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.
Do inbound links to download .exe files improve SEO?
-
The site, (http://www.bartenderbarcodesoftware.com/) sells barcode software. They also provide free printer drivers on their site. During a recent domain change (before I started helping them), they began looking at their inbound links and found quite a few external sites linking to these download files. However, when someone clicks on the link on one of these sites (i.e. http://vvs-motor.com.ua/barcode-printer-drivers) it immediately begins downloading the file (i.e. http://www.seagullscientific.com/downloads/drivers/archive/7.2/7.2.4/Unimark_7.2.4.exe) without taking the visitor to the site.
The owner would greatly prefer this traffic to engage with the site and is considering 301 redirecting those download links to an actual webpage. Question: Would this look suspicious to Google? Would this have a positive or negative effect on SEO?
The last factor to consider is that many of these sites will likely just recreate the list based on the new links at some future point.
Thanks for any help!
-
You're welcome. Anything else I could help with? (If not could you mark this as answered, please?).
Thanks,
Martin
-
Thanks for the info Martin. Your answer echos my hunch (albeit unsupported). If Google is moving more and more toward user interaction metrics, one would imagine that links to these .exe files would be beneficial for the overall site authority.
Thanks again,
James
-
Does the website owner mind hotlinks like this? I don't think 301-ing them to a real web page would be bad in the eyes of Google. I think if purposeful pages that better describe the downloads and are useful resources for the visitors then that may be a better way to harness the links for SEO. As for whether links to .exe's is good for SEO, the file itself won't rank, but it may help domain authority. I'm not wholly sure so I'd like another opinion on this. And as an aside, the .exe's shouldn't be directly downloadable due to secure reasons, best to zip the files anyway as some anti viruses may block .exe downloads. So if you create some new downloads in ZIP files, redirect the .exe URLs to useful pages then you should benefit from the links. I'd like to see if others have tested this out however.
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
-
link building
https://www.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
Link Building | | Tv2.ro
https://m.youtube.com/redirect?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://t.me/iv?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://cr.naver.com/redirect-notification?u=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://panchodeaonori.sakura.ne.jp/feed/aonori/feed2js.php?src=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/no_outbounds.php?o=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://optimize.viglink.com/page/pmv?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://hobby.idnes.cz/peruanske-palive-papricky-rocoto-dlz-/redir.aspx?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://redirects.tradedoubler.com/utm/td_redirect.php?td_keep_old_utm_value=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://www.kaskus.co.id/redirect?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://salesevents.madison.com/go.php?article_id=108164&dealer_id=60&ga_id&promo_id=25&source=promotion&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://bbs.pku.edu.cn/v2/jump-to.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://feeds.hanselman.com/~/t/0/0/scotthanselman/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://guru.sanook.com/?URL=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://keyscan.cn.edu/AuroraWeb/Account/SwitchView?returnUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://bukkit.org/proxy.php?link=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://nou-rau.uem.br/nou-rau/zeus/auth.php?back=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F&go=x&code=x&unit=x
https://redirect.camfrog.com/redirect/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://auth.she.com/logout/?callback=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro&client_id=8
https://bugcrowd.com/external_redirect?site=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://wikimapia.org/external_link?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://www.earth-policy.org/?URL=https://antena24.ro
https://m.ok.ru/dk?st.cmd=outLinkWarning&st.rfn=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://m.ok.ru/dk?st.cmd=outLinkWarning&st.rfn=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=hdorrh%2BHcDlQ%2BzUEnZU5qlfKZ1Cl53X6&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.fuzokubk.com/cgi-bin/LinkO.cgi?u=antena24.ro
https://ipv4.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://ditu.google.com/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro
https://m.verywed.com/redirect.php?url=https://antena24.ro/
https://www.projekt-office.ch/?URL=https://antena24.ro
https://mobile.myprice74.ru/redirect.php?url=antena24.ro
https://www.libenar.it/?URL=https://antena24.ro/
https://feeds.osce.org/~/t/0/0/osceofficetajikistan/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://feeds.gty.org/~/t/0/0/gtyblog/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://feeds.marinsoftware.com/~/t/0/0/marininsights/~/https:/antena24.ro
https://www.bing.com/news/apiclick.aspx?ref=FexRss&aid=&tid=60610D15439B4103A0BF4E1051EDCF8B&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F&c=12807976268214810202&mkt=en-us
https://maps.google.bj/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.google.bj/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://www.htcdev.com/?URL=antena24.ro
https://maps.google.mu/url?q=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://mitsui-shopping-park.com/lalaport/ebina/redirect.html?url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://images.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://maps.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://google.co.uk/url?sa=t&url=https%3A%2F%2Fantena24.ro%2F
https://results.dogpile.com/search/web?q=antena24.ro
https://www.ask.com/web?q=antena24.ro
https://search.aol.com/aol/search?s_chn=prt_bon&q=antena24.ro
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=antena24.ro&ia=web
https://www.bing.com/search?q=antena24.ro
https://search.yahoo.com/search?p=antena24.ro
https://search.yahoo.co.jp/search?p=antena24.ro1 -
When conducting a link building strategy does it matter the country the link is from?
We are a UK business and if we have links mostly from US based blogs and websites does this penalise us. The links are from relevant websites and topics. Should we be focusing on .co.uk sites
Link Building | | Caffeine_Marketing1 -
Toxic Link Removal-Better to Pay an SEO Firm or Can I Do It Myself?
Hi Jen: Recently an SEO audit from a reputable SEO firm identified almost 50% of the incoming links to my site as toxic, 40% suspicious and 5% of good quality. They are of the opinion that it is imperative to remove the toxic domains. The fee for toxic link removal is about $3,000.I would prefer to save the $3,000 but would prefer not to take the risk of screwing up my ranking if this is a complex procedure best left to SEO professionals. My assumption is that link removal will involve identifying the toxic domains, requesting removal and eventually submitting a Google disavow request. Can I do this myself or is there a big risk of screwing it up? Assuming it is safe for me to remove toxic links, would anyone suggest software of tools for doing so? Thanks so much.
Link Building | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
Link Building | | tcolling
Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim0 -
EBay listing links SEO value?
Hi guys, Our website has an eBay widget which lots of eBay users put on their listings. We are thinking of using that as a way to get links from eBay listings. However, since most eBay listings will disappear after 90 days, is this worth doing and also will Google count those links? Many thanks David
Link Building | | sssrpm0 -
Inbound links from porn sites into a professional business services site - remove help?
The website in question was hacked four years ago and there was porn on the servers. It was used as a peer to peer torrent streamer. The images were deleted. We have just found inappropriate inward bound links (with great link juice!!) - how can we remove these links - or should we? any advice would be appreciated thanks
Link Building | | GardenBeet0 -
Is it important to have a geo modifier for local SEO link building?
If anyone here is familiar with local SEO, you may have noticed that there are different local results for: "city + Keyword" and just the "keyword". When building links will you end up targeting both with a geo modifier in the link, or is it beneficial to build links without the geo modifer for the keyword?
Link Building | | dignan990