Factoring in OBL to Open Site Explorer
-
Morning all - I've been using Open Site Explorer a fair bit since I signed up to SEOMoz a couple of months ago and found it to be a little different to other tools in the past, so would welcome some thoughts on what I should be looking for when I run reports.
For example, I've always thought that Outbound links should be important when deciding whether to place a link on a a particular site, but in OSE I'm only given a Page Ranking and a Domain Ranking.
Am I therefore to understand that these two factors outrank OBL and that the number of links on a page don't matter? Or have these been factored into the overall Page rank already?
Thanks a lot for your help,
Simon -
Yes and no. The number of outbound links on a page is an important factor, but it can be outweighed by a huge number of other factors, such as the position of the link on a page, how "editorial" it is, and other considerations.
My favorite article on the subject. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links
Even though OSE doesn't report these, they are still important considerations to look at. For the most part, you'll have to use your best human judgement when evaluating link targets and ask questions like:
Am I likely to get a link high on the page?
Is the link likely to last, or get pushed to the archives of another URL?
Will relevant text surrond the link, or will it appear simply as an item in a long list of links?
Etc, etc.
MozRank, PageAuthority, DomainAuthority and MozTrust are all great metrics for determining the value of a link, but they are not the final word. In aggregate, I would say they are more important than looking at the number of outbound links, but in the end each link target must be judged on its own merits.
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 do YOU use site explorer?
I normally use open site explorer to identify links that competitors of my clients have and sometimes this gives me what I call 'some low hanging fruit' to go after. (and of course links that are more challenging to get) I don't know why this didn't occur to me sooner. If my client is a chiropractor why not look at the links for 50 or 100 of the top rankings chiropractic sites all over the US? This would HAVE to uncover a wealth of blogs to comment on that have good authority, great industry associations, publications, forums - a whole wealth of items. It made me wonder how many people use site explorer like I have been (top 3-4 competitors that your client has) or identifying links pointing to LOTS of competitors? How do you use it? Couldn't you almost base an entire link building campaign using OSE? Why would this be a bad idea if not? Just some random thoughts. THE WEEKEND IS ALMOST HERE - Have a great day everybody! 🙂
Moz Pro | | Mrupp441 -
How can I get a report of the top 500 national sites using Domain Authority and Page Authority? Does someone have to type sites in one by one on Site Explorer or is there another way?
I want to know what sites and blogs have the to rankings overall based on their Domain Authority and Page Authority - Top 500 - 1000 in nation - I want to know which ones are follow and no-follow too - Does anyone know? Has anyone run such a report yet? Thanks for help - BD
Moz Pro | | creativeguy0 -
Bulk OSE Open Site Explorer Tool?
I am trying to do some spring cleaning for a client and hoping to prune any unnecessary domains. Is there a tool that will check, in bulk, these domains through Open Site Explorer? I've looked through all the different Excel spread sheet apps and google doc apps but they are incredibly buggy if they work at all since SEOmoz changed their data limits. Maybe a new tool has been updated in the last few months that I am not aware of. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | kerplow0 -
Open Site Explorer Page Authority
Hello, I ran a report on my website at http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/links?site=www.carrentalbuddy.com.au and noticed my page authority went to 1. I also noticed a lot of our results that were showing high page authority have dropped right down. I checked other sites and they all seemed fine but was wondering if this is a open site explorer issue or a a www.carrentalbuddy.com.au issue? Kindest Regards, Chris
Moz Pro | | kymodo0 -
Why would Open Site Explorer say some internal links are images when in the source code they're text?
Hi, All! I was looking at OSE for one of my client's site's pages, and I saw that all internal links were said to be images. I was pretty sure their menu was CSS, and all the links were text. So I did "fetch as Googlebot" and looked in the resultant code of one of the homepage to see the main navigation bar. The navigation link for one of those pages looked like this: `onmouseover="doMenu2on(this);">[](http://www.mysite.com/solution_sub.asp?ID=8)` [``` <code>![](images/arrow6.gif)Anchor Text Here</code> ```](http://www.mysite.com/solution_sub.asp?ID=8) ``` The nav link for a page that does show internal anchor text in OSE looks like this: onmouseover="doMenu2on(this);">[](http://www.mysite.com/solution.asp?ID=5) [```
Moz Pro | | debi_zyx
<code>Anchor Text Here</code> So there is an image in the link (it's the little arrow before the text to indicate a sub-category), but the anchor text comes right after it. Is Linkscape (and therefore potentially Google) seeing them as two different links to the same page and only counting the first? But it's all wrapped within the same <a></a>tags. Any ideas on if this is a bug in Linkscape, or a real issue, and what should be done? Thanks! Aviva``0 -
Tons of Crappy links in new OSE (Open Site Explorer)
I am starting to miss the old OSE. I've found that for a lot of the pages on our site, the new OSE is showing WAY more links and most of them are garbage nonsense links from China, Russia, and the rest of the internet Wild West. For instance, in the old OSE, this page used to show 9 linking domains: http://www.uncommongoods.com/gifts/by-recipient/gifts-for-him It now shows 454 links. Some of the new links (about 5 of them) are legitimate. The other 400+ are garbage. Some are porn sites, most of them don't even open a web page, they just initiate some shady download. I've seen this for other sites as well (like Urban Outfitters) This is making it much harder for me to do backlink analysis on bc I have no clue how many "Normal" links they have. Is anyone else having this problem ? Any way to filter all this crap out ? See attached screenshot of the list of links I'm getting from OSE. NHXnn
Moz Pro | | znotes1 -
Has anyone noticed slight drops in the Domain mozRank of their sites since the OSE update?
There's been no significant changes to their link profiles, so I'm thinking how mozRank is measured may have changed. Anyone else have this issue?
Moz Pro | | RiseSEO0 -
How to get seomoz to re-crawl a site?
I had a lot of duplicate content issues and have fixed all the other warnings. I want to check the site again.
Moz Pro | | adamzski0