Moran Hi All, Just wanted to ask a technical question. I have been looking at a backlink service where its legitimate News sites in my country. Whats confusing is the description mentions it will be a 301 from an existing Page? and I cannot specify the anchor. Would any of you know how this is done IE give me more details. I'm assuming a news page would have to be live and indexed then 301'd more so how that 301 is done? i.e. on page , plugin or HTACCESS. will the juice pass in your experience? 2 👍🏽2 28 💬🗨📰👈
Maguire What they are describing is: They will find an expired domain that has backlinks from your desired News website, and will 301 redirect that domain to your desired page. Yes, it will pass the juice.
Moran ✍️ » Maguire Thanks Kevin i was interested in the how so it's a whole page redirect .. apparently they are the tesla live sites .. so must be old articles 301d Maguire » Moran Yes, so do ensure that the article where the link is coming from has some internal/external links itself. Nothing wrong with age, so long as it still get's crawled and has some weight itself.
Truslow 🎓 Your description says "You're getting links from legitimate business sites" – but that's not true. Other pages are getting links from legitimate business sites and they are redirecting to you. That's not really a link to your site. I can't say for certain how this would play out for you, but it sounds an awful lot like the NFT scam I was reading about last week. Basically, when you buy some non-fungible art or something on the block-chain, you THINK you're buying that art and that it's stored on the block. Once you buy it, it becomes yours. What is ACTUALLY stored on the block chain is a link to the art – which is stored just like any other file on the web – on some server somewhere. So now, you buy that NFT and you get your link – but then some time later you come back to put it on your new phone or laptop and they've deleted your art of the server or moved it somewhere else to sell it again. If you don't have access to the original on your old device or haven't backed it up somewhere, you're out of luck. It's gone. So much for the blockchain being so safe and secure, right? This sounds like the same sort of thing. You're not buying a link, you're buying a redirect. Sounds like they're scanning news sites for dead links, buying up the domain names that are available for those links, and then redirecting them to you. So now… what happens when someone else offers them more money? They can just change that redirect to the higher bidder. Or, if they guarantee the link for 1 year, then I guarantee that on day 366 they're going to kill that redirect and put it back in their inventory. Seems like a horrible plan for you, IMO.
Maguire » Moran The short version of that is – Make sure you are taking ownership of the expired domain with the sale. Truslow 🎓 A better short version is, if you feel you must go buy links, make sure they are actual links. 😉 Maguire » Truslow 301's are links. 301 is just the server response that forwards them. Truslow 🎓 Sort of. Here's the thing with those. Google has stated (pretty recently in fact) that once a year has gone by, Google has transferred all the stuff from the old page (that's redirecting) to the new page and so it's okay to turn off that redirect. So now, that suggests that if that redirect was used by someone else for a year – then THEY got all that value and that redirect has nothing left to pass. OR It means that once they take that away to resell it after the guarantee is up, you lose the value. One or the other. A "real link" would be under the control of the person who made the link. A fake link is one that is not a direct link, but rather one that someone hijacked/stole and who is willing to let you have it for a price – while they (the person/company that decided that this was a morally and ethically sound thing to do) retain control over things. At best this is a "link rental" scheme. And the thing is, you'll probably never know. The Domain Authority (DA) and Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR) score calculations aren't savvy enough to pick up on what REALLY happens in this situation – just as I have to guess, so do they – and they're going to make the choice one way or the other. (Probably showing you getting credit – even though none may exist.) Maguire » Truslow Not sort of, but you can believe that if you like, I don't expect you to know everything. And no not Google, A talking head rep John Mueller said that in passing in a Google hangouts. Much like a lot of things he says, they're proven wrong time and time again in the field. Any backlink can be deleted at any time for many reasons natural or paid. That's why I suggested to the OP, if you are buying redirects, ensure you are buying the domain they are attached to. Here's a backlink to this post https://bit.ly/377lEi7 it's a 301. SEO Signals Lab Truslow 🎓 No… they aren't… look here. Here's Gary Illyes comment on it. There's also a link in there which goes to the documentation that explains that and other related topics. I'm not sure what John said in passing, but here's what Google says in detail: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-keep-redirects-live-for-one-year/414234/ ""Keep the redirects for as long as possible, generally at least 1 year. This timeframe allows Google to transfer all signals to the new URLs, including recrawling and reassigning links on other sites that point to your old URLs." "Transfer all the signals" and "reassigning links on other sites that point to your old URLs". So that is why I'm saying is that if he's second generation of buying that link, then he gets no value from it because the first person who bought it got all the links reassigned and and all the signals were already transferred. And, in any situation… a 301 only passes the juice until Google has done all that transferring and reassigning. Once that has been completed, the juice flows through the link directly to the new location as if the 301 wasn't there – and even if it isn't there. And THAT is why it's only "sort of". You're correct in that he would be better off buying the URL – but he'd be better off still, just finding that situation and buying it himself. Even if the domain came with the deal, he has no way of knowing if it has any juice left to give after being in the hands of these brokers for a while. SEARCHENGINEJOURNAL.COM Google: Keep Redirects Live For One Year
