Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Link Building
    4. How do sites have so many 'total links'?

    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 do sites have so many 'total links'?

    Link Building
    3
    5
    1515
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • TBiz
      TBiz last edited by

      I've been analyzing some of our competitors: essayedge.com and papercheck.com

      Both sites have a large number of 'total links'... about 93,000 each.  The former has about 1,200 linking root domains while the latter only has 195.  Even for 1,200 linking root domains, 93k total links seems like a ton to me.

      Our site has 101 linking root domains and only 299 'total links'.

      I'm quite new to this whole SEO game and admittedly still learning a TON.  Am I missing something here?  How do sites generate so many links?  This seems nuts to me.

      Thanks for any help!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • TBiz
        TBiz @marcinlejman last edited by

        Thanks Marcin, that makes more sense.

        For example, I noticed papercheck had a ton of links from verisign.  It appears they did some case-study for the company and the links were all over their other country specific domains, etc.

        It makes sense that it would be more about increasing the number of linking root domains than the total number of links and I now understand how one link on a very large site can result in hundreds, if not thousands, of links.

        I didn't really understand this and in the back of my mind I keep hearing Rand telling me that link building is valuable but hard work and time consuming.  I'm thinking... s*$t, it really is going to be a lot of work to get 100,000 links   🙂

        But it's nice to know I need to simply focus on high quality linking domains... easy enough 🙂

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • TBiz
          TBiz @Keszi last edited by

          Thanks for the reply, that helps and makes sense!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • marcinlejman
            marcinlejman last edited by

            Hi,

            it's very simple to achieve with site-wide links, for example in a sidebar or in a footer. It's quite possible that a single domain. This is exactly the case with at least one of the domains you provided, as far as I can tell after a quick look-up.

            Generally, if a large site links to you with a link which is present on each page of that site (think blogroll), you can easily get thousands of links. However, their value will not be significantly stronger than a single link from the same site would hold.

            Hope it helps.

            TBiz 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
            • Keszi
              Keszi last edited by

              Hi TBiz,

              The fact with these website is the following: they have a lot of sitewide links (link that appear on more then one page of the linking website). For ex, footer links (such as "created by" or "designed by", etc.), advertising which appears on each page, etc.

              Although it can drive a big number of inbound links, I would still go and ask the question of quantity vs. quality? Which one is better for a website? (If it would be me, I would choose quality).

              I hope that helped,

              Istvan

              TBiz 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
              • 1 / 1
              • First post
                Last post

              Got a burning SEO question?

              Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


              Start my free trial


              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.

              • See all categories

              Related Questions

              • Sindre

                My site is linked from over 900 "The Globe"-domains - disavow or not?

                Hi! As some of you may be familiar with, there is a giant spam-network with the same design and same page title on all domains: "The Globe - The world's most visited web pages". For example: theglobe.at
                theglobe.co.za
                www.internet-search.us I've now discovered that over 900 of these spam-domains link to my site. My plan was of course to disavow them all, but Google is explicit on telling me to be careful. «Only disavow if you are certain that the links are damaging to your rankings». And to be honest, I'm not sure. Also: it seems drastic to disavow almost a thousand pages. I'm afraid to mess something up. What would you do?

                Link Building | | Sindre
                3
              • AlexLenhoff

                Does an external link to an image file on my site help my SEO?

                I found a few websites that are displaying images from my site.  Curiously, they have also linked these images to the source image file on my website.  I found these because Moz showed these sites in my list of backlinks.  I assume that means it impacts my Domain Authority.  But does this actually help me in search engines since it's not linking to a page on my site?

                Link Building | | AlexLenhoff
                0
              • gundogs

                EDU Links to my Site Never Show in Webmaster Tools

                I have legit links from about a dozen .EDU sites. We do training for Universities. The links never show up in webmaster tools "Links to Your Site' and considering how many we have its amazing our rankings aren't better. It's almost as if google is ignoring them. Any thoughts?

                Link Building | | gundogs
                0
              • Total-Design-Shop

                What is the best way to remove a link that redirects to a spammy site?

                I've got a new client and I'm trying to clean up their backlinks. There are several links that all redirect to this spam site http://www.expert-lender.com. All of the websites appear to be real, i.e. http://www.sammorganhomes.com/ but the actual links i.e http://www.sammorganhomes.com/wp-fav/backup/supplement/semitruckleasing.html are in a sub-directory and redirect to the spam site. I don't know if these links were from the previous SEO company or if they paid someone to create these or if these sites have been hacked. Can anyone tell me what is going on here and what should I tell these site owners?

                Link Building | | Total-Design-Shop
                0
              • CobraJones95

                Link Detox and Link Removal

                I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own.  But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png

                Link Building | | CobraJones95
                0
              • Static_Shift

                Is it ok for a web design company to have a branded footer link on their client's sites?

                Now I know that in general footer links to your site from another site are bad...this is because they are very often spammy...however I like to think that Google is pretty smart and I am of the opinion that a web design company should be able to link back to their own site. Here's why: If a visitor comes across a site that they love the design of, and they want a new website built...why shouldn't they be able to click through to the web designers site? (as long as the client is happy to link to it of course) I also feel that if there are a whole bunch of high authority/pagerank websites have been designed by a web design company and they therefore have a footer link pointing to them, it's probably a pretty good sign that they're a good web designer. Is it not? In saying this I think that the link anchor text should be branded rather than keywords. For example I usually write "Web Design by Static Shift" I'm interested to hear people's thoughts. Am I being blinded by my bias? Thoughts aside, and onto the facts...what are people's experiences with footer links for a web design company. Do they help or hinder?

                Link Building | | Static_Shift
                3
              • GardenBeet

                Inbound links from porn sites into a professional business services site - remove help?

                The website in question was hacked four years ago and there was porn on the servers. It was used as a peer to peer torrent streamer.  The images were deleted. We have just found inappropriate inward bound links (with great link juice!!)  - how can we remove these links - or should we? any advice would be appreciated thanks

                Link Building | | GardenBeet
                0
              • A Former User

                Does google scrape links from PDF files? do these links pass link juice?

                Title is pretty much the whole question.

                Link Building | | A Former User
                0

              Get started with Moz Pro!

              Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

              Start my free trial
              Products
              • Moz Pro
              • Moz Local
              • Moz API
              • Moz Data
              • STAT
              • Product Updates
              Moz Solutions
              • SMB Solutions
              • Agency Solutions
              • Enterprise Solutions
              • Digital Marketers
              Free SEO Tools
              • Domain Authority Checker
              • Link Explorer
              • Keyword Explorer
              • Competitive Research
              • Brand Authority Checker
              • Local Citation Checker
              • MozBar Extension
              • MozCast
              Resources
              • Blog
              • SEO Learning Center
              • Help Hub
              • Beginner's Guide to SEO
              • How-to Guides
              • Moz Academy
              • API Docs
              About Moz
              • About
              • Team
              • Careers
              • Contact
              Why Moz
              • Case Studies
              • Testimonials
              Get Involved
              • Become an Affiliate
              • MozCon
              • Webinars
              • Practical Marketer Series
              • MozPod
              Connect with us

              Contact the Help team

              Join our newsletter
              Moz logo
              © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
              • Accessibility
              • Terms of Use
              • Privacy

              Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.