I only have 65 extrernal links after 8 months of link building?
-
I am currently employing an SEO consultant who has been carrying out link building for the past 8 months. having signed up to SEOmoz i noticed that i only have 65 external links when my competitors have 13,000+.
My consultant gave me a list of over 300 links he has putting into place but SEOmoz only shows 65.
What I am concerned about is why I have only so few and where the others have gone? And how do i catch up to my competitors and put a proper (better) strategy in place.
-
Check your site into Google Webmaster Tools and you can see exactly what they are counting toward your backlinks
-
Linkscape is limited, and right now a couple of months behind. We'll be releasing a new index sometime next week, and you should see some changes then.
-
A universal challenge: How do I see my links?
Linkscape is, by SEOmoz's own admission, limited. Yes, it's getting consistently bigger all the time, but there are still links they miss because their index is small. If you want a different perspective on where links are coming from, check out SEO Majestic or Raven Tools. Rand has openly said SEO Majestic's index is substantially bigger than Linkscape, but it's also older.
Remember that what all these companies are doing is trying to mimic Google. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but understand that by definition they're sometimes going to get it wrong. Just because SEOmoz or one of these other services hasn't caught some of your links doesn't mean Google has missed them as well.
Try to look carefully at the nature of the links that your consultant has built. If they're predominantly directories or footer links, then I'd question their value, and like you I would be concerned about the quality of the consultant's work. But if there is diversity in the types of links - some blog links, some directories, some press releases, etc. - then it's more likely your consultant is doing good work.
One final thought. I'm a big believer that the very best links are the ones your competitors can't easily duplicate. Earned links from blogging, good PR and good writing can be hard for the competition to neutralize. This is one reason SEO can be so hard.
-
Everyone has to make up his own mind on some things... but with the way that google is acting these days.... spammy links may be worse than no links.
-
Go to opensite explorer and put your domain in, you could filter by do-follow as well.
If you click the results that come up you should be able to find your link on that page, if the website is spammy note it down and maybe make a list say 10. Ask him if he created these links?
You can also look at the anchor text tab and see what kind of anchor text he has been building. This should be a mix of your brand name, targeted keywords and variations.
Or put your domain up here and I or someone else (EGOL is clued up a lot) and we can have a look for you.
-
Thank you for this, I am clear on what you are saying about quality over quantity, but do you think there should be some questions I should be asking my consultant to make sure he s doing the right things?
-
You might find that 13,000+ is not from 13,000 websites, if they managed to get a sitewide link maybe in the footer and that site has 1000 pages that's a 1000 links out of the 13,000.
Also those 13,000 might be rubbish, shed loads of directories with no Auth, if your SEO is doing it right he might have built only 65 links but from 65 high Auth websites.
For example a link from the BBC could be better then 1000 directory submissions.
-
Thanks for this, one thing I would like to add is that another second opinion I have already had, suggested many of the links my consultant had in his report were very spammy and SEOmoz would probably ignore these, do you think this could be a possible reason?
I am concerned me SEO consultant is not doing his job well and I need to go elsewhere?
-
There are a couple of possible reasons....
A) Perhaps the links that your SEO acquired have not been spidered yet. Crawling every page on the web can take a while to find links on obscure pages that might only have one link into them from another obscure page.
B) Perhaps the links that your SEO acquired are on pages that are unspiderable - either because they have no links into them from the greater web or the links into them are not spiderable.
About your concern that your competitor has thousands.... go to their website and see what they have that might attract links... and you can run a link assessment for their site just like you can for your own.
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
-
Does Search Console data include GMB traffic? Branded CTR is 37.8%- Good or Bad?
Hey all, Per Search Console our branded keyword CTR is 37.8%. But when that keyword is searched our GMB listing shows up on top of the #1 result. For the same 90 day period GMB shows another 35% visits to our GMB (based on the number of impressions and visits to our GMB page) listing when the same keyword is searched. My question is this. Does Search console data include clicks that came from our GMB listing or not? My thinking is like this: If GMB traffic is not calculated in search console then it means that 72.8% of people looking for our brand will end up on our site on way or another 9organic #1 result plus GMB listing visits) We are also doing PPC for this very keyword that has gets almost 20% of the remaining traffic. So after adding all up we are loosing about 8% of our branded traffic to people who are doing adwords. When you search our brand you normally see 2, 3 competitor's adwords ads. Does anyone know how this works exactly? And if you don't mind sharing your branded keyword CTR's, so I can compare to ours please. I would love to compare to a site that actually has a GMB listing ranking for the same keyword Thanks in advance, Davit
Reporting & Analytics | | Davit19850 -
Link juice am i getting it or not?
We have a newspaper source that links to a domain that forwards to a page on our website. Do we get link juice from that? Go here: https://dailygazette.com/ click on "Classifieds" then "CapRegion Homes" the button goes to the website www.capregionhomes.com which forwards to our main website, a page we built for them. My question is: Because the link from this site first goes to another site that auto-forwards to us are we actually getting any link juice from the daily gazette on this or is that first site getting all the juice & we technically are getting link juice from capregionhomes.com ?
Reporting & Analytics | | Cfarcher0 -
Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29\. We have been building good links from high DA pages and producing quality, regular content.
Hello, our domain authority dropped significantly overnight from 37 to 29. We have been building good links from high DA sites and producing regular, good quality content. Anyone able to offer any ideas why? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ProMOZ1231 -
How long before links are found in analytics?
I'm new to website building and have recently set up some links by submitting my website in directories and have also got some people in the same industry to link to my website. But they aren't being found in moz analytics. Does it take time or should they be getting found?
Reporting & Analytics | | PaddyCoop0 -
Cannonical Links?
Hi guys, I recently started using Moz Analytics's for my site and it has told me that the vast majority (perhaps all) of my pages have duplicate content because Google will be indexing the version both with and without www. in front of it as seperate domains. I've done some research and have come across a few suggestions of what to do, but i'm not sure which to go with or how to actually implement it. Any help, advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Sandicliffe0 -
Link Research Tools
Is anyone else here a user of Link Research Tools? I recently completed a Link Detox for my sites. However, it is saying that links from high quality press release sites are deadly and should be removed. They are also saying the same about the links from the Yellow Pages. Obviously I know these tools are automated, but does anyone know why they are showing these links as 'deadly' and should be removed? I have tried contacting LRT about this issue but am yet to receive a reply.
Reporting & Analytics | | AAttias0 -
Link being indexed
So I found this link to my website on the huffington post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/13/california-car-insurance-rates-vary-study_n_2122614.html it's at the bottom in the "around the web" section. My question is this article has been around for almost 4 months yet the link does not show up in WMT. I would like to know if the link to http://www.shiftins.com is indexed and passing authority. Thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | jameswalkerson0 -
Find 404 Broken Links
We are looking for tools to help us repair broken backlinks, those with 404 error. We have used the Open Site Explorer tool to create a CSV file from our client's URL. We read the "Fixing Crawl Diagnostic Issues", but don't see how to "find the 404ed URL", nor do we see a "referral column" to scroll to. What steps should we take to locate the broken 404 linkages? What steps can we take to streamline repairs?
Reporting & Analytics | | jamie_netsitemarketing.com0