Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How do sites have so many 'total links'?
-
I've been analyzing some of our competitors: essayedge.com and papercheck.com
Both sites have a large number of 'total links'... about 93,000 each. The former has about 1,200 linking root domains while the latter only has 195. Even for 1,200 linking root domains, 93k total links seems like a ton to me.
Our site has 101 linking root domains and only 299 'total links'.
I'm quite new to this whole SEO game and admittedly still learning a TON. Am I missing something here? How do sites generate so many links? This seems nuts to me.
Thanks for any help!
-
Thanks Marcin, that makes more sense.
For example, I noticed papercheck had a ton of links from verisign. It appears they did some case-study for the company and the links were all over their other country specific domains, etc.
It makes sense that it would be more about increasing the number of linking root domains than the total number of links and I now understand how one link on a very large site can result in hundreds, if not thousands, of links.
I didn't really understand this and in the back of my mind I keep hearing Rand telling me that link building is valuable but hard work and time consuming. I'm thinking... s*$t, it really is going to be a lot of work to get 100,000 links

But it's nice to know I need to simply focus on high quality linking domains... easy enough

-
Thanks for the reply, that helps and makes sense!
-
Hi,
it's very simple to achieve with site-wide links, for example in a sidebar or in a footer. It's quite possible that a single domain. This is exactly the case with at least one of the domains you provided, as far as I can tell after a quick look-up.
Generally, if a large site links to you with a link which is present on each page of that site (think blogroll), you can easily get thousands of links. However, their value will not be significantly stronger than a single link from the same site would hold.
Hope it helps.
-
Hi TBiz,
The fact with these website is the following: they have a lot of sitewide links (link that appear on more then one page of the linking website). For ex, footer links (such as "created by" or "designed by", etc.), advertising which appears on each page, etc.
Although it can drive a big number of inbound links, I would still go and ask the question of quantity vs. quality? Which one is better for a website? (If it would be me, I would choose quality).
I hope that helped,
Istvan
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
-
My site is linked from over 900 "The Globe"-domains - disavow or not?
Hi! As some of you may be familiar with, there is a giant spam-network with the same design and same page title on all domains: "The Globe - The world's most visited web pages". For example: theglobe.at
Link Building | | Sindre
theglobe.co.za
www.internet-search.us I've now discovered that over 900 of these spam-domains link to my site. My plan was of course to disavow them all, but Google is explicit on telling me to be careful. «Only disavow if you are certain that the links are damaging to your rankings». And to be honest, I'm not sure. Also: it seems drastic to disavow almost a thousand pages. I'm afraid to mess something up. What would you do?3 -
Back link from site with DA of 72 to a website domain. Clicking on the link redirects to our website not the attended one.
Hi,
Link Building | | JIMBO16
I've ran a back link check and discovered a good back link to a site which then gets redirected back to my company's website. I have a feeling that an old SEO agency has purchased a small website which has a decent link back from a relevant organisation with a high Domain authority and then redirects the domain to our website to get the link juice. What are your thought on this? Is this really bad practise and possibly damaging? Thanks, Jim0 -
How many links per week/month should a link building campaign acquire?
I am running a linkbuilding campaign for my company. I am mostly focusing on guest blogging opportunities and responding to emails from HARO. How many links would I have to acquire each week or month to be considered doing a good job over a 6 month or a year time period? Thank you,
Link Building | | fersu0 -
How can I find the best sites to guest post on while linking back to my article?
Whats the best way to find sites to guest blog on. There are just so many and I don't want to make bad choices so my current rankings don't get hurt
Link Building | | aronwp0 -
Footer Links And Link Juice
I'm starting to learn about link juice and notice in GWMT > Traffic > Internal Links, that the list is in this order by the links counted on each page. Some are in the footer and some are in the header, with some being more important than others commercially i.e. /register /privacy /terms /search /sitemap /disclaimer /blog /register So I am wondering if I should add a 'no-follow' attribute to the footer links i.e. privacy, terms, disclaimer and leave the others as they are? Does this help retain link juice on each page where the links appear? Or am I missing the point all together? This is my website: http://goo.gl/CN0e5
Link Building | | Ubique0 -
Link building for a product review site
I'm doing SEO for a product review website, and I'm curious what link building opportunities are best for this category. Assume only the following: The website is basically a blog Most of the articles are reviews on cosmetic products, though there are also articles regarding news, product roundups, tips&tricks and similar content The website is in a local, non-english language Disregarding low-value opportunities such as directories, what kind of websites should I aim for outreach purposes? So far, I'm thinking the following: Product manufacturers (very low success chance, as the review site is fairly new and in a localized language) E-commerce sites selling the products (average to low success chance, since a lot of them use CMSes that might not allow integration of a review) Other cosmetic blogs, particularly for guest blogging (average to low success chance, since the website is fairly new) Any ideas would be appreciated, thanks!
Link Building | | mihaiaperghis0 -
Link Detox and Link Removal
I have a question about which links to remove after running a link detox from Link Research Tools. First a little back story. I had had an SEO company link building for one of the websites I own. But I have recently stopped working with them. In the last month my rankings have near dropped off the charts. I have just recently gotten access to Google webmaster tools and noticed an unnatural link warning from back in March. So yesterday I ran link detox and it reported 19 toxic links, 120 suspicious links, and 24 healthy links. It's rather obvious that I should remove all of the toxic links. They all from sites that have been deindexed by google. But my question is a about the suspicious links. What should my criteria be for removing them? Am I better off removing them all and leaving my site with only 24 healthy links or should I personally comb through them and remove only the worst of the worst so that I leave my site with a few more links? I'd really like to get the site ready to resubmit to google as soon as I can. Thoughts? yyCOf.png
Link Building | | CobraJones950 -
Linking strategy between my own sites
Hi, I have one main site, let's call it food.com I also have 10 smaller sites, let's call them mexicanfood.com, indianfood.com, italianfood.com etc food.com is on its own separate dedicated server the 10 smaller sites are all on a shared IP in hostgator I don't want Google to think that I have created the 10 sites for only purpose of creating links to each other. So, would you recommend that all those 10 sites link to each other? or should there be no interlinking within those 10 same IP domains? What about linking from those 10 sites to my main site? How should I structure my own backlinks not to get penalized by Google ?
Link Building | | limens0