of linking root domains. These domains are of very low quality and, in my opinion, are being ignored by Google. Is it best to 'clean up' some of these links, or leave them and start building quality links? I just don't want to waste time cleaning link profiles if there's no need.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A_Q0