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.
How can I verify who links to me?
-
I need to verify all the inbound links I have coming in to my site. I've tried using OSE but have been told it does not scrape many smaller sites so cannot be sure of it's accuracy (especially since when I ran it, it returned a small % of the link i know are out there).
Is there a way to do this in Analytics? Or another way?
Thanks
-
There has to be a way to see all links pointing to your site...
Actually, there is not.
Any tool which provides a report of links to your site has to collect the data somehow. The most common means is to crawl the internet, collecting data on each page that is encountered. There are very few organizations which have sufficient resources to crawl billions of web pages and process the data in a timely manner. Google is by far the most efficient.
Even so, web pages can be blocked by various methods:
-
the page could be on a member-only part of the site which requires a username and password to view. Such a page cannot be discovered by crawlers.
-
the page could be tagged with noindex, nofollow to where the link is not discovered. It can also be blocked with robots.txt
-
the link may be presented in an iframe, flash or other means which the crawler does not capture.
-
the page may be buried so deeply on a site, or on an island page, where the crawler does not ever reach it.
In the above cases, a link to your site may exist but not be found. An excellent means to capture undiscovered links is using Google Analytics to determine the source of any traffic. This method can help you discover links to your site which otherwise were not discovered via a crawler.
If a link does exist but is not captured by OSE and is not sending you any traffic, the link likely has no value at all.
-
-
Looking for a complete list. There has to be a way to see all links pointing to your site...
-
in analytics you can actually see the links that send you visitors. You can have a look at them under traffic sources and linking sites. However this is not a complete set of sites linking to you.
-
And how do I do this in Analytics?
-
Open site expolorer here by seomoz, or you can try open site explorer by yahoo. Here you can find a list of some more if you would like to try multiple ones: http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/11/1-seo-tools-for-tracking-inbound-links/
-
Other than Open site Explorer, Google analytic would be your best bet.
Good luck friend
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
Spammy links
Hi Guys, I have a case which seems to occur more often for our customers. The websites of our customers seem to receive tons of backlinks from websites all over the world (China, Russia, Ukrain, etc). It’s spam we never asked for, we didn’t buy any dodgy linkbuilding packages or anything. Do any of you guys have experience with this matter? We try to disavow the links but it takes too much time and we will never manage to disavow 100% of all links. Examples are www.keukensduitsland.nl and www.m2beveiliging.nl Hope anyone has experience and maybe even solutions for this matter. Thanks!
Link Building | | Happy-SEO1 -
What count as irrelevant links?
I recently had a link audit done for a client selling mechanical parts. This client supplies to the mining and construction industries. The link audit showed all links on mining or construction sites as irrelevant. When I questioned about it, they explained that my client is in the mechanical parts industry and therefor Google would penalize me as those count as irrelevant links. I don't agree, but need an expert opinion. Can anyone help?
Link Building | | seocoza0 -
What is a good ratio of total links to linking root domains?
Is 100 total links for every linking domain too high? I suppose I could also look at ratios of sites that are doing well in the rankings.
Link Building | | ProjectLabs0 -
Changing links
Hi guys i wanted you views on changing the anchor text of links. I have quality links coming in but with year terms such as 2012 in there, if i want to change them all to 2013 for example would it be badly seen by Google? I cant say i feel comfortable about doing it but they are my links and are related to our products. Any advice much appreciated.
Link Building | | pauledwards0 -
Text Link vs image link?
Which passes most link juice a text link or an image with the correct 'alt' attribute? Do the pass the same amount or is one more valuable than the other?
Link Building | | SamCUK0 -
How many links per week is too fast in link building?
For a new website/blog how many links per week looks suspicious or hurt the rankings?
Link Building | | aaran1 -
Link Frequency
I understand that good link building is all about the quality of the link / the anchor text attached to it. But, what about frequency? Should I build until I can't build anymore? or create a plan to submit links to a certain # of sites per week/month?
Link Building | | pricefutures0