Do follow links from indie hackers
Hey @csallen,
Maybe this has been asked before but why does indiehackers not allow dofollow links from its website ? It would be really valuable to many of the startups here given IH's domain authority.
Obviously it would need to have some restrictions to prevent people from spamming their website in every post, but maybe you have to get 1000 points or something before you can get a do follow link for a company you have attached in your profile etc.
Anyways, curious to hear your thoughts.
Trending on Indie Hackers
Because it would be 💯 abused and we would have Even More Spam links and also undercover spam topics
Likely the same reason that blog comments, other forum sites, and social sites are not follow links: Spam.
Imagine the abuse.
If every link someone posted, or even if you got to x points (which is really not hard to do if you comment enough) then this site would be flooded with people linking back to their website and as a result, spam.
The links would not exactly be valuable anyway - Google takes into account the amount of links on the page, the relevancy of the page and the linked page, and the position of the link on the page.
If people could just comment with their URL to get a backlink, I imagine posts would be flooded with links to all sorts of domains diluting any benefit that the dofollow link would provide.
Here's what IndieHacker should do though: they used to allow you to submit articles and set the canonical URL back to your website, this meant that the the article would rank (because IndieHackers has a good DA) but you would get all the SEO benefit, because the canonical URL points back to your site.
Is it no longer possible? How did you previously set the canonical url?
You used to be able to submit articles to be published on IndieHackers and set a canonical URl, they phased that out earlier this year in favor of publishing articles to your profile.
Didn’t folks complain? Aren’t people worried about SEO issues from cross posting?
Why would they complain? That's the point of a canonical URL, it tells Google what the original source of the content is to prevent any SEO issues that could arise from duplicate content.
If you publish a piece of content on yourdomain.com then republish it again on seconddomain.com but set a canonical URL for that republished article to the original article on yourdomain.com then you get all the SEO benefit from both articles.
That's the magic of canonical URLs.
I ran an article from my blog on IndieHackers, set the canonical url back to my original blog post, and because it got popular I got all the benefit for my own domain.
I just discovered canonical URLs a few days ago, I totally see the benefits, I’ve been trying to find out more about it, but no comments so far there.
That’s why I was surprised that the feature got removed without an uproar from users.
So they removed the feature and folks are still cross-posting even though Indie Hackers will have duplicated their content, thus messing up their search results?
Gotcha! Sorry, now I see what you mean by asking if folks complained, your question makes perfect sense.
Canonical URLs are a bit of a niche topic in SEO, so my guess is the average member here didn't fully realize how good they had it when Indie Hackers allowed them - I was certainly unhappy when they removed them though.
To answer your second question: yes, if people continue to cross post here they'll end up duplicating their content . Copying a post every now and then won't cause issues SEO-wise, it's when large amounts of text are copied that Google starts penalizing for duplicate content.
I've resigned myself to just getting referral traffic when resharing a post, I've ended up shortening/reformatting the post as mine are usually quite long, and then at the end I add a link to the full post on my site.
The thing that worries me is that because Indie Hackers is such a strong domain, it can have a negative effect on your content, so if I understand the dynamic, posting content to Indie Hackers is potentially a foot gun?
Are you saying that in a community that is based on online entrepreneurship, marketing, SEO etc, nobody spoke up about this feature disappearing?
'Negative effect' really depends on your niche, your point of view and your goal.
When I search marketing/seo terms (which my business operates in) I really don't see Indiehackers ranking, as the site has relatively weak authority in that niche.
Could a post published on IndieHackers outrank the content on your domain? Sure, especially if you have a newer website or one that is not very authoritative. But if that's the case then your post probably was not going to rank anyway.
If you are trying to cross post on IndieHackers purely for SEO, then that's a waste of time.
If you are using IndieHackers to expand your reach and get some referral traffic then that's a pretty good strategy. As I said in my previous comment, often I'll reformat an existing post and link out to the original, which has netted pretty good results.
As for "Are you saying that in a community that is based on online entrepreneurship, marketing, SEO etc, nobody spoke up about this feature disappearing?"
I don't know, I don't spend a ton of time on this forum. Usually I just chime in on SEO questions once a week or so. I've voiced my concerns with the folks who used to manage the article posting process, however this really isn't a hill I want to die on as I've got more things to worry about.
If IndieHackers has do follows to a lot of low ranking site their SEO will be negatively affected. And if they link to a spam site they will get crushed on SEO.
I saw the comment that Product Hunt does a do follow for featured. That makes sense because those products are getting attention and are probably good quality.
I think quality can be controlled. Not everyone gets do follow. Maybe you show stripe approved revenue, etc. there are ways to ensure its high quality do follows
This comment was deleted 3 years ago.
I don’t think quantity of do follow links is an issue because from my research, product hunt provides do follow links if you are featured
Lol, the new marketplace.
Yeah, I am just brainstorming. I am not even sure if its a good idea but curious to learn why it isn't.
I think the dofollow would have to be linked to some kind of value back to IH. Maybe you are an active participant of the community, maybe you have posted and generated this much value back to IH and then you could "qualify" for dofollow