Ammon Johns 🎓 I've done Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in virtually every market or vertical I can think of and I've never needed to use a 'link building service' at all. I've had a few clients that tried them, a few that were even fans, but in every single case we got far better links, with infinitely more value, and cheaper, by doing content marketing – building content specifically to attract links we wanted. There are clients with no other options – those that won't build content because they don't want to change a single word on their site, nor are willing to produce content to go on other sites that carry a link to their site. In those cases, then sure, they have nothing with which to earn a link other than money. But those are like the companies you used to find in the 90s that wanted to rank for terms without actually changing any of their content so the page could rank for them, and so had to rely on cloaking or funny redirects. The inherent problem with buying links is that you have to get them from someone willing to sell them. That usually means that they were also willing to sell them to all the other companies that couldn't earn links any other way and had to buy them. Which basically means that in terms of the link graph, you've linked yourself closely to poor quality sites, via pages with no trust. There are paid link builders who very carefully and brilliantly source links from places that don't usually sell them, and who still have the 'trust' factor in their sites, but that's a time intensive service, has a quality requirement on top, and is really often just paying someone more expensive to create content to do a guest post on a site that doesn't usually accept guest posts. For less money you can usually offer some kind of prize draw or competition, and let it get links from all the sites that exist to list and promote such giveaways. Maguire Shocking, both Mods giving 1000 words of self righteous analogy, without answering the actual question.🤣
Moran ✍️ » Maguire Yeah look i get what they are saying but yes i was asking how it's done ✅ Ammon Johns 🎓 » Moran And it's a lot like asking a chef how they make a dish from a ready-meal, and not a fresh ready-meal, but one rescued from a bin after its sell-by date expired. They really don't. Not if there is any alternative at all and unless someone has a gun to their head, or it is some impossible to refuse dare. That may not be the answer you want, but it is the truth. Your situation, this 'service' as described, isn't even a link building service at all. Instead they are ranking some URL that isn't yours, and redirecting it, and you have to just trust that despite falsely selling it as "link building", and thus already being a straight-up bare-faced lie, that somehow they'll be really honest in their dealings. It's a bullshit service that no sane SEO should touch with a ten foot pole. They are not selling you a link, they are selling you some redirected traffic, and could redirect it anywhere else without a moment's notice. You can't even be sure they are redirecting Googlebot's IP address the same way they are redirecting yours. If that still sounds like something you want to do, well, that's your choice. But you are not going to hear any pro's advice on 'how' to do something nobody should do. Moran ✍️ » Ammon Johns I wasn't even entertaining the idea of using it i was trying to understand how it could work .. Even having you comment on my post is a privilege .. as my first sentence said it was a technical question not a moral or best practice one .. thanks for your time and perspective 👍 Truslow 🎓 » Moran & Maguire In my post, if you actually read it, I explained exactly how it would work in theory: "Sounds like they're scanning news sites for dead links, buying up the domain names that are available for those links, and then redirecting them to you." It's the same principle as you buying an expired domain and redirecting it to you. And then I went on to explain how, in all likelihood, it wouldn't ACTUALLY work. And in a follow up post I explained how it could turn out that it LOOKS like they are working because it brings up your Ahrefs Domain Rating (DR)/Domain Authority (DA) – but it's not actually doing anything to help you. Maguire » Truslow I learned a lot about NFT's, but not much about redirects. I deal with dozens of such redirects every week, and I can assure you they work perfectly fine. My client sites are in niches Pharma and Casino, where link placements are harder to come by. This technique works, and has done forever. You can believe whatever you like, it makes no difference to me whatsoever. Just when you push it on people as knowledge, when you don't actually know yourself is the problem. Truslow 🎓 » Maguire Are you working with redirects where you are in control of them and the domain they are redirecting through? Or working with redirects where someone else controls the domain and the redirects themselves? There is BIG difference there. Maguire » Truslow I've said it twice already. We find the domains, and we sell them to the clients (the domain, not just the links). How we use them is slightly different however. We focus on 100% relevant expired's with 100% relevant backlinks. We generally don't point them at the main money site either, unless it's a very powerful domain. Normally we would use these domains to point at existing backlinks, to bolster their Pagerank (PR). Truslow 🎓 » Maguire Exactly, so you're describing a situation that you control and you're comparing it to a different situation (here… you're not even getting the whole domain – just some of the links from the inventory) that is under