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Hi there I would be extremely careful here, according to Google this would be considered a link scheme. One of the examples are as follows: Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites While I understand your intentions are good, this is an old link tactic that Google and other search engines caught on to awhile back. I would recommend against it and instead focusing on brand building via content, SEO, and other opportunities. Let me know if this helps or doesn't make sense. Good luck! Patrick

You'd be doing this with the big site's permission, right? Then yes, as Chris said use a canonical pointing to the original source. That content on your site won't be indexed, but it will be there for visitors to your site to read without leaving your site, which is why I am assuming you'd do this in the first place. And to make a quick point about the dreaded "duplicate content penalty"--it's not a penalty as such--Google just makes a call on which version to index and which one to drop. In this case, the original would probably indexed with or without the canonical (though you should use it anyway). That being said, if you have a lot of scraped content, Google may not consider yours to be a quality site and that creates problems.

Awesome, thank you!

Hi poke1! If Gaston's replies helped, mind marking one or more as a "Good Answer?" It'll get him some bonus MozPoints, and it's helpful for us. Otherwise, how can we be of more help?

I haven't heard of this service, but if you can figure out where any of the indexes grab links, then they're doing that. For Google specifically, they're likely going to post your links on G+. Links posted via G+ see a quicker rate of indexation, and that's something a 3rd party could do without having access to your backend, changing code, or fixing your website.

Over a year ago haha

We have a similar scenario. Many of the competitors have got more internal equity passing links and some of our clients have 0 or 1. We know that our clients have more links than these. We crawled the sites using the https://moz.com/researchtools/crawl-test and still showing same results. Any idea?

The article that PaddysDisplays has linked to, doesn't really cover this because what you are doing doesn't sound like the author link is spammy. Yes, if there are links in the article that are pointing to an external site, then I would tend to err on the side of caution if it is done for link benefits - but author links? I have seen many sites that carry an author link that are followed without issue. Have you noticed any problems in what you are doing - any signs of a penalty? -Andy

Hi Greg, As Moz's Open Site Explorer (like most other link indexing tools) crawls sites independently to discover links pointing back to your site, there is often disparity between the numbers reported between of them and with what Google reports in Search Console. That being said, Moz will likely find these links eventually, they just may be in the queue for indexing, or were not present the last time Moz visited those site's pages. Thanks, Jake

I'm afraid link building really isn't something that can be outlined like that. It's about building relationships and putting together useful content that other web site owners and influencers will be interested in linking to, and there are countless ways of doing that. The best advice I can give at this point is to read through the Beginner's Guide to Link Building and go from there.

Hi Igor, thanks for the reply, I will check out Serpstat.

thank you!

As Dmitrii mentions, disavowing links isn't going to change your rankings, especially overnight. Removing poor back links is an excellent first step, the next step is to get a well balanced SEO campaign planned out. Start creating some entertaining, helpful content pieces, then get that content in front of people. Build some high quality back links to the site, and continue doing it. Show the search engines you've made changes to move in the proper direction. It'll take time, but it'll be beneficial. Chris Adficient.com

Wonderful, thank you Everett.

I agree 100% with both Donna and vcj! If you have the opportunity to get the backlink, I would take it. The more links you have to your site (from reputable sources) will demonstrate to Google that you have an influential/informative website. As long as the page that is linking to you is relevant, there is no harm from getting the link. Keep up the great work getting those links!

Hi, No, those links won't affect the root domain. Just marking them as nofollow is enough, leaving them as plain text is even extremist. There will be no harm. Cheers. GR.

Hey Brian, Andy's suggestions are good ones, and I'll just add to this that your Charlottesville page exists in a much less competitive market than your Atlanta page, by dint of population alone. Barring any technical issues with the website, it may be that Google simply finds your bands by location page to be too weak to compete in Atlanta.

I think our situation falls into that of the gentleman with the NYT links, except our sites aren't quite that bad. We do occasional round-up posts (ie: best co-working spaces, etc.) and some of those folks link back to us to show that they were included. Is that OK?

Hi David, I agree with Tymen—you should continue guest blogging AND building out the content on your own website. The reason why that page ranks so well on the SERPs is because Photography Life's has a high domain authority. If you had posted that guest blog on your own personal website, it is probable that it would not even rank on Page One of Google. By creating more guest blogs for website with high domain authority, you will likely improve your own site's authority—thus increasing the chance of having your site rank better! In all, backlinks are an off-site way of increasing your SEO, rankings, and thus, potentially leads and sales. Backlinks are judged on their domain site quality for users, relevancy to your site’s content, and domain authority. As with most SEO tactics, there are no quick fixes and easy wins within a link building strategy. We've written a blog on what makes a good backlink so be sure to check that out if you need more information. Hope this helps! Good luck.

Hi, I have to agree with the previous responses. Anchor text is important because it gives web site visitors (and search engines) a hint about the web page or web site they are about to visit (if they click the link). This is why you DON’T want to use common calls to action like, “click here” or “our website.” Instead, you want to use keyword rich anchor text. But you don't want it to become very spammy sounding—so keep this in mind when creating content. Anchor text helps search engines understand what the page is about and it also helps establish site architecture. And depending on the anchor text of the link, it might even increase your rankings for certain keywords! As an example, if you’re having a contest to give away a free website makeover for the HVAC industry, make free HVAC website the anchor text! If thousands of web sites link to your site using the anchor text ‘leading residential furnace installers‘ there’s a good chance that you’re in the residential HVAC business and you install furnaces! I hope this helped! But if you're looking for more information check out our blog that discusses if you need links to rank on Google.