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Hi there,

Just to add to the other replies, there isn't really a perfect time to start link building nor is there a fixed number of links that could get you penalized. The focus should be on quality and if you're getting links that are genuine, then you shouldn't have anything to worry about.

As others have said, you should start as soon as you have something worth sharing. If you publish a page and aren't sure why it deserves to get links, then you're going to struggle to get them no matter when you start. You should also remember that not every single page you publish will generate links and this is fine. You may publish one blog post which is very high quality but not necessarily going to get lots of links, but may rank well for a certain keyword. So try to focus on quality over quantity with the content that you create and promote only your best and more link-worthy content.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Rob,

There are some great answers in this thread, so I won't repeat too much. But just a few additional points:

• Ultimately, the quality of the site should be an important factor for you to consider. If the site is high quality, then it's likely to help you in terms of traffic and rankings no matter what the anchor text is.
• Anchor text still plays a big part in rankings. But as others have said, it can be risky to have too much anchor text which doesn't look natural i.e. is stuffed full of keywords. So you do need to be careful not to look manipulative and I'd advise not taking risks and focusing on the quality of the link as noted above.
• There are lots of other signals as well which Google can look at besides anchor text. A few may be - the position of the link on the page, the surrounding text, whether the link is in a list or not, whether the link is followed or not.. countless things which can help Google decide if a link is good or not.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Aaron,

The advice from the other guys here is spot on in that it's more about the quality of the domain linking to you than the number of links coming from it. If it's a relevant link and makes sense for users, it's pretty unlikely that it would cause you any problems.

Just to chime in on this question:

"My question is, is it worth have 2-4 articles from one highly relevant website, or will 1 article have the same weight?"

To give you a concrete example, I've guest blogged here on Moz multiple times and each post has links to my site. The first time a link was found to Google would have had more impact than the subsequent ones, but the subsequent ones would still help me because of the trust and relevance that the Moz.com domain has to my own. It's just that these links probably won't be as powerful as getting brand new links from new domains to my website.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Radi,

In terms of cleaning up your links, there is a good article here on Moz which may help with the process and it's still relevant:

https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-google-penalty-removal

Even though this is for penalty removal, step 3 talks about how to spot low quality links and before that, the article talks about how to gather your link data. I also wrote this guide a while ago which is still relevant except for the use of PageRank which is probably too out of date now. But the process is still relevant:

http://www.stateofdigital.com/step-by-step-guide-finding-low-quality-links/

To give you a very quick overview of the process, I tend to use something like this:

1. Gather all of your backlink data using Google Search Console, Open Site Explorer, Majestic and AHREFs
2. Combine it all into one dataset and remove duplicates
3. Look for patterns of links that may be low quality such as spammy anchor text, directories, article submissions etc
4. Review them in more detail to assess the quality

In terms of the citations for the old business name, these on their own shouldn't be harmful - it's perfectly normal for businesses to change names / rebrand etc. It's only an issue if the citations / links are low quality. It is probably worth changing the citations to the new business name where possible just to make sure that Google pass across any equity for them.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Becky,

There have been some good replies so far but to address your question here, I think it's definitely worth doing the outreach and trying to build relationships. Unless you're a massive brand, it's hard to get noticed online without some form of outreach, at least to begin with.

In terms of time, it really does depend on your other priorities. If I had to put a time on it and given that you haven't really started yet, I'd block out maybe half a day to do some research and contact a few sites and then gauge feedback. Then build up from there.

Bear in mind that some companies will hire SEO and PR agencies to just focus on promotion of their website, so it can take up a lot of time. But if you start on it yourself with a few hours, then you get a good understanding quickly of what's involved.

A quick heads up - it's not easy! But it's important so it's worth pursuing.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Brian,

To follow on from what Andreas has said, I think that Google certainly can figure out this kind of thing. The question then, as you point out is whether Google give credit for them. I think that if Google can figure it out, then they would give credit for that brand mention. It won't have the same effect as a solid link, but I can still see it helping in some form.

As to whether Google give credit or not, I don't have any evidence but I'd imagine it's dependant on a few things:

• If there are any other similar brand names / domains out there. So if there are a few different companies with similar names or domains, Google may not be able to figure out which one to attribute the mention to. Therefore they may not credit anyone or they may credit the wrong brand.
• The context in which the mention is given. If the mention is given in a piece of content which is the same topic as the domain, then it may be easier for Google to figure out and assign credit. If the content isn't the same topic, again it may be harder for them to attribute credit.

Ultimately, I guess the test is how the domain in question ranks for the brand name. If you rank number 1 and dominate, then it's pretty clear that Google have figured out that the two are connected. If the results are a little more mixed or you rank number 1 but not with a six pack of sub-page results, then again, Google may not know for sure.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Jeeyaul,

As long as the links pointing at the 2nd and 3rd level pages (and the site in general) are good quality, then I wouldn't worry about this too much. I certainly don't think it's bad for rankings and is actually more likely to help those 2nd and 3rd level pages rank better.

