How to analyse a big drop in external links
-
Hi!
Can someone tell me the best way to determine what caused a big drop in External Followed Links? I have used tools like remove em in the past to try and get rid of exact match keyword links but I'm unsure if this was the root cause.
Our rankings went up the 3 months after this period, but this year they have dropped back to levels from 2015. I'm wondering if this drop has anything to do with this decline.
See attached.
-
Another good practice to take into effect is to start going to Google Webmaster Tools and going to:
Search Traffic > Links to your siteGoto full view and download / export a copy to cvs, open in either google sheets or excel and date it, next time you have an issue, you can repeat the above process and then using a compare feature ( plugin / extension ) in google sheets ( not sure if there is one for excel ) and figure out what links were removed much faster.
Ahrefs can do a good job, but since it doesn't have all your backlinks, can also be just as much frustrating.
-
As Andy mentioned, Ahrefs is a very good tool to use here. I don't know if you can do it in OSE, but in Ahrefs you can see lost domains and the last date that it was seen in their index.
I looked at your screenshots and I don't know if this is a coincidence - but if it's not the links, then it might be the Phantom 3 update, that there was a lot of chatter about (e.g. http://searchengineland.com/evidence-of-an-unconfirmed-google-update-happening-on-november-19th-237452). The fall in the curve does seem to match the date of this update - but again it's hard to know without looking at it any further. But it might be a plausible explanation as well.
-
Hi,
Really you want to be looking at something like Ahrefs where it will show you lost and found links. I don't know offhand if OSE has that facility.
You might find that your drop is because of sitewide links that have been removed, but without thorough investigation, I could just be guessing. It could be a coincidence that the drop is related to the removal of the links.
Has anything else been done to the site that could account for this? Do any date drops coincide with a Google algorithm tweak?
-Andy
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
-
GWT Lists URLs with links to my site, but those URLs don't have links to my site
There are a number of URLs that show up for my website in Webmaster Tools as having links to my site when in fact they don't. I know this to be a fact because I actually wrote some of the sites that Google is saying are linking to my site and I know there isn't any links on the specific pages to that site. For example, the site in question is: https://www.liftproducts.com/ As an example, Google is saying that about 100 URLs from https://www.lift-tables.net/ are linking to it when, I'm fairly confident that there is only 1 link to it found here: https://www.lift-tables.net/info.php?countrytabs=3 Yet Google says links exist on this (and many more) page: https://www.lift-tables.net/liftproducts/max-lift/lpt4w-030-48.php I thought at first it might have been due to linking to a image file directly instead of locally hosting it, but after checking the source, that's not the case. I am also seeing this type of non-linking being reported on sites I have no clue what they are. For example, some Spanish site about tandem bicycles is being listed as linking to liftproducts.com: http://206-225-85-34.dedicated.abac.net/tandem/inc Yet I can find no evidence of an actual link existing. Am I missing something here? Any insight of why this is happening and how I can clean up my link signature would be appreciated.
Link Building | | Nivik231 -
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 -
Reddit LInks
Are Reddit links worthwhile? I hear they are sometimes follow and sometimes not follow. Also what about links verses self links? I'm pretty handy with reddit so I can probably make content that would actually be upvoted a lot. Let me know, thanks.
Link Building | | RafeTLouis1 -
Link building during link removal
We were advised by out outsourced link removal vendor not to build any links while they are removing links pointing to our site. I am worried that our site will lose significant traffic if we dont build any new links while waiting for them to remove links that caused our site to be penalized. What are your thoughts?
Link Building | | WizardOfMoz0 -
Bearshare links?
I am doing competitor link research and so far 4 of the 4 have had links from search.bearshare.net What kind of site is this? I am sure it isn't valuable but I can't figure out how it is getting crawled.
Link Building | | EcommerceSite0 -
Root Domain Link for Affiliate's Link
It seems my affiliate link: http://www.hrmsplugins.com?partners=21 is not being considered as a "root domain" backlink when this link is used on their website. Is there a reason for this?
Link Building | | delphia0 -
Building Links
Hi everyone, I am new to SEO and in the process of building links the clean way. Any suggestions on how exactly I can find websites that are linking out to quality websites already? I went thru most of my competitors link building strategy - and 90% of their links are done either thru link exchange or paid links. So looking at my competitors strategy does not really help. So I need to find websites/blogs/forums that are ready to link to me if I can show them some useful content. How do I find these websites first? Please help! Cheers! Arjun
Link Building | | ArjunRajkumar0 -
Link building software
Does anyone know of any software that will build links if I enter the URL in? I know this sounds silly but I had to ask... I know ontolo is good to discover which links you need based on a key word and I know the SEOmoz tools do the same. My question is that is there any software that you can then enter all the links you have found and acquire them, Thank you for your answers. I really appreciate it. Vijay
Link Building | | vijayvasu0