Why have my external followed links risen from 271 to 9961 in three weeks?
-
I've noticed a massive increase in the number of external followed links to my root domain (from 271 to 9961) - has anyone else experienced this?
-
The one quick thing I would suggest is to look at your "Anchor Text" report in Open Site Explorer and try to determine where those links are coming from. It's very possible they are coming from a single domain e.g. a sitewide sidebar link for example.
If the # of linking root domains hasn't changed drastically, this is more than likely the cause.
-
Agree with Federico,
Take a look in other areas (e.g WMT or majestic) to confirm then look at what you've done recently to get the links. Have you run a viral campaign etc. if not are you suffering from some competitors spamming you to bring you down ? things to look at are anchor texts (are they spamming or from people shouting how great your site is?), domains (are a lot of them coming form one domain or more?) and authority (are they all really low domain authority etc.) That shout get you on the right road.
Good luck!
-
I suggest you download your "latest links" from Google Webmaster tools to verify if the report is/isn't an OSE issue. If Google also shows all those new links, then you might want to look a much closer look and if those are spammy backlinks, start disavowing before getting any penalty.
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
-
Too many "nofollow" outgoing links are Okay?
Hi all, Our forum have so many discussions and topics where our users leave their websites and oter URLs which will be marked "nofollow" by default. Beside spammy websites, is that Okay to have so many "nofollow" outgoing links? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Are we confusing Google with our internal linking?
Hi all, We decided to give importance to one of our top pages as it has "keyword" in it's slug like website.com/keyword. So we internally linked even from different sub-domain pages more than homepage to rank for that "keyword". But this page didn't show up in Google results for that "keyword"; neither homepage, but our login page is ranking. We wonder why login page is ranking. Has our internal linking plan confused Google to ignore homepage to rank for that primary keyword? And generally do we need to internally link homepage more than anyother page? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
Absolute Internal Links and their Affect on Rankings for Local Businesses
For many localized search terms (City + Profession), I'm noticing that OpenSiteExplorer is reporting high numbers of backlinks for anchortext from Absolute internal links from that same domain. Now, I'm familiar with the difference in relative and absolute internal links but am wondering if this type of linking may be carrying a lot of weight for rankings. It may be a correlation over causation situation if it's more that those companies that are including absolute internal links for terminology are just doing a better job (generally) with internal linking... but I feel like this may be something worth digging into. Everything I have read says that search engines view absolute and relative internal links essentially equally but does anybody have their own insight on the effectiveness for these two types of internal links in regards to small local businesses who otherwise are getting basically no links at all?
Algorithm Updates | | Kirch0 -
If our link profile is too "blog link" heavy, will that be all that bad?
We own a site that lends itself extremely well to getting boat loads of links, only down side is that those on the boat are all bloggers. We are selling a product that retails for $6.89 per unit. They are for women. Our target market is any woman/girl who is between 14 and 50. Even better, our cost per unit is only about $0.40. So what we've been doing is sending them out by the hundreds to legit fashion blogs all the way down to blogspot mommy bloggers and the reviews have poured in, literally all of them positive. Moral of the story, we have a good product, and no shortage of bloggers that would be willing to write us up a legit, human written (by a red-blooded American none-the-less) on almost exclusively legit blogs. We're not trying to manipulate what they say, how they link to us, what anchor text they use or anything. We're just sending them product, asking that they do a review and give us a link and that's it. Our worry is that given the nature of the site and the product offering, it's going to be easy to get these legit blog links, but more difficult to get links that "aren't on blogs". Is this going to hurt us, or will Big Google be kind and realize this isn't shady manipulation. It's legit part of our ongoing effort to get the word out. Further evidence that our campaign isn't to manipulate (although we all know we're in it for the links) is that so far 75% of our sales have been driven by these reviews. A few of the bigger sites that have done reviews have each directly resulted in 10+ sales from that single review. So what are all ya'll's thoughts? I suspect we'll be OK, but wanted some others to provide their views.
Algorithm Updates | | AarcMediaGroup0 -
Paid for Directory Listings and no-follows
Was just about to book an advert in a directory until the salesperson told me that the directory listing would be replicated over 40 times, from different websites (they white label the directory to different sites, who then sell their own adverts in the directory). I asked them whether they did nofollows - they didn't know what they were, so clearly not. I'm thinking 40 plus identical links coming through (over 10% of total links to site) could attract punishment from Google. Your thoughts would be welcome. Thanking you in advance, Luke
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
How do you block incoming links to your site?
With the new update to google focusing on link spam and multiple anchor text ? If you have incoming links that you would like to block or make no follow?
Algorithm Updates | | HelpingHandNetwork1 -
WIll embedding affiliate links from Amazon, commission connection services, and AdSense damage your SEO?
Will having affiliate marketing links and images on your website damage search engine ranking on certain terms? Those affiliate links are just for office tools and online document services and nothing like an adult contents or spamming.
Algorithm Updates | | WebMarketingSmart1