If, on the other hand, these links aren't great quality or could be seen as manipulative by Google, then that could be bad for rankings.

You could take a look at this blog post that I wrote late last year which talks about what makes a good and bad link:

https://moz.com/blog/the-anatomy-of-a-link

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Becky,

I'm not sure that product titles / descriptions would directly affect rankings as such i.e. writing good titles and descriptions is unlikely to make the category pages suddenly jump up in rankings. However I can see how it would help Google better understand the topic of the category as a whole, which may allow the category page to rank for a wider range of keywords.

The one thing to be careful of is that you don't accidentally confuse Google with your keyword targeting. So you should try and make sure that your target keywords map to different pages and don't cross over too much. If you cover the same keywords across a category page and a product page, it may confuse Google and they won't know which one to rank for that set of keywords - which means they may rank the wrong one and not rank as highly as they could.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Nicholas,

To lead on from what others have said, I'd agree that these links are unlikely to be passing value from a ranking perspective i.e. they're not likely to pass PageRank. Google do try and detect affiliate links and as Matt has said, they see these as placed to get affiliate revenue as opposed to being placed because someone genuinely endorses the website in question.

In terms of how this actually works, I'm not too familiar with Sharesale personally. But I know that similar affiliate programs provide plugins / scripts to affiliates which can make the link look natural, but when clicked, some JavaScript kicks in and adds the affiliate URL and the redirect. The website owner themselves can also do this themselves if they want to "mask" the affiliate link so that when someone hovers over the link, they see a nice clean URL rather than a potentially long and messy affiliate link.

In terms of what you can do - it really comes down to whether you value the traffic from the affiliate and if that drives revenue. If it does, then that's more valuable (I'd guess) than having a normal link. Plus, would they actually link to you at all if they couldn't get affiliate revenue? If not, then stepping out of the affiliate program may cause more harm than good. But it's really a balance between the affiliate revenue and potential link benefit.

I hope that helps a bit!

Paddy

Hi Lauren,

This technique can be very effective but it is getting harder to do because as you say, people need a reason to link and often don't like linking out.

My question would be - does your colleague have a page on your website? Something such as a profile page? If they do, then this may be a good way of providing a reason for the link because it's crediting the right person with the quote. Another possibility - have they used a photo of your colleague? Again if they have, then that may be another route.

I know this may be a little too late, but I wanted to mention it for the future - the quicker you can contact someone after an article has been published, the better chance you have of getting the link. You mentioned that the article in Reuters was from a few months ago which makes it tougher for you. So I'd advise trying to react as quickly as possible to things like this using a tool such as Buzzsumo of Fresh Web Explorer to find fresh mentions of people's names.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi David,

In terms of whether these links could hurt you, I'd be more concerned about the quality of the links than the topic. If the majority of links pointing at these user generated pages are low quality, then that would be of concern and you may want to disavow the ones that are very low quality such as the spammy sites / directories etc that you've found. You may even want to go as far as removing pages where the people who set them up are clearly spamming the pages hoping to get them to rank for some reason.

The fact they come from websites that are off-topic is a slight concern but they shouldn't "hurt" you as long as they are genuinely natural and it doesn't look like manipulation. If you're also generating links to other areas of the site that are on topic, then I wouldn't worry too much.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the response to David's question. I just wanted to clarify, I don't think David is referring to the topic of these pages or the links from these pages out to other websites. I believe he is referring to links from external websites pointing inwards towards these user generated pages. Therefore, Panda isn't something that should come into consideration.

Cheers.

Paddy

Hi Kadence,

There are some really good responses already and some good links that I'd recommend taking a look at. I just wanted to add a few more points:

• Try to focus on creating the type of content that may attract links - so when you're creating it or thinking about an idea, go to Google and find 10 people who you think would link to the content. If you can't do this, then it may not be a link-worthy idea. That doesn't mean you don't do it at all, but it may be a piece of content that is designed more to get organic traffic than links.
• I wouldn't worry too much about a site being new. The tactics are still pretty much the same and if you're focusing on white hat techniques, I don't think it makes too much difference that the site is new.
• Take a look at a few competitors and run them through Open Site Explorer to see how they are generating links. This isn't to say you should copy them 100% - you want to get better links than them But they can provide some context and inspiration for directions to go in.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi there,

Eric is right in that linking through other authoritative pages to your product can help increase the rankings and traffic to that page. Generating links to the domain generally can also indirectly help individual pages rank better as well.

