Blog Swapping
-
Hi,
I know that it's not advised to engage in link swapping activities, but what about when it's actually useful for our readers?
As an example, I'm writing a guest post on a hen party website on how to choose the right hairdresser for your wedding day (relevant content to both their site and mine). They asked if I'd like a post in return about the best way to do makeup if you're going on a fancy dress night or hen party (which is again relevant to both our audience groups and will be of great interest to them).
Is this sort of link swapping okay, when the primary goal is to actually provide our audience with a richer experience, or would this still raise red flags for search engines?
Thanks!
-
I think the easiest answer to EGOL is that you would be missing out on a backlink. The whole question here, and thank you to Philip Crothers for asking it, is if this act would be positive or negative from Google's perspective. If Google is saying this is a reciprocal link and all reciprocal links are bad, then I understand. However, if it is truly unique and relevant, would Google be okay with it and could you actually benefit from the backlink? If Google is okay with it, and you will benefit from the backlink, then I think the easy answer is to include the link to your site.
Let's look at the example EGOL provided: For attribution you can say... "Philip Crothers is an expert on wedding day hairstyles and is the owner of WeddingDayHair.com" I'm assuming you are saying just use the URL as text, not a link. I understand what you're saying and I think that's a great idea. However, I think there is some value to the user in the form of convenience if in fact they want to visit WeddingDayHair.com, it would be easier to just click the link rather then copy and paste it into your browser. So I do think there is value in the difference. However, what the most ideal solution is will depend on if Google sees this act as a positive or negative one. I would love to hear an accurate answer on this specific situation.
-
Thanks!
That's a great idea. This is exactly why I love these Q&A areas, everyone is so willing to help and provide assistance.
Once again, thanks!
-
Why not just forget about the link and trade these great articles?
That would be a content gift for the visitors, OK with Google and you get a little diversity in content for your blog.
For attribution you can say... "Philip Crothers is an expert on wedding day hairstyles and is the owner of WeddingDayHair.com"
Now you have a brand mention that can still drive traffic and might be a small signal for Google.
Everybody wins. No worries.
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
-
A number of times you should use your keyword in a guest blog
Is it true that if you want to rank for a chosen keyword, you have to mention that keyword 3%-5% of the whole content (in a guest blog)?
Link Building | | FilkaCer2 -
Getting links on old blog posts
There's 100 of blogs with posts that link to my competitors, but don't link to my site.They are mostly lists. Eg: "The best Sites to get blue widgets" I was thinking about getting in touch with these blogs, and asking them to take a look at my site, to see if perhaps they would add it to the list. In fact, I started doing it and I got some links already. Now I am starting to worry that Google could consider these links as unnatural, because, you know, the algos are not exactly perfect. Anyway, the links are important for the exposure anyway. I've two questions: 1. Is there any chance I'll be penalized? 2. May I get a SEO benefit from this links?
Link Building | | elefantes0 -
Website/blog list to get quality backlinks?
Hi Everyone says quality backlinks increase ranking of your website. Can you please suggest a list of good websites and blogs from where I can get quality backlinks and how to do that. I have one person at my disposal full time to do manual commenting or any manual tasks for getting backlinks but how should i approach this problem (of getting backlinks). Where do I start. For information, my website provides online services (its an ecommerce site) and also has a blog in subdirectory. refer to www.geekwik.com www.geekwik.com/blog Would like to become top ranker on search for these services (eg 'logo design services', 'website programming', 'content writing', 'hire virtual assistant' etc) Also anyone interested to become our SEO consultant or SEO service provider (of course paid) is most welcome 🙂 Thanks in Advance!
Link Building | | geekwik0 -
Anchor text in blog boilerplate
At the end of our company blog posts, we have a short paragraph about our main service using anchor text linking to the homepage. I read somewhere (but can't for the life of me find it again) that this method can lead to Google ranking these blog posts lower than if they weren't there. Is there any correlation between internal linking using boilerplate anchor text and lower ranking for those internal pages? I understand that this isn't a top priority as Google is placing less value on anchor text, but don't want to do anything that could potentially hurt, either. Thanks.
Link Building | | brandonRT0 -
External linking on a company blog
This has been bothering me for a long time. Our company has a sub-domain blog that gets a respectable amount of traffic but not a lot of SER. Most of our traffic comes from social shares (although we do rank really high for a few key searches). The blog manager is convinced that providing external links to additional resources or source material "dilutes the SEO juice" for the blog. URLs are provided, but they aren't linked. Attempts to sway her to the idea that external links are actually Good Things® have been stonewalled. Tell me I'm right and why.
Link Building | | AMSVansSEOTeam0 -
Should I remove links from my internal blog?
I have blogs/news sites on every one of my clients' websites (each representing a different business within the same industry - self storage). On each of these blog sites, I have a writer who places about 3-5 exact keyword match links (varying anchor text) to give interlink juice to the other off-site businesses owned by the client. Each of these blogs receive about five posts per week. I am sure this is mega-over-optimizing and a stupid thing to do considering penguin. So, my questions are: Moving forward - 1. Should i stop adding so many blog articles to each site? 2. How many interlinking anchor texts should I use per blog? 3. Should I go back and either get rid of all those interlinks on past blogs or just trash the blog articles altogether? Please help if you can - I very much appreciate the responses best bd
Link Building | | creativeguy0 -
301 redirect blog network to main site, good or bad?
Hi, Here is a newbie question. When we launched our web shop 18 months ago I started eight blogs on a different host with keyword rich domain names to get some links to the shop. Today I don't update them, but they have a lot of links to our shop and the blogs have something like DA 20 and PA 30-40. There are lots of links between the blogs as well. Can I do 301 redirects of the blogs/posts to the web shop to rank higher in the SERP for the keywords? If I do, what happens to the links from the blogs to the shop? Will the shop loose a lot of links, but gain in PA, DA, mR etc? Overall, would the shop/main site benefit from this? Or should I just leave the blogs and not mess with them? They don't have much traffic. I appreciate any input, thanks!
Link Building | | DanielSndstrm0 -
Do links to blog.domainname.com help the www.domainname.com subdomain?
Hi, Do links to pages within the blog.domainname.com subdomain help the rankings of pages within the main www.domainname.com subdomain? (where "domainname" is the same of course). Thanks.
Link Building | | geoffh0