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Thanks  Rebecca, frustrating though as our competitor is ranking top for 'web development' local searches and having run OSE on their site the only reason is by adding anchor links to sites they've developed.  This is generating them dozens of new enquiries pcm compared to our zero!

Publish articles that are "best on the web for their topic" (or as close as I can come to that) and always with unique perspectives and great images.  If you do that your visitors will spread the word about your content for you. Grammarly, Hemingway, any good graphics program

Thanks! Good to know

Hey Charles, It's always better to get the links on the relevant pages. I usually follow this approach, Suppose you have a site Abc.com and you keywords are "android app development", "iPhone app development", "mobile app development companies". Now in this case, my preference would be to have different pages for "android app development" & "iPhone app development" and all the related links should come on these pages. But if I get the opportunity to play on generic keywords or ""mobile app development companies"" my preference would be the home page. The logic is simple, get the links on the best and relevant pages even if it's a blog page so your referral visitor can stay on your page. Even from the core SEO perspective, it's good to have links to the inner pages to boost their authority. Hope this helps! Umar

Hi there Okay cool - didn't want to give you information you didn't need. I'd also take a look at the Moz SERP analysis - tons of great information there that can help guide you in the direction you should take with your efforts. Good luck!

If they have follow links, the deal's backlink will enhance your SEO efforts as they are legitimate links that are there for a helpful to the user purpose and coming from a strong domain.

I agree.  And that is the reason why it is better to spend your time improving your website than worrying  about a site above you that is impossible to understand.   It's possible that they earned those rankings.  It's possible that Google has incorrectly ranked them (which most often happens in low competition SERPs such as the ones here).

I'm not going to go into the DA vs. PA issue. What I am going to do is focus on the issue Umar brings up.  That's much more of a concern than the "Science" of DA vs PA since those are really only a tiny consideration across a much broader number of ranking, authority, quality, relevance and trust factors for links from one site to another and not something you would even be able to figure out if you thought it mattered. The risk of cross-linking the way you described on the other hand, is something that could risk both sites being penalized.  How much is the deal worth when considering what the harm would be if either, or both sites were penalized? Gamble if you want. Just recognize the price paid for gambling that gets snagged in Google's spam trap.

The links I looked at were being passed through with a 301 status code, which would be fine for SEO, but then they're passed through a 307, which is a temporary redirect akin to a 302. This Moz article notes that most major crawlers treat it the same as a 302, which implies that it's unlikely to pass any link value through to the destination site.

There's no guarantee, other than the site isn't likely to rank for Louis Vuitton. In general, Google will pick the best of the worst in any niche/vertical which has a proclivity for link spam. So that's something to consider, if such is the case. Definitely disavow anything you deem inappropriate. Make sure to mention the circumstances in a properly formatted disavow file. A couple of good resources one should keep in mind are this Google Webmaster's answer and Dr. Pete's post. You may want to buy the domain and get a simple, single, page up and running. Then connect it to Search Console/Webmaster Tools, to get a better idea of the domain's link profile. Robert Fisher's people, over at drumBeat, noticed that a lot of sites block bots associated with popular backlink reporting tools. Once you have your link list, load it up in Screaming Frog and make sure to spoof the Google bot user agent. Can you associate any sort of penalty that lines up with the time the domain went rogue? I'm sure it's probably difficult, given the nature of the case. No matter what, make sure to mention the circumstance of the links in the disavow. Still, I would imagine it's probably not difficult to get the client to rank for his name. This is probably true if the targets are something like Name Surname Political Office Location. Without the ability to dig into it further, I would say the domain probably is salvageable if you take precautions.

Hi Derek, I noticed most sites if not all in the linking domains section have a link to there own site. How do i do this? This won't help with what you are trying to do. DA (Domain Authority) will build over time as you start work on your SEO. I suggest you read their Beginners Guide to SEO as this will give you a good understanding of what you should be doing on your site. You will find that every site has Internal Links to their own pages. This is gained through Menus or Inline Links where you reference another page on your site. This is used to help Google understand which of your pages are more important and is useful when you are crafting your site structure. A big part of your SEO strategy, should be External Links. These will help further boost your DA, but there is a very definite art in doing this and I suggest you read these references before even starting. Link Building in a Post Panda World Beginners guide to Link Building Link Building: The Definitive Guide I would also have some sort of content strategy in place as this will help you establish trust with Google and get some great content written for your blog (if you are running with one). I hope this helps a little. -Andy

Here is my take on this! In my personal opinion all TLDs are similar in the eye of Google it’s just that people tend to consider .edu, .gov and .org links more authoritative and link to it naturally as compare to .com and .net domains and which is why special TLDs tend to win the race but this is not always the case. My advice is to see if the org domain has a good and clean link profile and if they are getting a link from quality sources, then go for it and if not the idea is to pass it like any other non-quality domain you pass. In my opinion, saying that Google give importance to some domains as compare to others is nothing but a myth. Hope this helps!

Donald seems pretty spot-on, but may I ask how old this site is? A DA or PA of 1 usually just means we haven't indexed the site.

Thanks for the response, the article already had these so I guess I'll just chock this one up as a "natural link from good content" win!

Although you have more than enough answers I figured I would chime in since I have had some experience with this. Bottom line, whatever work you put in, you will get out. Google progressively becomes more and more intelligent and is more and more capable of determining who wrote what first. Simply put, there is no easy way to get content anymore. Search Engine Land wrote a great article about content. Now, we are in a time where EVERYBODY writes content. I'm not totally sure what you do but I'm guessing its wedding photography? I personally think that utilizing your creative gift of photography for links is a great idea. Maybe think of some other ways you can leverage that talent. Make an infographic of how wedding photography has changed over the years, or a youtube video on the 10 best wedding tips. As a wedding photographer (if that's what you do, I'm sure you have plenty of tips that are outside of box. Remember, if you pay with bananas you are gonna get monkeys. Same goes with SEO. If shortcuts were easy and effective, they would just be the way.

Thanks for the well documented answer. Didn't go through all the resources mentioned yet, but I know what I'm doing tonight I think

Hi Umar - This is good advice, and consistent with my thinking. The educational site is ranking very well and we're in the process of giving it a facelift - new design, etc. It is not a .edu - it is essentially a large blog site that discusses a specific area of homeopathy. The content produced for the educational site will not be thin. I also plan on introducing more outbound links to other authoritative sites that are not the commercial site to diversify the link profile. Much appreciated!

Hi there I wanted to put a couple of resources here that can help to add to Everett's already great answer. Check out these: Should I Rebrand and Redirect My Site? Should I Consolidate Multiple Sites/Brands? (Moz) Web Site Migration Guide - Tips For SEOs (Moz) Hope these help answer your questions! Good luck!

Alick It wouldn't surprise me if Google already discounts the major coupon sites in their algorithm for this very reason.  It doesn't want to reward link building like this (if some were inclined to do it this way), while equally it wouldn't want to penalise legitimate sites that use them. I think you'd be fine.

You are welcome Laura -Andy