One SEO professional asked John Mueller in a hangout about backlinks – more specifically paid links.
They were concerned about links getting reported – if they are reported, such as if you report those links to the Google team as well.
Their main question is how does Google determine what is actually a paid link?
Or, is it more of the fact that Google understands a loose financial framework that helps them understand that these are actually paid links?
John explained that from Google’s point of view, they take a lot of different factors into account – they don’t give every link they find the full weight.
Even if they’re not sure, because something in terms of link value can always be in between.
It’s also more about the fact that Google takes everything into account.
It’s not just because a link was reported as a paid link that they treat it as such, because random people on the web report many things that aren’t necessarily true.
At the same time, this is useful information sometimes.
It’s potentially a lot of things that come together regarding paid links.
The SEO professional then asked about internal links in specific locations – such as within an anchor text map from the header, or within the content, or within the footer.
Does the placement of these links, whether it’s in the head or body or content, matter?
John explained that on one hand, they do use it to understand the context of the page better.
So things like link anchor text helps them in that regard.
Usually, the only time when Google differentiates where links are on a page is when they are trying to determine exactly how these links are relevant to the page.
This happens at approximately the 0:38 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
So my question is related to the paid links. So is it like- I read some of the MadCatz blog, and, and in a video that he has clearly said, if your links get reported, like if you report those links to the Google team also. So those links are like, you know, kind of the paid links? How did Google determine?
Or is it more of the financial things that helps Google to understand that these are the paid links, or more about something like seems to be a flashy or a steamy one that makes these links as a paid or the [inaudible] unnatural links to your site?
John 1:21
So I think the question is, kind of like what, how does Google recognize paid links? Yeah, I mean, from our point of view, we take a lot of different things into account, we don’t give every link that we find full weight.
So even if we’re not sure, like something can be somewhere in between. But it’s like, it’s a number of things that we take into account there. So it’s not just, did someone report this as a paid link, because random people on the Internet report lots of things that aren’t necessarily true. But at the same time, sometimes this is useful information.
So it’s, I don’t know a lot of things that kind of come together with regards to paid links.
SEO Professional 1 2:15
And how about the internal link? If you have a internal link from a respective anchor text map from the header, or within the content or within the footer, does the placement of the links within it protect header, body, or content, does it matter?
Because for most of the website, the headers and footers remain the same. So is it like body part content has been given the more weightage because that is the particular portion that changes as per the pages.
So that particular thing…
John 2:51
Not necessarily. I think for internal links, on the one hand, we use it to understand the context better. So things like the anchor text helps us. But another really important part is really just being able to crawl your website.
And for that, it doesn’t matter where that link is on a page to kind of crawl the rest of the website. Sometimes things are in the footer, sometimes in their header, or sometimes in a shared menu or in a sidebar, or within a body of content.
All of those kinds of link places are all fine, from our point of view. Usually what we differentiate more with regards to location on a page is the content itself, to try to figure out what is really relevant for this particular page.
And for that, it, it sometimes really makes sense to kind of focus on the central part of the page, the primary piece of content that changes from page to page, and not so much the headers and the sidebars and footers, or things like that, because those are a part of the website itself.
But it’s not the primary reason for this page to exist and the primary reason for us to rank that page. So that’s kind of the difference that we take when it comes to different parts of the page.
And for links, it’s usually more to kind of understand the context of pages and to be able to crawl the website, and for that we don’t really need to differentiate between different parts of the page.
