Local SEO - Directory Submissions Not Counting Towards External Links
-
I'm trying to raise the authority of a clients website. It's a local business so I'm submitting it to various applicable high authority business directories to earn more external links. I've submitted it to about 15 directories so far; however when I run Moz's Open Site Explorer, it doesn't state that any of these directories are linking. It's been about 3 weeks now so I assume that's enough time for the directory submissions to be indexed by Google. Has anyone else run into this problem, and if so how did you solve this so these links are counted?
-
Hey Steve,
We don't have any plans to pull data from GWT for our index in the future. We are focused on creating a larger and more up-to-date index of our own as we go forward and we prefer not to rely on other companies for our index data, since they can choose to remove our access to their data down the line. We prefer to grow our own index over time, though we do know this can cause some growing pains.
Let me know if you need help with anything else.
Chiaryn
-
Makes a lot of sense, this is a great answer Chiaryn!
I was suspecting it might boil down to this. I do have one additional question for you. Since this information is present in GWT, is there any plans to tap into the API to retrieve this information directly from GWT? I'm not sure if this is even possible in their API, but may be a good way to do it.
-
Hey Steve,
Thanks for writing in and for using our Open Site Explorer! I'm so sorry that you still haven't been able to see your links in Mozscape. Most links will be indexed by our spiders and available in Mozscape and Open Site Explorer within 60 days, but some take even longer for many of reasons, including the crawl-ability of sites, the amount of inbound links to them, and the depth of pages in subdirectories.
Just so you know, here's how we compile our index:
- We grab the most recent index.
- We take the top 10 billion URLs with the highest MozRank (with a fixed limit on some of the larger domains).
- We start crawling from the top down until we've crawled 90,000,000,000 pages (which is about 35% the amount in Google's index).
Therefore, if the site is not linked to by one of these seed URLs (or one of the URLs linked to by them in the next update) then it won't show up in our index. Sorry!
Mozscape focuses on a breadth-first approach. Therefore we almost always have content from the homepage of websites, externally linked-to pages, and pages higher up in a site's information hierarchy. However, deep pages that are buried beneath many layers of navigation are sometimes missed and it may be several index updates before we catch all of these. This is often the case with links from directory pages since directories tend to have a large number of pages and we are not able to crawl deep enough to index every page or link.
If our crawlers or data sources are blocked from reaching those URLs, they may not be included in our index (though links that point to those pages will still be available). Finally, the URLs seen by Mozscape must be linked-to by other documents on the web or our index will not include them.
I hope this information helps! Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Chiaryn
Help Team Ninja -
Hi Steve,
I'm going to alert our technical help staff to your question and ask them to pop by. Stay tuned!
-
It's hard to say.
They may show up in MOZ. It seems like MOZ shows the more authoritative links ahead of the others.
If I was in your position, I would look at GWT and take the domains and run them through Google and see how MOZ rates their domain and page authorities.
-
Hmmm, this could be a problem since I really want to rely on the authority metric from Moz. From your experience do the links eventually show up in Moz, or does Moz never end up indexing some links?
-
OSE does not produce as a robust/in-depth list of linking sites.
When I want to know what sites are linking to me, I look at GWT.
When I want to know the anchor text, domain/page authority etc of the links, I look at OSE.
-
Yes, GWT shows the directories I submitted linking to the website. These aren't showing up in Moz though. Does Moz's web crawler take longer to index links?
-
Hi Steve,
Some citations can take months to go live. You might want to read:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/09/26/infographic-citations-time-to-live/
Hope this helps!
-
Have you also checked incoming links in GWT?
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
-
SEO question about lots of outbound links
I'm considering adding a directory page to one of my websites that lists local groups from all around the world. I haven't kept up with SEO in a long time, but I recall (many) years ago that having a lot of outgoing links and very few (if any) inbound connections was a terrible thing. Is this still the case, or have search engine algorithms figured out that this can be beneficial to site visitors? What effect will adding a page like this have on my SEO?
Link Building | | jordanchris0 -
More than one link on an external website
Just wanted to clarify my understanding of this... I'm of the understanding that if an external site has more than one link going to your site, then it is only the one link that passes value. If this is the case.... Which is the link that passes value (i.e the first link established or the link that, all factors being considered, is the most valuable for passing authority?) If a second link established on an external website comes from and goes to a different webpage than the first (and is done for the purposes of targeting and boosting a different keyword category/theme), is this then a beneficial practice? If multiple links on an external website all serve to generate solid referral traffic, will this boost rankings, and thereby be a sound practice? Thanks in advance for your help in clarifying this for me!
Link Building | | Gavo0 -
Toxic Link Removal-Better to Pay an SEO Firm or Can I Do It Myself?
Hi Jen: Recently an SEO audit from a reputable SEO firm identified almost 50% of the incoming links to my site as toxic, 40% suspicious and 5% of good quality. They are of the opinion that it is imperative to remove the toxic domains. The fee for toxic link removal is about $3,000.I would prefer to save the $3,000 but would prefer not to take the risk of screwing up my ranking if this is a complex procedure best left to SEO professionals. My assumption is that link removal will involve identifying the toxic domains, requesting removal and eventually submitting a Google disavow request. Can I do this myself or is there a big risk of screwing it up? Assuming it is safe for me to remove toxic links, would anyone suggest software of tools for doing so? Thanks so much.
Link Building | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Is link exchange a reliable source to get back links?
I read a latest post on seomoz that _“Do not buy or exchange link with anyone who contacts you. This is completely against Google's policies and if they were to find out, you could be penalized." So I went through Google's ''Link Schemes'' and found that ''Excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you")'' can negatively impact a site's ranking . _ So is it the ''excessive'' link exchanging that can cause a negative impact? Exchanging links with good quality, cached sites (without excessive doing) can do good or bad? Can anyone please explain to me in detail?
Link Building | | semvibe0 -
Is a no-follow link/sponsored link a good editorial link?
Ok maybe this is a dumb question. I really need some better, more quality backlinks pointing to my site. There is a site that has domain authority of 72, page rank 5 that is offering me a sponsored blog post. Do sponsored posts count as a good editorial link? Also what if they are no-follow (and how would I find out ahead of time), does that still give me link juice?
Link Building | | tutugirl0 -
Are links from every page of a partners website to my website bad for seo?
I have asked a partner website to link to my website in the Menu Bar. Which has resulted in a link to my website from every page of the partners website (Over 1000 Pages). The link is not a "nofollow" link, it is a regular link. Can this have any negative effects in terms of SEO?
Link Building | | raghavkapur0 -
External links incorrect
Hello, My 'air intelligence' campaign is indicating my site has no external links, but I know from Google analytics that there is over a 1000 links. How long should I expect SEOmoz to take to discover all the links. Regards
Link Building | | CanineConcepts0 -
Is there any tool in/or out of SEOMOZ where we can check anchor texts for internal/external links for a website?
I just want to check anchor text of all the links for a specific URL within a website
Link Building | | merkal20050