I can get hundreds of natural links from real estate agent sites, but should I?

[esv2111]

I have a website that generate leads for real estate agents nationwide. I have an auto email that sends out the referral agreement and in the email I ask them to place a link to our website on their site somewhere to be a part of the program. I can get as many as 10-15 links in a few hours in every major city in the U.S. Most realtor websites have websites that are new, or haven't posted blogs and have a Moz domain score of 1 and trust score of 1.

I have been thinking of only selecting websites with descent Moz rankings instead of having all agents link to me, even ones with a low moz score. Is it a bad idea to get a bunch of links from legitimate websites that have low Moz scores?

[brettmandoes]

As long as the links are marked nofollow you don't have to worry about being penalized for unnatural link building. To stay in line with Google's webmaster guidelines you should make that a part of your strategy. If you're getting hundreds of dofollow links in a matter of days, Google is going to know those are unnatural whether they have a high DA or not.

Google has stated in the past that they may pass value through a nofollow link, so don't consider it a dead end for SEO efforts. I would consider any link from a legitimate website to be of value, regardless of what their moz score is. Remember that any score from moz or any other third party is an approximate measurement of Google's algorithm and does not guarantee anything. There may be something valuable to your website on other sites with a low DA.

[Gavo]

The first thing I would ask is how you define "legitimate"?

If these "legitimate" sites are websites for actual businesses in your industry then the answer to your question is no. It is not a bad idea to get a bunch of links from legitimate websites that have low Moz scores.

Moz scores only reveal certain aspects of what makes a good linking site. One aspect moz metrics do not measure is relevance. A relevant site in your industry with low Moz metrics linking to your site can possibly do more benefit to your website for SEO purposes than a non-relevant site, unrelated to your industry, with high Moz metrics.

Another consideration to take into account is a site may have low Moz metrics this year but grow to have high Moz metrics in future years. For most realtor websites that are new as you have mentioned, this is likely going to be the case. Getting a link on the site will grow in benefit as the site gains authority and trust with time. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with getting a suitable link on a site with low Moz metrics and there could be great upside future rewards.

The potential problem I'm seeing with your strategy though is that there is a strong possibility that the sites that put a link up to your site for the free program will not keep the link on the site for the long-term, especially when the link doesn't make sense on the site and possibly look spammy. Considerations to have the link applied with suitable contextual text that make sense for the linking site will both be more fitting for them and also beneficial for the SEO of your site.