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Nov 25 |
Direct or Re-Direct Link?Tagged Under : Google, links, Search Engine Optimisation, SEOPosted in SEO Tips by Sian |
Do you know the difference between a direct link to your website and a re-direct link – also known as a jump link or indirect link? If you don’t then please read on.
I recently spoke to a client who said she’d been on a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) course and was advised to advertise with a certain directory that would be great for SEO. However I knew that they didn’t actually offer a direct link.
It worried me that this was being advised on an SEO course. Now I am not professing to be an SEO expert at all. I’d like to think I am learning. However, I have picked up some great advice from Ali at Webmentor.ie who has given me some help with writing this as I wanted to make sure I had all the facts correct.
Firstly I need to explain the reason for the importance between a direct and re-direct link. It is good to get legitimate direct links to your website from other websites – especially if they’re relevant to your business. Let’s call it “link juice”. Google counts relevant direct links to your website as a measure of your popularity on the web and this can help with your SEO by raising your rankings.
Here’s why a re-direct link isn’t much good for SEO – Google doesn’t count a re-direct link as part of the link juice!
Remember – both types of link still go through to your website immediately, and both can give you visitors. However, only a direct link has the potential added benefit of “link juice” which can help with your own website’s rankings.
It’s very simple to spot the difference. Just hover your cursor over the actual link – don’t click on it. Then look at the bottom left of your screen – immediately above the start button to see if your actual web address is being used or not. See the diagrams below to explain simply:
Direct Link
Re-Direct Link
The link may even look real with the http://www prefix but it isn’t necessarily a direct link.
Please Note: SEO is highly complex. Google rankings depend on many factors. The purpose of this article is to show a user how to distinguish a direct link from an indirect link, not to recommend how to do SEO.
I hope this is of some help for people to understand the difference so please let me know if it does.
Sian
Awesome, thanks for the clarification!
You’re welcome. And now you have a direct link too with our Premium Listing
That’s really interesting, I hadn’t heard of a direct or re-direct link before.
Is there any benefit/disadvantage to the webpage putting up the link in choose to put up a direct/redirect link? Say for example I was to link to your blog from my (fictictious) company blog – why wouldn’t I just use a direct link?
*sorry – in choose = in choosing
fictictious = fictitious
Must learn not to type in haste.
Thanks Sian, am having trouble getting the facebook page up there. Seems to be directing to my own page this may be a hangover from having another name before???
Hi Annie, As I said I’m not an expert and happy to stand corrected but I don’t think it makes any difference to your site. Mainly a re-direct link is set up to be able to count the click-throughs from your site to the one you’re linked to. Other directories do it but there is no help for your SEO. FYI we provide a direct link. Companies have their own stats package nowadays so can count their own clickthroughs anyhow.
Hope that makes sense
Sian
Hi Tony, not sure what you mean. Please give me a call and if I can help I will. My numbers are on the contact page on http://www.whatswhat.ie
Sian
Cheers Sian, was just wondering out of curiosity – thanks for the info
This is enlightening – thanks Sian, great to learn something new every day and this is really helpful
Excellent information, Sian. Thanks so much for sharing it with us.
Best wishes, Fiona.
I never really though of directories adding redirects. I figured they’d be adding nofollow attributes to website links (the tag Google recommends giving paid links in order to prevent ‘Google Juice’) but didn’t think about them adding redirects. It is however possible to have a redirect and pass on (although somewhat diluted) ‘Google Juice’, but there is definitely room for jiggery pokery there in order to prevent ‘juice being passed on. I doubt whether there is any SEO benefit at all.
If we’re thinking of the same directory (think ‘mellow’ and ‘wages’), they offer a separate product with ‘SEO Capabilities’ and an ‘SEO audit’… which seems a bit cheeky.
Hi Andy, I believe (from my previous job) it’s to do with recording traffic provided from the directory. However I understand that is possible now too with a direct link. But perhaps from another point of view why would a directory want to help a client get on the first page of Google and therefore not need them anymore? Although at Whatswhat.ie we do give a direct link with full Google juice in order to help a company get a presence online. We’re nice like that
Sian
Fair points. I suppose the onus really lies on the SEO trainer to make sure they know their facts before making recommendations. In terms of links passing on ‘Google Juice’ I suppose that is up to each directory to decide… but I agree that it’s nice to be nice
.
Andy
Some of the information contained in the article is inaccurate. Ali is misinformed. 301 redirects in some instances do pass link juice – although tests have shown that the it is *less* than a standard direct link. The technical details mean that you need to use a ’301′
See this thread.
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3617275.htm
[...] At Whatswhat.ie we are completely embracing the Social Media community and will be doing more in the coming months. At the moment companies that advertise with us can add their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Blog addresses plus their YouTube video. These are all direct links and if you don’t know the importance of a direct link then please read here – Direct of Re-Direct Link? [...]
@paul
The status of any redirect defaults to 302 (moved temporarily) if not specified by the program that does the redirect. And obviously a 302 is absolutely worthless in terms of link juice.
It is ***highly unlikely*** that the program behind a jumplink will perform a 301 redirect since a 301 is achieved by a. sending the correct server headers before the link itself is sent or b. via server software – such as the htaccess file on an apache server.
No-one is arguing whether or not a 301 sends link juice (it does), the question is ‘how do you know a 301 was specified?’ It probably wasn’t.