What would be causing our linking domains and inbound links to decline?
-
I am noticing a decline in the number of our linking domains and inbound links from month to month. It isn't drastic but looking like a trend. Any reason why this would happen? I'm not sure where to start. Thanks!
-
A tool like MOZ or SEMRush will show you where the backlinks were pointing or you may notice a difference in the page rank or traffic to a page if it lost a valuable link.
If the links all look to be of low quality I wouldnt worry to much if you have a good overall link profile. But I would keep monitoring to make sure it is not a trend that is going to continue.
https://blog.pagezii.com/how-to-check-backlinks-in-google-analytics/
The above link may also help. You may need to add a secondary dimension of landing page. Sorry brain not working quite right its been a long day.
-
Thank you! This is helpful. I'm new to tracking this so I'm not quite sure where to gather all of this information. I found the "lost" links and the websites don't seem to be very high quality so I'm not too worried, however I'm having trouble finding the content they linked to. Any tips?
-
There is something called "link rot"... that every site experiences. You earn some links a long time ago and most of those links will eventually disappear for reasons described by effectdigital. If your new content production pace is not as fast as in the past, then you can be losing more links than you are earning. Link rot hits sites that are slacking on their content production.
And, as Mr Whippy said... "The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now." Sometimes competitors will see your content, produce something much better, then solicit the linking websites to link to their content that is now much better than yours. We receive lots of emails suggesting better destinations for links in existing articles. These email messages can be valuable to a webmaster, but if we look at their suggested content and it is crap, we filter their email address to trash.
-
Without seeing the data it is hard to say.
If you have a few years of data take a look back and see what fluctuations you have had previously.
Also, check the pages that the links were pointing to on your site make sure they haven't been removed.
If its a small number of links compared to your overall backlink profile then I wouldn't worry to much if its a big percentage of your overall backlink profile then I would be digging into it to see if you can stop it.
Is there any pattern to the links as I asked in my first response? are they all from one type of site? do they all link to old content?
-
Thank you both! So at what point do you think it's important to investigate to find the cause? And when do you think it's normal fluctuations?
-
This is a really good answer.
OP also needs to check the data they are looking at. Is it link growth data, or actual static link data? Some charts make it look as if your links are disappearing, when what they are really saying is less domains are 'creating' links to you over time (aka your link growth is slowing)
If OP is sure that their actual links are shrinking over time, Steve gave great answers
Here are some others:
- People re-designing their websites and streamlining their content, some links get removed as some old content (which may contain links) doesn't make it onto the new site
- People killing their own content even if it's not part of a re-design, removing old blog posts etc (which may contain links)
- People un-linking their internal links to insulate their own PageRank better, which leaves you with un-linked citations
- People adding no-follows to their links. These links should still be detected, but they won't count to your SEO any more
- People blocking the indexation of content that contains links (e.g: putting Meta no-index and / or robots.txt blocks on blog posts which contain links) as a risk nullification measure
- People moving their site from one domain to another. The new links from the new site should be found eventually, but often there's a trough where a backlink tool will see the old site is gone but it won't have found the new site yet!
- More people opting out of having their site crawled by backlink data suppliers (e.g: blocking rogerbot, Moz's crawler in robots.txt)
-
There could be any number of reasons for this.
The domains linking to you are clearing up old content and removing it from their site if they no longer see it as valid or valuable.
The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now.
Old domains disappearing off the web completely
For a more specific answer you will need to provide us with more info, such as how old are the links, are they all from one type of websites such as directories or blog sites
Steve
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
-
Google Analytics: Okay to change domain?
So, we are a long time user of GA and we're planning a domain change.
Reporting & Analytics | | jmueller0823
Does anyone know if I can 'change the domain' in GA so we don't lose our past data?
Thanks!0 -
Accidental Link not being removed by Google WMT
I operate two sites for a client. One is a local business and one is their national business. I used the same template for both sites (with changes) but accidentally left a link in the footer to the local site. Now the local site is showing 12k backlinks from the national site. I removed the link over 2 weeks ago but it still shows up in Google WMT in the "Links to your Site" section. It goes to a coupon page and not a "targeted" page but 12k links to the local site is 6 TIMES what I had before. My question is: "Is there a way to get Google to remove the link from Google WMT?" More specifically force it. Like I said the link has been removed for over 2 weeks but it still shows up in the Local site's Incoming Links section of WMT. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | DarinPirkey0 -
Multiple-Domain tracking for sister sites- NO retail checkout- Please help
Hello, I have about 5 sites I want to set up multiple-domain tracking in google analytics. All posts I read seem to be focused on cross-domain tracking for the purpose of tracking a visitor from one domain across another domain for shopping cart check outs. I don't need that. I have about 3 sister sites (mastersite.com, sistersite1.com, sistersite2.com, sistersite3.com) related to my primary site. I want 1 Master Analytics Profile to track traffic for all of these sites combined. My visitors will not jump from mastersite.com over to sistersite1.com. There will be no cross-domain visits. How can I set up 1 master google analytics profile that will aggregate traffic data from all sites and present the data to me in one analytics profile. Please help
Reporting & Analytics | | AndreGant0 -
Google Webmaster Preferred Domain Settings Help
I was recently running my SEO Moz report for my domain and saw a drastic drop in page rankings on the report. After some trouble shooting, I checked my Google Webmaster Tools and saw the "Preferred Domain for my Site has changed" the last week in which I saw the drastic drop. Under the "preferred domain" area, I have it set to www.marware.com but on most of the links to my site, it reads www.marware.com/ . We also have http://marware.com , but am not sure if this carries any relevance as the preferred domain is set for www.marware.com . Does the "/" make a difference in the "Preferred Domain" section? If so, how do I update it? Is there a way to confirm it is set up correctly? In the photo attached, what does "Linked Property" "Analytics Web Property" and "Associated Webmaster Tools Site" mean? Thanks in advance! T5tSCxm
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadaran0 -
Removing Bad Links, Bad?
Our situation is this.. We recently went through a major redesign that included a significant change in content and URL structure. This of course cause a significant increase in 404 from our search traffic. In an effort to minimize those 404s we requested that Google remove certain URL directories from their index. Doing this resulted in a 90% drop in the number of impressions we were getting from search. My question is this, is it better to allow the 404s with a good landing page that explains the changes or better to remove the bad urls? Much thanks...
Reporting & Analytics | | SQE-SEOMoz0 -
How effective is OSE in crawling press release links?
How effective is OSE in crawling press release links? We have released a few press releases recently (over the last couple of months) and OSE doesn't seem to have found them.
Reporting & Analytics | | deuce1s1 -
Domain Authority History
Is there a way to check the domain authority of a site from a past date?
Reporting & Analytics | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Custom GA tracking and link value
Hi I'm working on a real estate agents web site which has a lots of links coming from paid listings in real estate linstings sites (this in France so I'm not sure examples will mean anything but basically the agents have 900 house listings in each site and each listing has a backlink) In analytics these are classified as referals and that's fine for the moment But because sites provide different types of links, we are considering tagging all paid links with analytics utm codes. Mainly to learn which ads are actually providing qualified traffic (providing contacts). I'm guessing that currently these links, there are thousands, bring seo value to my client's web site and are not considered as paid links. Will adding the analytics codes to these links cause a loss of their value by clearly indicating to Google that we paid for them? What's the current thinking on this? I'm tempted not to be worried about being honest about the origin of these links but I'm worried that there is a real danger of loosing current ranking Any arguments FOR tagging paid links ? Thanks for you help Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | NeilInFrance0