URL Link Counts
-
Hi
Can someone clarify what the URL link counts in the SERP report means? Is this total internal links on this page?
My followed internal links are very high compared with sites I am comparing against, some sites only have 1 internal followed link - is this possible? Have they simply no followed all the rest on that page?
-
Hey Becky
I recommend looking at the metrics directly in OSE to get a side-by-side comparison
You will find a breakdown of the page, sub-domain, and entire root domain metrics at this link.
Hope this helps!
-
Thanks, I'm just confused as we have showing 3.4K and everyone else has 1 - 12?
just seems like a really inconsistent number - or we are way out for something?
This is the page I am looking at http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/sack-trucks
-
And yes, it would be rather odd for a website to have only one internal followed link. It is possible that something funky with their CMS has all links no-followed, but even then.
-
Hi Becky,
So first it is important to note that the Moz Link Index (MozScape I think it's called?) is not a complete picture of all the links on the internet. So if you see a website ranking better than yours, but you have better links according to Moz, try checking a tool like Ahrefs.com as a "second opinion" on what links each site has. Sometimes the best ranked sites only have a handful of links, but they're incredibly focused links from valued sites in that industry.
A great example of that is Moz itself, none of my local competitors have written content for Moz over the years, so even if they have some really good links, or even more links, the few links I have earned by having YouMoz content promoted to the main blog (and just the YouMoz content itself) have given me some very specific valuable links from Moz, arguably the most authoritative website on SEO that exists. So that one link is just worth a ton in Google's eyes, vs. my competitors who haven't earned that link themselves (even though they could, probably easily, but don't tell them that).
When you're asking about internal links vs. total URL links, unless it specifically says "internal" links or "external" links it probably means all links. Internal links (just covering all the bases) are links inside your website to other pages inside your website, ie a link from your "homepage" to your "about us" page. That is a sitewide link internal to your website that is probably in the menu of every page. Only links that are internal would be counted that way, and it's a safe bet that the Moz tool has found 100% of the internal links on your site.
Now external links - again the Moz tool may or may not have found all the links on the entire internet that point to your site and your competitors sites - but those are links from when another website links to your website, from one domain to your domain. So when we're evaluating value in a link report, we're saying "Okay this guy has 50,000 links and I have 12 it's probably going to be impossible to compete with him for these primary keywords".
Alternatively, you may say "I have 500 links and this guy has 3 and he's kicking my ass, what gives?!" That comes back to the fact that not all links are created equal, again similar to how my competitors might have more links than me, but I just have better links. I've done guest posts, I've been interviewed about SEO, we monitor HARO religiously for anything SEO or marketing related, etc. Our links are few (because we rarely focus on our own stuff) but they're of such a high quality that they make up for the lack of volume (in many cases).
Now saying all this - and forgive me if I said anything you already knew, I just wanted to be sure I covered the basics before moving on just in case - your question is ultimately "Can I trust the SERP Report as a means to show me how my stats rate vs. the sites I am trying to beat on Google?"
I'll go un-vague and just say... No. You can't. You shouldn't rely heavily on that tool as a means of generating a "To-Do" list for your website in order to help you rank. Link metrics are incredibly important, arguably worth more than anything you can do to your actual website (outside of creating outstanding shareable content) but at the same time not all links are created equally, so if you are using the SERP tool and saying "I have better numbers than person in Rank #1, I should be doing better than them" you are going to wind up pulling your hair out.
There are hundreds and hundreds of factors that go into Google's algorithm, maybe less broad there are dozens of factors that we generally look at from a "low hanging fruit" perspective on what we should change to improve our rankings.
I always run the on-page Grader tool from Moz when I am comparing pages, to see if there are any obvious keyword problems or if the Title tag is lacking in focus. The Title tag is incredibly important. One of the biggest resources that Moz creates is their Search Ranking Factors report, so if you wanted to review your website vs. that report, you might find some items where you know you are lacking and then that gives you an idea of what should be on your ToDo list.
The SERP Report isn't going to be a good gauge of like... if I go from 50 to 150 links I will beat competitor X, because that assumption is based on all links being equal, which they are not. Google cares about the age of links, the authority of the linking site, the relevance of the content, the social shares of the content, etc, etc. Everything has a footprint online so the bigger the footprint the more noise it looks like it's making the better it is assumed to be.
This is probably way more of an answer than you wanted, but there you go. I recommend you dive into the Search Ranking Factors report from 2015 and see if anything there pops up as severely lacking on your site, and see if you can target those items to make a big difference. Just keep in mind, even that report is based on the opinions of hundreds of SEOs so while it is really good, it is not a guarantee'd roadmap for ranking well - there are few guarantees in search.