someone else's control. It's different so the results wouldn't be the same. If you don't like Ammon's and my responses to things, just block us and you won't have to see them. But please stop coming out and calling us wrong and self righteous with an Apples and Oranges comparison as your proof. Actually… please just stop poking at people and saying things about them regardless of whether you have a better answer or not. Maguire » Ammon Johns This analogy is completely backwards to how backlinks and the PR algorithm works. A freshly made page or backlink is at its absolute weakest when first created. Firstly, a freshly made backlink needs to be crawled, indexed, and PR weighted, this takes time. Secondly, the links built to it will also require time for the same, and so on down the tiers to infinity. The longer it remains within the index, the more likelihood it will have of gaining PR. My analogy would be, "The older the berry the sweeter the juice." Maguire » Truslow The OP asked a technical question, which I'd answered precisely, and hours before yourself and Ammon chimed in and muddied the waters with 2000 words of confusing analogies. I'd never block either of you, I respect you both. And it's fine too disagree with someone, so long as you're qualified to debate the subject. I love you brother, don't take it personal. ❤🤙 Truslow 🎓 » Maguire You came to the conclusion that it would pass juice. (Which was the last part of his question). I came to the conclusion that, in a case where if they were recycling these, they may not pass juice. And Ammon pointed out several other problems (the close association of yourself to others who may be abusing the system and therefore more likely to actually harm than help.) So… it might work. It might be a wash. It might be harmful – and all three of those are valid answers. Keep in mind, too – we're not just answering the question in hand here, but we're discussing the topics in a more broad sense in hopes that others with similar questions can learn from it too. So anyway – ease back on the snark and we'll be good. Cheers. Ammon Johns 🎓 » Maguire Aw, thank you for explaining how you think PageRank works. Obviously in all the decades I've been around, I've never studied it, and nobody ever explained it. All the various Google engineers I've known for years, and spent hours chatting with, never ever mentioned it… Of course, you haven't accounted for either 'Fresh-Boost' nor for 'EverFlux', the two major factors introduced way, way back specifically to counterbalance 'links acquired over time' as an unfair factor, back when it really was. You apparently are unaware of why there is no longer any need for 'the Google dance', or how PageRank started to operate in real time much more, and how updates and estimates are done continually in the past decade and a half. You seem to have missed some years of discussion about Google caching pages, and the papers that made clear they know *when* a link was added to a page. You know, that whole reason that a lot of those who do link-building from expired domains carefully recreate the last Wayback version as closely as possible… And all of that is okay. Those are really advanced topics beyond the average. Most people won't have heard of them, won't have considered them. However, if you check out pro resources like https://the.domain.name/ you might find that a lot of people have spent time thinking about those deeper, more nuanced aspects of getting value from domains. THEDOMAINNAME Domain Name Intelligence & Expired Domains for Online Marketing – The.Domain.Name Maguire » Ammon Johns You talk about the subject like you've read it in a book, and never tested anything yourself. Backlinks are not your thing, and your own words clearly display that. Ammon Johns 🎓 » Kevin Guys like you are always hilarious to me. I mean, YOU'RE the guy so bad at link building generally that you have to buy the leftovers from others on their discarded domains, telling me that links aren't *my* thing. I'm not just laughing out loud at that, I have genuine tears in my eyes from it. I have mastered link building tricks you've never even had to think about, like the old hallway pages (because Google wasn't the first engine to ignore orphan pages), or how to link to multiple alternate versions of a page built as doorway pages without creating duplicate content. Or how to properly cascade PageRank through a dynamic site with millions of pages. Or how to build links to a page that doesn't exist yet (something News sites have to think about so that when a story breaks, they can almost instantly give it juice). I was working out methods for context based faceted navigation, offering visitors a navigation menu specific to their intent that effectively changes the site structure around known interest parameters before WordPress was a thing. So yeah, I know a fair bit about not just testing, but developing new techniques from scratch. Hey, maybe that's why I don't have to rely on scraps leftover from the link-building of sites that failed huh? But, I'm sure you can carry on picking up scraps, selling to people who also know no better, and telling yourself this makes you a 'link builder'. That's entirely your prerogative, but you'll miss things like why most links (and all PageRank) decline in value over time if you buy into the widespread myths, such as 'aged links'. Whatever you decide to do in future, cheers for the laughs.
Morgan To answer your questions. 1) Yeah, they'll just redirect an existing page on their site to one of your pages 2) You can't choose the anchor because redirects don't have anchors. It's a response code that tells your browser "the content you're looking for is no longer on this URL, it moved to this new URL" 3) In terms of how it's done from the technical point of view.. It can be done using the htaccess file, a plugin like "301 Redirects" if it's WordPress, it can even be a JS redirect.
Ammon Johns 🎓 » Morgan There's even Meta REFRESH redirects that are treated as soft 301 and 302 redirects according to the timing on the refresh.
