Someone started a discussion on Twitter promoting the Quora website for link building. Google’s John Mueller responded with a comment that seems to indicate that Google is aware of the practice.
Quora Promoted for Link Building
Quora is a website headquartered near Google that was founded by people who were formerly associated with Facebook.
Quora is a question and answer website. Questions are asked and people answer them.
The practice of using Quora for link building is essentially the same strategy for forum spamming and profile link spamming.
Forum Spam Tactic
Forum spamming is going to a community, answering questions and adding a link to your site for “more information.”
Some white hat SEOs view that as a win-win situation because you’re answering the question and linking to an article that has more information.
But most people who operate or moderate forum communities see this as spam.
Profile Link Building Tactic
Profile link builders are people who visit a forum, make a few useless posts and then disappear.
The way this low quality spam tactic works is that when a forum member makes a post, there’s a link back to their profile from their profile shown in the discussion. Then on their profile page there is a link back to whatever site that is being promoted.
As a moderator at WebmasterWorld for around 16 years, I can affirm that profile link building is easy to spot and aggressively acted upon by competent moderators.
Quora Link Building for Traffic
There are some who say that dropping (nofollow) links on Quora will result in massive traffic. It might result in a large amount of traffic but the traffic is highly likely to come from India.
Quora is highly popular in countries like India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
That kind of traffic is not useful if the traffic you seek is from the United States, Italy, France or UK.
Link building for traffic to a site that is not targeting India, China or Nepal is not a useful activity.
On a scale of 1 to 100, Google Trends ranks United States interest in Quora as a seven.
Clearly, link building on Quora for traffic is not realistic.
Why Quora is a Link Building Target?
Spamming Quora is the same as spamming any other community. The links are no-followed but low quality spammy link builders will affirm that Google loves those nofollow links. This is the same thing that link spammers say about spammy blog comment links.
It’s common that the only people promoting nofollow links for ranking purposes are link builders who specialize in nofollow links for link building.
Why Use Quora for Link Building
The person promoting Quora for link building asserted that Quora has a high Moz Domain Authority score and that means that some of that “authority” will trickle down through the more than 55 million pages of content and pass through the nofollow link to your website.
I won’t comment further on whether so-called “link juice” is going to trickle through over 55 million web pages and then squeeze through a nofollow link.
Related: What is Quora and Why Should You Care?
What Does Google Think About Quora for Link Building?
Google’s John Mueller did not expressly say that Google ignores nofollow Quora links. He didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about how great nofollow Quora links are either.
This is what he posted on Twitter, you make up your own mind on what that means:
Google on Link Building
Google’s stance on link building is that links that come from users who are not associated with the linked website are the best kinds. That’s what’s known as a natural link.
According to Google’s Webmaster Help page on link schemes:
“…creating links that weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page, otherwise known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our guidelines.”
Clearly if the person who is adding a (nofollow) link to Quora has an association with the site that’s being linked to, that’s not an “editorially placed or vouched” link.
Given that high standard for what qualifies as a natural link, it may be useful to view Mueller’s remark that Google “isn’t missing sites that are link building on Quora…” to mean that they are aware of their nature as not being “editorially placed.”
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FAQ
Are all links from Quora tagged as nofollow?
Yes. All links from Quora are nofollow links.
What is forum spamming?
Forum spamming is a tactic that involves going to a community, answering questions, and adding a link to your site for “more information.”
What is profile link building?
Profile link building is a low quality spam tactic where a forum member makes a few useless posts and then disappears. Their posts include a link back to their profile shown in the discussion. Then on their profile page, there is a link back to whatever site is being promoted.