Moz's 2015 Search Ranking Report - https://moz.com/search-ranking-factors
Hope this helped!
-
Links is "All links to this page including internal, external, followed, and nofollowed".
It's same number as if drop this URL into OSE where it's count as "Total Links" -
Don't know really what you mean... Did you mean the SERP overlay? In that case: total/all external links.
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
-
Only One Canonical URL Tag
HI, I'm an SEO novice - company owner with no money so doing it all myself with help from my web designer using wordpress. Ive just completed some seo and done the moz page scoring analysis for optimisation and gained 92% - however - there is one outstanding issue on canonical url tags - i.e. recommened fix = The canonical URL tag is intended to refer duplicate pages to a single canonical URL. To ensure the search engines properly parse the canonical source, your page should use only one version of this tag in the header. See Canonical URL Tag - the Most Important Advancement in SEO Practices Since Sitemaps Ive gone through the page code and can see I have 2 rel=canonical references - am I able to simply delete one - how do I do this if its been created by the yoast/wordpress plug-in? Many thanks in advance for any help!
Moz Bar | | M-J-Smith0 -
Need to solve "Oops our crawlers were unable to access" url for new campaign
I'm putting the url designfirstkitchenandbath.com and getting the "oops! our crawlers were unable to access the site. Since this site is a potential client, which shows up online, I can't get access to fix the code, plus while I can write a little html I don't feel comfortable working with hard, live code on someonelse's site. Anyone have a simple solution?
Moz Bar | | alisacromer0 -
Keyword Stuffing Count Differs to Source Code
Moz's on page grader counts 33 instances of a keyword however, when looking into the source code I only find 8. I have checked if capitalization affects the find feature when viewing the source code and it doesn't. Has anyone else come across this issue and found an explanation?
Moz Bar | | Worship_Digital0 -
Too Many On-Page Links Notice
When calculating the number of links on a page, are navigation links included in the total? I have all of my navigation links within the <nav>element. I would think that there are a lot of sites out there that easily exceed the 100 link recommendation if you add up nav and footer links. </nav>
Moz Bar | | Brando160 -
Learn how to build links using Fresh Web Explorer: Get your Daily SEO Fix!
This is our second video tutorial for The Moz Daily SEO Fix--tips and tricks with Moz tools in two minutes or less. In today's fix, Michael shows you how to set up an alert in Fresh Web Explorer for anyone who mentions (or links to) your two biggest competitors but not to you. Monitor your inbox for these alerts, and you'll find link new building opportunities ripe for the picking. Watch The Moz Daily SEO Fix: How to Build Links Using Fresh Web Explorer to learn how. To view more videos like this, be sure to check out The Moz Daily SEO Fix playlist on YouTube.
Moz Bar | | kellyjcoop2 -
Why can't On-Page Grader grade any Hilton hotel URLs?
I'm receiving the "Sorry, but that URL is inaccessible." for every hilton hotel webpage I check when using On-Page Grader. Is Hilton blocking Moz's On-Page Grader or is something else going on? Here are a few "inaccessible URLs" from different brands within Hilton's portfolio: http://doubletree3.hilton.com/en/hotels/new-york/doubletree-by-hilton-hotel-metropolitan-new-york-city-NYCDTDT/index.html http://home2suites3.hilton.com/en/hotels/tennessee/home2-suites-by-hilton-nashville-vanderbilt-tn-BNAHTHT/index.html http://hamptoninn3.hilton.com/en/hotels/florida/hampton-inn-and-suites-destin-DSINEHX/index.html http://hiltongardeninn3.hilton.com/en/hotels/georgia/hilton-garden-inn-atlanta-downtown-ATLDOGI/index.html Thanks in advance.
Moz Bar | | Just-Me0 -
Rank Tracker - URLs are Different when Exporting to CSV
When exporting to CSV in Rank Tracker, many of the URLs are reduced to the root domain instead of the full, ranking URL as seen within the tool. Right now the URLs must be copied/pasted or manually edited afterwards in the CSV. However, it doesn't happen to every item. A few of them do show the correct URL after being exported. Any idea if this is a bug or just an odd thing the export does?
Moz Bar | | AlfredGoldberg1 -
OSE Missing High Profile Linking Root Domains
Hi All, I have noticed that Open Site Explorer does not appear to be totally accurate in the linking root domains it shows for a given site. For instance, I have a site that I know for a fact is listed on dmoz (and has been for far longer than last Mozscape update), which should show up near the top of the stack. What gives? Do you think that this is also affecting my projected DA, PA, etc? Thoughts and theories welcome.
Moz Bar | | G2W0