OK Crawl Test Link Question Again!

[JemRobinson]

I've downloaded a crawl test and column G Link Count reads 62 and yep there are a total of 62 links on the page in question. Column AM Internal Links reads 303 and yep there are somewhere in the order of 303 pages pointing at this one. Root Domains is surprisingly low at 6, so maybe there are only 6 domains linking to this page.

BUT... External Links read 51. There are not 51 links pointing away from this domain on this page, no way hozay, so can anybody tell me what is meant by 'External Links?

A humble thank you in anticipation of an education.

Jem

[ChiarynMiranda]

So glad I could help clear things up! :]

Each domain is only counted once, so a domain could have 3, 10, or 100 links to your site, but it would still only count as one linking root domain.

[JemRobinson]

Thank you, thank you, and thank you! This was the way I initially read 'external links' but was told in previous post I was wrong. Is by any chance the 'root domain' count of 1 but external links counting at say 10 highlighting that 10 links come from 1 domain...?

Thank you again, I cant tell you...

[ChiarynMiranda]

Hi Jem,

Sorry for the confusion! External Links actually refer to links from other domains that point to that page. For example, if the page www.example.com/tools had three links pointing to it where one came from example.com, one came from presentation.com, and one came from description.com, it would have one internal link (from example.com) and two external links (from presentation.com and description.com). We do not count how many links the page has pointing to other domains in the metrics you are seeing. It is much more important to know the links that are pointing into the page rather than from the page to other sites so determine the authority of the page.

Here is a great resource if you need more information about external links: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/external-link

I hope this clears things up. Please let me know if you have any other questions.