Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Are URL shorteners building domain authority everytime someone uses a link from their service?
-
My understanding of domain authority is that the more links pointing to any page / resource on a domain, the greater the overall domain authority (and weight passed from outbound links on the domain) is.
Because URL shorteners create links on their own domain that redirect to an off-domain page but link "to" an on-domain URL, are they gaining domain authority each time someone publishes a shortened link from their service? Or does Google penalize these sites specifically, or links that redirect in general? Or am I missing something else?
-
Ryan, thanks for responding, but I may have not been clear in my question. Your answer is about domain authority for the ultimate destination of the link; let's say http://bit.ly/xyz redirects to http://www.seomoz.org/q/are-url-shorteners-building-domain-authority-everytime-someone-uses-a-link-from-their-service
And let's say 20 people on tweet the http://bit.ly/xyz link, and the text of several of those tweets is reproduced (link included) on eight websites. Does http://bit.ly 's domain authority increase as a result of those 20 tweets and eight website links?
-
Jay, you are asking a great question and the answer is yes, links that are offered from URL shortener services build DA.
Think of those links as 301s. When you use http://bit.ly/xyz that URL is 301'd to the actual web address. As with all 301s, you do lose a bit of link juice due to the 301, but 90%+ of the value will remain.
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
-
Reasonable Cost for Link Building Service
We need about 5-10 high quality links to our website created every month. We need the link targets researched and outreach done to these sites. The sites most be legitimate and high quality; decent domain authority, real sites, not phony low quality sites. Sites that would show traffic in similarweb.com with decent metrics. We absolutely want to avoid any link building schemes that could get us penalized. I have been told that such a project would take a qualified SEO about 8-10 hours per months (more during the additional month of research, less afterward). As such, what is a reasonable cost for these 5-10 links per month? $300, $500, $700, more? I only want to work with a highly experienced SEO, native english speaker with extensive experience. What is fair? I don't want to overpay or to under pay. Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location error using pro-sitemaps.com
Hey, guys, We are using the pro-sitemaps.com tool to automate our sitemaps on our properties, but some of them give this error "This url is not allowed for a Sitemap at this location" for all the urls. Strange thing is that not all of them are with the error and most have all the urls indexed already. Do you have any experience with the tool and what is your opinion? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lgrozeva0 -
I have a lot of spammy links coming to my 404 page (the URLs have been removed now). Should i re-direct to Home?
I have a lot of spammy links pointing at my website according to MOZ. Thankfully all of them were for some URLs that we've long since removed so they're hitting my 404. Should i change the 404 with a 301 and Re-Direct that Juice to my home page or some other page or will that hurt my ranking?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jagdecat0 -
Case Sensitive URLs, Duplicate Content & Link Rel Canonical
I have a site where URLs are case sensitive. In some cases the lowercase URL is being indexed and in others the mixed case URL is being indexed. This is leading to duplicate content issues on the site. The site is using link rel canonical to specify a preferred URL in some cases however there is no consistency whether the URLs are lowercase or mixed case. On some pages the link rel canonical tag points to the lowercase URL, on others it points to the mixed case URL. Ideally I'd like to update all link rel canonical tags and internal links throughout the site to use the lowercase URL however I'm apprehensive! My question is as follows: If I where to specify the lowercase URL across the site in addition to updating internal links to use lowercase URLs, could this have a negative impact where the mixed case URL is the one currently indexed? Hope this makes sense! Dave
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | allianzireland0 -
URL Value: Menu Links vs Body Content Links
Hi All, I'm a little confused. I have read a number of articles from authority sites that give mixed signals over the importance of menu links vs body content links. It is suggested that whilst all menu links spread link juice equally, Google does not see them as favourably. Inserting a link within the body will add more link juice value to the desired page. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks Mark
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mark_Ch0 -
Can you redirect specific sub domain URLs?
ello! We host our PDFs, Images, CSS all in a sub domain. For the question, let's call this sub.cyto.com. I've noticed a particular PDF doing really well, infact it has gathered valuable external links from high authoritative sites. To top it off, it gets good visits. I've been going back and forth with our developers to move this PDF to a subfolder structure.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs
For example: www.cyto.com/document/xxxx.pdf In my perspective, if I move this and set up a permanent redirect, then all the external links the PDF gathered, link juice and future visits will be attributed to the main website. Since the PDF is existing in the subdomain, I can't even track direct visits nor get the link juice. It appears in top position of Google as well. My developer says it is better to keep images, pdf, css in the subdomain. I see his point and an idea I have is to: convert the pdf to a webpage. Set up a 301 redirect from the existing subdomain to this webpage Upload the pdf with a new name and link to it from the webpage, so users can download if they choose to. This should give me the existing rank juice. However, my question is whether you can set up a 301 redirect for just a single subdomain URL to a folder structure URL? sub.cyto.com/xxx.pdf to www.cyto.com/document/xxxx.pdf?0 -
What Wordpress Update Services Should You Be Using on Your Wordpress Blog?
I have been told that pingomatic.com is all that you need however yesterday I went to a conference and others were recommending to have a good list of pinging services to cover all your bases Here are 4 that have been recommended: pingomatic technorati blogsearch.google.com feedburner Any others that should be included on this list? My goal is not to spam these ping lists however want to make sure my content is getting indexed quickly
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | webestate0 -
Outbound Links to Authority sites
Will outbound links to a related topic on an authority site help, hurt or be irrelevanent for SEO purposes. And if beneficially, should it be Nofollow?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VictorVC0