Are My Links Valuable?
-
I have been link building for a couple months now. I am having a hard time trying to figure out which sites are even worthy of getting links from. Obviously, those that are clearly link farming, or have lots of ads throughout their site are not valuable. I use OSE, but don't know what is a good P.A or D.A. and what it means when one is much higher than the other (and if that is a bad thing). I also use compete.com to give me a general idea of the unique visitors going into a site. Any tools I can use to help evaluate the strength of specific incoming links/ specific websites? Any ideas or thoughts would be helpful. Thanks So Much, Melissa
-
Hi Melissa.
The value of a link can be interpreted in many ways. First let me offer several great links on this topic:
http://www.seomoz.org/beginners-guide-to-seo/growing-popularity-and-links
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-from-a-to-z
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-management
Some generalities regarding measuring the value of a link:
You naturally want links from the highest DA site possible. It is also important to receive the link from a page on that site that has good PA. If the page is buried or otherwise is not seen, then the link may not even be seen by search engines.
The linking site should ideally be relevant to your site, and the anchor text used to link is very important as well.
Links from sites with higher DA/PA then yours is definitely preferred. Links from sites with lower DA/PA require a lot of quantity to make up for their lower quality.
As you can see, there are a lot of factors involved. There are some SEO people such as Ross Hudgens who almost exclusively focus link building.
If I may make a suggestion. Try focusing on creating the most incredibly interesting / helpful / informative content that the world will WANT to link to. If you can create such content, you wont have to work at link building as people will seek out the content and build the links for you. Users will +1 / Like / tweet about your article and let the world know.
-
Good question, Melissa. Unfortunately, there is no tool I know of that evaluates the strength of a specific incoming link beyond an evaluation of the page and domain that OSE gives you.
You're on the right track using OSE and considering Page Authority and Domain Authority, and the general perception of spamminess. Other things to consider when evaluating backlink targets:
How many outbound links are on the page you're targeting? Link juice gets divided (not necessarily equally) among all the outbound links on a page. So other things being equal, a link from a page with 5 outbound links is better than a link from a page with 150 outbound links.
When looking at PA and DA, if PA is less than 10-20% of DA, your getting into a less than ideal scenario. There is a chance that page isn't getting crawled . As to "what is a good PA or DA" it's depends on your niche and competition. Run OSE on competing domains to get an idea of what you're up against.
Anchor text. A "click here" link is not going to help you as much as descriptive anchor text like "super awesome widgets".
Alignment. Links from relevant pages/sites are going to be better for your site than links from general/unrelated pages/sites. This not only helps your SEO, but hopefully you actually get good/qualified traffic through the links.
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
-
Why such a difference in external followed links details?
I love using seomoz and have done for a few years. I am no SEO expert, but like to think I can get away with making out I know what I'm on about! I use opensiteexplorer regualrly and usually enjoy delving deeper into it's metrics, but one thing is bothering me (before I start with this, please forgive me if I am missing something obvious - you may have to point it out in your answer!) So I run a comparison of a few sites and pay attention to the external followed links section. On checking this number at root domain level, company A has 12,666 external followed links. So I want to dig a little deeper as to the qulaity of those links and click along to the inbound links tab, here I select the following: "followed & 301" > "only external" > "all links to this root domain" > leaving the results ungrouped Downloading this table I only have results for 3,416 links - why such a big difference to the previous 12,666 or am I missing something here? Would just like a bit of clarification 🙂
Competitive Research | | iThinkMedia0 -
Possibility to see which domain carries contribute the most links?
Dear, From the linkexplorer tool, you can see: Total links Linking Root Domains Is it possible to see which domain(s) have the MOST links pointing to the website you are exploring (the URL typed in)? Thanks.
Competitive Research | | waidohuy0 -
Internal linking structure
Hello, Is there a way to see the most anchor text of a sites internal linking structure, that is not mine. For example how many times a competitor used the anchor text "door" on their site. Not external links though, just the internal ones. Thank you, Ada
Competitive Research | | digitalops0 -
What's the best way to make sure a link is worth getting?
I know what tools to use and I use all of SEOmoz's tools daily. PA, DA, MR, & MT are all things I take into account, but sometimes all you have to do is look at a site and you can tell it's not worth it. I'll analyze the page's backlink's and everything in between. Are there any tricks out there that can help the decision making process? I'm tired of trying to get links on sites that clearly are not worth it, but all of their stats say otherwise. So do you stick with stats, or is it a judgement call? I'm particularly curious about determining the amount of possible traffic from a link. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
Competitive Research | | MichaelWeisbaum0 -
Anyone have experience with "Link Research Tools" ?
I'm looking into Linkresearchtools.com for competitive backlink analysis. Already have SEOmoz (obviously) and Majestic. Anyone have any experience with the toolset? If so, what does it do well, what do you like, and where does it fall down? Cheers
Competitive Research | | BedeFahey0 -
Blog Comment Links
Hi everyone! Using the Open Site Explorer tool I can see many of my competitors leave blog comments which (according to the tool) are providing link value to their sites. This seems like something that can easily be used in a black hat sort of way. My question is this - Is leaving comments on blogs an effective way of generating positive links to my site? Adrian
Competitive Research | | adrianaldous0 -
How does a site get to no 3 in Google with no KW in their links?!!
Hello everyone, my first post - ahhh I'm investigating a niche and there is a site that should have no right being there in my view. It's no. 3 Google UK for 'company formation' with a small site with 65 weak links from only 7 domains and hosted in the US. But more importantly, the Open Site Explorer says there is not 1 link with that term in its anchor text. This I find crazy and makes me suspicious. But before I go back to my client saying "oh they must be black hat" I would like your expert views. I'm not sure whether to tut or congratulate them and for the first time I'm not sure what reasons to give for their amazing performance! What's your views?
Competitive Research | | GOYMedia480 -
Question regarding back link analysis and anchor text
Hello, I am looking at my competitors back link analysis and comparing a range of link based metrics from the top 10 SERPS. I am then putting this data into excel and comparing our back link profiles. When looking at the anchor text distribution i am not sure whether to look at exact match anchor or phrase match anchor. For example, one of the companies I am looking at holds positions 3 and 4 in the SERPS. Looking at their linking profile I can see that only 1.7% of their links use the exact match anchor 'widget'. Looking at their phrase match anchor is an entirely different story, 93.5% of anchor links contain 'widget' somewhere. i.e. 'cheap widgets', 'widget sale', 'buy widgets at www.examplewidget.co.uk' etc. Obviously their exact match and phrase match anchor distribution tell a completely different story. THIS IS TRUE FOR MANY OF THE TOP 10 SERPS. Therefore, should I be looking at phrase match anchors instead of exact? Side note: would people recommend targeting anchors with 'brandname widget' based on predictions of Google giving weighted anchor more weight. Robert.
Competitive Research | | 87ROB0