External Links Massive Drop
-
In Google Webmaster Tools I have well over 1000 links. Now I appreciate that this will vary a lot compared to Open Site Explorer but that's showing just 45.
Previously, before the last OSE update on the 28th I had 182 links so this is a big drop. My competitors use similar software (vbulletin forum) and have all increased in links and my actual links haven't dropped at all according to Google Wemaster Tools.)
My MozRank has dropped a lot, as has the authority and trust. I know this is only a guide but it's very frustrating. My PageRank has also dissapeared (although was only 1 a month or two ago) so really not sure what's going on.
Does anyone have any ideas. I haven't done anything that would penalise me in Google, just some tweaking of certain pages to try and help relevance and rankings.
Cheers.
-
Thank you very much for all of that info. Will have a good read and get link building.
-
OK, got your PM. So the short and sweet version is you need more quality links.
OSE shows 23 linking root domains to your entire domain, which is on par with your current PA/DA (doesn't address the drop of course).
Also, for your homepage I see 456 links from 5 domains. Don't focus on total links, it's a deceptive metric. Focus on Linking Root Domains instead of total links - aside from PA & DA, that is the only other monthly metric I track from OSE.
Go to Google Webmaster Tools into the link section, it says 1000 links, but in the top left section titled "Who Links the Most" click "more" and at the top it will say "Top XXXX domains that link to you". What is that number? I'd guess it's under 100? If so, that's confirming what I said above about getting more quality links and focusing on linking root domains.
When I search google for "yoursitename.co.uk" the mentions I find aren't much better, which tells me there's lots of low quality links (not necessarily created by you) and not enough quality ones to balance it out. That said, I do a site:yourdomain.co.uk search and see over 25k URLs indexed, so Google hasn't abolished you from the SERPs...
I'd recommend reading the following two posts. The first will take you 20 minutes to digest at most. The second link should take you a few years to finish doing, and when you're done you'll be far beyond your competitors.
- Growing Popularity & Links / What is Link Building? - SEOMoz Beginner's Guide to SEO, Chapter 7
- Complete List of Link Building Strategies - Point Blank SEO
Focus on delivering quality to your audience and interacting with other forums and sites as often as possible to draw people in, and you'll stick out from the competition.
-
Thank you very much for the advice, really appreciate it. I've sent you a pm with the web address.
Cheers.
-
A 45 to 1000 ratio is fairly low. Rand recently said that they see an average of 40% at the lowest for sites they've compared. For the sites I manage, 25% to 50% is most common.
To me, a ratio that low suggests that they're crappy links, since crappy links typically don't get picked up by OSE, but they're frequently reported by GWT.
If links are no longer showing up on OSE, I'd guess it's because:
- they links have been removed from the sites they were on,
- the links are no longer reachable by the index (in other words they've been pushed deeper into a site and they don't end up getting crawled),
- or they're low-quality links.
The software you use shouldn't affect link counts that are reported, unless perhaps you just changed a ton of URLs, but then your Top Pages tab would show lots of 404s - you wouldn't see the links missing.
Pagerank went through a toolbar update in the last two months, which could explain that drop.
Hard to give any other suggestions without more details. If the URL isn't confidential, I could probably diagnose more specifically than that.
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
-
Are aboutus.org links good?
Greetings Mozzers, I've posted several clients on aboutus.org sometime ago and it doesn't look like it is showing up on OSE. Its been well over 5 weeks. I have looked on their profile and none of the links are rel="nofollow" is there another thing I can check that would take all the juice away from them? Or does someone know if this is a good place to use? Thanks for any advice and clarification!
Competitive Research | | MonsterWeb280 -
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 -
As anyone used this before the hoth for Links building???
http://www.thehoth.com Links building company Is it safe or waste of money
Competitive Research | | spidersite1 -
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 -
Manta inbound link in OSE - competitor site yes, my site no, why?
Our site has had a link back to our site from Manta for a long time, but it's not appearing in our OSE results. One of our competitors similarly has an inbound link from Manta and that link DOES appear in their OSE results. I'm not certain whether that matters for us. Does it? But in any event, why would the one link appear but not the other? Thanks! Tim
Competitive Research | | tcolling0 -
Search shows site links, but not hyperlinked?
2 of our competitors on Google have site links show in their results which brings you to that specific page. In our listing we show up with the same results a few spots behind them with our site links visible showing very similar content, but are not actually hyper linked. Is there a way to fix the issue and let people actually be able to click on our site links instead of just reading them?
Competitive Research | | sknott0 -
Competitor with over 100,000 links to duplicate copy ranks well, anyone know why?
One of our competitors has over 100,000 links on Yahoo site explorer, most of them are from pages on their site with duplicate content and they don't seem to have a focus on gaining backlinks, but the site still ranks really well. Can anyone think of a reason why this duplicate content hasn't been penalised by Google?
Competitive Research | | RobertHill0 -
Do links from a linkdirectory still matter
Hi everyone, I'm checking out some competition for a webshop and i found a website which was quite high in Google for a searchterm, when checking it's backlinks why it was that high in google (His Content was rubbish, so it wasn't that). I only found out that it has loads of linkdirectory links, does this mean it still matters these kind of links, or does it mean the competition is just rubbish? Regards, yannick
Competitive Research | | iwebdevnl0