Why are none of my incoming links showing up in SEOmoz or Google? How do I get good legit incoming links?

[eugenecomputergeeks]

There are hundreds of sites that are linking to my website, but nobody is showing it.

Google wont display any when using link:eugenecomputergeeks.com, and in webmaster tools it only shows 46 incoming links.

SEOmoz shows only 3 links. This just isn't so. Why is this?

I DESPERATELY need valid incoming links from well ranked websites , and having lots of trouble getting them.

Nobody in town with a well ranked site seems to want to do a link exchange, and I've already made the mistake of buying my way into directories, which didn't do anything good for my rankings. Thanks!

[eugenecomputergeeks]

Thanks so much for your response! Very helpful.

So I've since removed the outgoing links to sites that don't make sense, and hoping they will notice and remove me from their sites.  I will from now on not try and cheat my way into getting links.

Is it likely that Google will punish me for having my site on a a few hundred directories? I manually submitted and paid to get my way in.  Do I need to take the time to ask to be removed from all these directory sites? 90% are related to the topic of my site, but most are free directory sites, and I'm sure some of them are on the verge of being spammy. Thanks again.

[evolvingSEO]

Glad you like SEOmoz, I've been a PRO member for about 10 months and love it as well!

Right, you want to look for "nofollow" in the <a>portion of the code. The SEOmoz Toolbar makes it really easy to find them without having to look at source code.</a>

<a>No matter the tactic (link exchange, blog commenting, directories etc etc) - simply ask; does the link make sense to be there from the user's point of you? If you link out to a valuable site who happens to link back to you, that is a "link exchange" but it happens in a valuable organic sort of way. Its the result of a mutually beneficial human relationship.</a>

<a>Judging the value of a link is a little more complex - this is a GREAT (albeit hidden) article </a>http://www.seomoz.org/article/the-professional-guide-to-link-building-2011 within SEOmoz on linkbuilding by Eric Enge. I'd give it a look

-Dan

[eugenecomputergeeks]

Thanks.

That puts me to ease a bit.I was thinking that since I made the mistake of buying my way into directories, that Google was "mad at me" and wasn't trusting my new legit links.

When I go to the websites that are linking to me the links are there.  I'll check to see if they are followed links or not.  I assume unfollowed links are links where "nofollow" is set in the html "a href" tag?  If this is the case then the links to me are followed links and are active.

I'll work on getting better content that people would want to link to. I will also work on getting more e-mails and calls out  there for link exchanges.

Is it true that if I did a link exchange with a site, that this wouldn't be as good as if the site was just linking to me?

Thanks for your help. I love SEOmoz so far.

[evolvingSEO]

If you can see the links on the websites where you are getting them, they are there. Further, check to see if they are followed or not (the SEOmoz toolbar is an easy way to do this).

The sources above which you mentioned (Open Site Explorer, the link: operator and even Webmaster Tools) are ALL at times incomplete, and not instantly up to date either. OSE can take 30 days to show links.

You can check MajesticSEO for an alternative source too.

-Dan