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
-
Thoughts on creating a resource/recommend links page in order to attain links?
Hey guys, Just wondering, how does Google view reciprocal link building nowadays? I've heard in the past that it's something that Google isn't particularly keen on. However, more recently, I've also read that - as long as the links are decent (and in moderation) - link exchanging is by no means a bad thing. The reason I ask is that I'm thinking of creating a "resource/recommended links page" for a client of mine. Because of their industry, it's really apparent that attaining links is often only possible if there is the opportunity of a reciprocal link in return. Therefore, I'd need to have a resource/recommend links page of my own. Is this something I should go ahead with to make it much easier to attain links? Or should I try to avoid reciprocal links and attempt to pinpoint one-way linking opportunities - even if they're thin on the ground? Any help much as appreciated as always. Cheers.
Link Building | | Webrevolve0 -
Value of IMG links for SEO
Hello, I'm looking for some new ways to build links (IE, letitimate not spam), and I know sites featuring a site that I created would be an interesting way to do so. My question is this, the StudioPress Showcase pages http://www.studiopress.com/showcase/baltimore-print-studios link back to your site with an image, with some "Almost URL Alt text". How valuable would this link be, given that the DA is 97 and the PA is in the upper 40s Thanks Zach
Link Building | | Zachary_Russell0 -
Why don't some external links "count"?
A car-dealer client advertises through DexKnows, and the entry includes a link to the client's website. That link is not listed as a linking domain through OpenSite Explorer for the client's site. A competing car dealer also advertises through DexKnows, but that link is counted as a linking domain for the competitor. Why the difference? (I'm new and still learning -- linkbuilding appears to be my weakness.) Thank you!
Link Building | | TheOptimizer690 -
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 -
Where I need to jump? Web OR Social OR Local Directories
I am working on patio umbrellas keyword to achieve top 3 ranking in Google. I have achieved top 30 ranking with help of on page optimization and want to achieve top 3 ranking with help of link building. Today, I was checking SEO web directories on SEOmoz. Now, I can't make any changes on live website exclude content. So, I have only one option to deal with link building. There are 3 sections over there including Web Directories, Social Directories & Local Directories. So, which is best one to improve my ranking on Google? If anyone have additional inputs for link building so eager to know that. I want to achieve top 3 ranking with my keyword by next 2 months.
Link Building | | CommercePundit0 -
Directory Submission for 5 month old website
Hey guys. I recently started doing a directory submission program for new website. Right now I am submitting to 20 directories per day, as well as social bookmarking around 10 blog posts per day. I noticed a small drop in our Google rankings since doing this. Is this because it is too much? Or is it just Google re-adjusting itself to cope with the changes. As ever, really appriciate the help I get off the guys on here. Big love to you all 🙂
Link Building | | Nextman0 -
Can too many high PR links can hurt SEO
I recently accuired about 10 PR 4- 5 for my website after getting mostly PR 1-2 for the past 6 months. After a couple of day my rankings not only didn't go up, but actually went down really drasticly for many keyphrases that i used to rank at the top 3. Should i keep building those high PR links in the same fast pace, should i slow down? Or maybe i should even those out with some low PR link?
Link Building | | atohad0 -
Web directory links
Just wondering about this SEO company that promises submissions to 65 000 web directories?
Link Building | | jingliang3_rogers.com
Is this even possible? Are many of the links going to be low-quality or worthless? What do you guys think?0