Here are some specific ways that you may be able to generate links to either your product page directly or to other pages:

1. Check for people linking to broken pages on your website. You can check Mozscape and filter by 404 pages to find these. if you do find any, you can reach out to the people who link to get them to change it or you can 301 redirect to another relevant page.
2. If you use images on your product page or use your company logo, use a Google reverse image search to look for people using these images but not linking to you.
3. Generate content ideas for use-cases of your product. So you can create things like buying guides or long-form information guides that can support the product. You can use tools such as Huballin and Answer the Republic to find inspiration for these kind of ideas.
4. Use a tool like Buzzsumo to find what your competitors are doing and how they're generating links and social shares. I wrote a blog post on this a few months ago which you can read here.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Anup,

The standard way to get links from social websites such as Pinterest and Instagram is via a profile page. For example, here is the Adidas Football page on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/adidasfootball/

As you'll see, there is a link in the bio which, at the time of writing, goes to a YouTube video. But if you look at the source code of the page, this link is tagged with rel="nofollow me". The nofollow part tells Google and other search engines that this link isn't trusted and therefore shouldn't pass PageRank. You can read more on nofollow here:

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/96569?hl=en

The "me" part tells Google that the target of the link is directly associated to you. In the Adidas example, they link from their own Instagram page to their own YouTube channel. So this indicates to the search engines that the pages are linked together which can help them figure out which pages are the official ones of Adidas. You can read more about rel="me" here:

http://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-optimisation-seo/index-inclusion/google-rel-me/

On the Adidas Pinterest page here:

https://www.pinterest.com/adidas/

You can see a link to Adidas.com. Again, if you look at the source code, you'll see that this link is tagged with rel="nofollow".

So overall, you can't really get followed links from these platforms because if you could, they'd open themselves up to spam where people would create thousands of fake profiles just to get links.

I hope that helps.

Paddy

Hi Syed,

Thanks for the question.

There could be a number of reasons why you can't rank any higher in search results. One place to start is to look at the websites that rank above you and see what they have that you don't. The things I'd look for are:

• Are they stronger, mainstream brands or established websites who are naturally stronger than you? For example from the UK, I see websites such as Buzzfeed and Amazon ranking for this keyword. These types of competitors are going to be very hard to move above.
• Do they have more and better quality links than you? Radi pointed this out in his answer and Open Site Explorer can help give you an answer here.
• Is their content better than yours on this topic? Be honest with yourself here and see if they're doing anything better than you and see what you can learn from this.
• Do they have larger audiences (you can get an idea of this from their social channels or engagement such as blog comments) which means they may be generating more user signals to Google?
• Is their content more keyword focused than yours? You can use the Moz on-page grader here to get an idea of this.

It can be hard to jump above stronger websites, but focusing on lower competition, niche keywords first is definitely the right approach.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi,

I often see the same myself and the recent Moz ranking factors survey (and all previous ones) show that general opinion is that links are still the strongest signal when it comes to organic rankings.

As others in the thread have mentioned, your content can be great but if no one ever sees it, then it's a bit wasted. One of the ways people can see / discover your content is via links and Google see links as vote of confidence in your website or content.

The one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that it's often the high quality links that can differentiate websites in the long-term. Lower quality links can boost a site for a short period but will often not work long-term anymore. So you're right in that things often come down to backlinks, but it's usually high quality backlinks that make the difference.

Having said all of that, I wouldn't bet against Google bringing in more signals that could become as strong as links. Social signals may become stronger for example, as may user signals or brand / offline signals. Machine learning also plays a huge part in rankings which are largely driven by user behaviour.

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi there,

To add to what others have said, I don't think this is a good idea.

If you have lots of low quality backlinks already, then you need to clean these up by removing as many as possible and adding the rest to a disavow file in Google Webmaster Tools. Building more blog comment links is very, very unlikely to help with anything and may actually hurt you more.

Once you've removed or disavowed the low quality links, you should then concentrate on building good quality links instead.

Here are a few links that may be helpful:

https://moz.com/blog/link-audit-guide-for-effective-link-removals-risk-mitigation

https://moz.com/blog/category/link-building

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi there,

I'd agree with the other comments here in that those particular tactics are not as strong as they used to be and I'd be very surprised if I saw that they were actually improving your search results. They may work for a short period of time but sooner or later, they are going to stop working or worse, they could start hurting you if they cause a penalty.

I'd recommend focusing on tactics that are going to work in the long-term and not cause you long-term problems. It's just not worth taking shortcuts. I'd recommend taking a look at the Moz beginner's guide to link building:

https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-link-building

I hope that helps!

Paddy

Hi Tom,

I'd definitely have a go at the suggestions provided by Verb Interactive and see if that makes any difference. It could be a case of Google not yet approving your domain for rich snippets in search results. Have you ever had rich snippets appear in search results yet? If not, it can take some time and Google need to see the right markup and quality signals in order for this to happen.

Cheers.

Paddy