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!
-
One way I use it is for ideas of types of links I might be able to get for my husband's business (selling model RC warships). There are only a couple of competitors for the fiberglass ship hulls in the US, so I look at their backlink profile. Just this evening I was browsing through, and saw that my competitor had a link from a crew website for people who had served on a certain ship, for anyone interested in building a model of that ship.
We don't carry the same hull so we couldn't get a link on that page, but we do have about 35 hulls, so there are opportunities for several links from other sites.
-
If this is the case for me, then i would just take top 2 competitors only with all their links. And then start refining the each links manually whether this is okay to consider or simply ignore the one, finally you will get clean links opportunities areas where you need to build links and compete your competitors. I won with THIS. .yes, you can too!
-
You could build a link campaign entirely around OSE but I would also look at other options too that competitors haven't thought of.
-
We use OSE exactly like you do, but also use it as an education tool for our clients. Many people has so many misconceptions about SEO and if you take the time to explain the basis of what you are actually doing they will see the value.
-
hi
Sure you could. We use it to export link reports to excel and then filter by moz page rank. we'll do that for every site that comes up in google under terms we want to compete for. next, we'll add a column in excel for yes/no to qualify the links in terms of whether we can/should go after them. It's a great tool to wrap your head around what other sites are doing and where you are relatively and to get in that "link circle" so to speak.
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
-
I am using moz pro but ı can't use keyword explorer
hi am buying moz pro but can't please help me. ı want scan this web site https://baliktasarim.com/
Moz Pro | | nurmasumi20020 -
What to do with a site of >50,000 pages vs. crawl limit?
What happens if you have a site in your Moz Pro campaign that has more than 50,000 pages? Would it be better to choose a sub-folder of the site to get a thorough look at that sub-folder? I have a few different large government websites that I'm tracking to see how they are fairing in rankings and SEO. They are not my own websites. I want to see how these agencies are doing compared to what the public searches for on technical topics and social issues that the agencies manage. I'm an academic looking at science communication. I am in the process of re-setting up my campaigns to get better data than I have been getting -- I am a newbie to SEO and the campaigns I slapped together a few months ago need to be set up better, such as all on the same day, making sure I've set it to include www or not for what ranks, refining my keywords, etc. I am stumped on what to do about the agency websites being really huge, and what all the options are to get good data in light of the 50,000 page crawl limit. Here is an example of what I mean: To see how EPA is doing in searches related to air quality, ideally I'd track all of EPA's web presence. www.epa.gov has 560,000 pages -- if I put in www.epa.gov for a campaign, what happens with the site having so many more pages than the 50,000 crawl limit? What do I miss out on? Can I "trust" what I get? www.epa.gov/air has only 1450 pages, so if I choose this for what I track in a campaign, the crawl will cover that subfolder completely, and I am getting a complete picture of this air-focused sub-folder ... but (1) I'll miss out on air-related pages in other sub-folders of www.epa.gov, and (2) it seems like I have so much of the 50,000-page crawl limit that I'm not using and could be using. (However, maybe that's not quite true - I'd also be tracking other sites as competitors - e.g. non-profits that advocate in air quality, industry air quality sites - and maybe those competitors count towards the 50,000-page crawl limit and would get me up to the limit? How do the competitors you choose figure into the crawl limit?) Any opinions on which I should do in general on this kind of situation? The small sub-folder vs. the full humongous site vs. is there some other way to go here that I'm not thinking of?
Moz Pro | | scienceisrad0 -
How to track data from old site and new site with the same URL?
We are launching a new site within the next 48 hours. We have already purchased the 30 day trial and we will continue to use this tool once the new site is launched. Just looking for some tips and/or best practices so we can compare the old data vs. the new data moving forward....thank you in advance for your response(s). PB3
Moz Pro | | Issuer_Direct0 -
Using Your 50 Monthly SERP Analysis Reports
Hi. I've been running analysis on a variety of keywords for a few of our clients and am noticing I'm going through our 50 monthly full SERP Analysis Reports pretty quickly. While SEO is only a fraction of what we do, I know there are large SEO shops out there that must run a tremendous amount of analysis each month. If you're running such analysis routinely, how do you manage with only 50 full SERP Analysis Reports each month? How do these reports fit into your workflow? Thanks a lot. David
Moz Pro | | WiredImpact0 -
Why Doesn't Open Site Explorer show Domain Links from Twitter, WordPress or Feedburner?
I commented on a few blog posts and wanted to see the domain authority of those sites. When I look at our domain links, I notice the links are not there from the blogs (which I now know I have to give it time to show up). But I also noticed that domains with links to our website (regularly) were not showing up either. i .e Twitter, WordPress and Feedburner. I know we have links in these locations, especially Twitter. Why would these domains not show up? Much thanks!
Moz Pro | | SydisNey0 -
Are organic site links excluded in the rankings report?
If I'm pulling a rankings report for a specific subdomain and a different subdomain appears at the main result and the specific subdomain is a site link beneath it, does that show up in the results? It doesn't seem to in my report.
Moz Pro | | mattiasantin0 -
Moving from a dynamic site to nopcommerce
Hi, First question since becoming a member so be gentle with me ;o) We are moving from a site using a dynamically generated ecommercetemplate to a nopcommerce site. I have two questions about this I know that 301 redirects are the best way to pass "link juice" but with the site being dynamically generated a lot of these links will simply disappear when we move to nop, meaning that they wont actually be there in order to add a 301. Any advice on this would be appreciated. How can i get a list of the pages on my current site which have the best rank in order to create the redirects. Unfortunately due to some technical issues we had with google analytics we were unable to install it so dont really have any analytics to give us some extra info. I was hoping that there would be somewhere within seomoz where i could be directed. Many thanks Chris
Moz Pro | | cjhamill0 -
Using the PA metric from the mozbar
Hey guys, just a quick question about page authority. Often I'll be on a page with a high domain authority but the page authority is 0 as it says there are 0 links from 0 domains to the page. This is despite the fact there is a followed link from the homepage to that page. Is this just a bug in PA, and can I assume that the page will have at least some authoirty as a link from the homepage is pointed to it? Or is there some other factor that may be preventing the page to not have any PA. Thanks
Moz Pro | | SureFire0