What would be causing our linking domains and inbound links to decline?
-
I am noticing a decline in the number of our linking domains and inbound links from month to month. It isn't drastic but looking like a trend. Any reason why this would happen? I'm not sure where to start. Thanks!
-
A tool like MOZ or SEMRush will show you where the backlinks were pointing or you may notice a difference in the page rank or traffic to a page if it lost a valuable link.
If the links all look to be of low quality I wouldnt worry to much if you have a good overall link profile. But I would keep monitoring to make sure it is not a trend that is going to continue.
https://blog.pagezii.com/how-to-check-backlinks-in-google-analytics/
The above link may also help. You may need to add a secondary dimension of landing page. Sorry brain not working quite right its been a long day.
-
Thank you! This is helpful. I'm new to tracking this so I'm not quite sure where to gather all of this information. I found the "lost" links and the websites don't seem to be very high quality so I'm not too worried, however I'm having trouble finding the content they linked to. Any tips?
-
There is something called "link rot"... that every site experiences. You earn some links a long time ago and most of those links will eventually disappear for reasons described by effectdigital. If your new content production pace is not as fast as in the past, then you can be losing more links than you are earning. Link rot hits sites that are slacking on their content production.
And, as Mr Whippy said... "The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now." Sometimes competitors will see your content, produce something much better, then solicit the linking websites to link to their content that is now much better than yours. We receive lots of emails suggesting better destinations for links in existing articles. These email messages can be valuable to a webmaster, but if we look at their suggested content and it is crap, we filter their email address to trash.
-
Without seeing the data it is hard to say.
If you have a few years of data take a look back and see what fluctuations you have had previously.
Also, check the pages that the links were pointing to on your site make sure they haven't been removed.
If its a small number of links compared to your overall backlink profile then I wouldn't worry to much if its a big percentage of your overall backlink profile then I would be digging into it to see if you can stop it.
Is there any pattern to the links as I asked in my first response? are they all from one type of site? do they all link to old content?
-
Thank you both! So at what point do you think it's important to investigate to find the cause? And when do you think it's normal fluctuations?
-
This is a really good answer.
OP also needs to check the data they are looking at. Is it link growth data, or actual static link data? Some charts make it look as if your links are disappearing, when what they are really saying is less domains are 'creating' links to you over time (aka your link growth is slowing)
If OP is sure that their actual links are shrinking over time, Steve gave great answers
Here are some others:
- People re-designing their websites and streamlining their content, some links get removed as some old content (which may contain links) doesn't make it onto the new site
- People killing their own content even if it's not part of a re-design, removing old blog posts etc (which may contain links)
- People un-linking their internal links to insulate their own PageRank better, which leaves you with un-linked citations
- People adding no-follows to their links. These links should still be detected, but they won't count to your SEO any more
- People blocking the indexation of content that contains links (e.g: putting Meta no-index and / or robots.txt blocks on blog posts which contain links) as a risk nullification measure
- People moving their site from one domain to another. The new links from the new site should be found eventually, but often there's a trough where a backlink tool will see the old site is gone but it won't have found the new site yet!
- More people opting out of having their site crawled by backlink data suppliers (e.g: blocking rogerbot, Moz's crawler in robots.txt)
-
There could be any number of reasons for this.
The domains linking to you are clearing up old content and removing it from their site if they no longer see it as valid or valuable.
The domain linking to you is clearing out links that point to your content as they feel there is better content to link to now.
Old domains disappearing off the web completely
For a more specific answer you will need to provide us with more info, such as how old are the links, are they all from one type of websites such as directories or blog sites
Steve
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
-
Decline in Traffic
Our company is a full service law firm with a main website and 6 microsites relevant to each practise area. Over the last 2 years, we have had significant traffic growth and ranked well in SERP, conversions were good and everything was tracking along nicely. Come January 2019, the traffic on 2 of our microsites have dropped by 20% and is not recovering. We have done a site audit and there are no issues with the website, we are still ranking #1 in SERP for our targeted search terms but the traffic just isn't there. Has anyone else with legal websites had this issue or can provide insight into the drop in traffic? It just doesn't make sense why all of a sudden the traffic isn't there anymore. Any advice on what other actions we can take to try and find the issue would be appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | monique-plaw0 -
Links not pointing to my website?
Aloha everyone! I've asked questions to the Moz community before and have always been happy to see how responsive and helpful the community is as a SEO learning new comer! Many thanks in advance for any ideas or insights to solving this problem. So here is my question, I own a wedding photography business here on Kauai and am looking to rank for a few things, Kauai wedding photographer, Kauai Wedding videographer, and Kauai family photographer. That aside I've been pouring more time into getting back links from people I've shot with here on Kauai (local business's websites etc) and have had links dropped in on their sites to, in theory, bump my rankings up from back linking my website. Here's my website http://www.balihaiphoto.com/ Here's a few sites but are not showing up as backlinks/pushing my site higher on SEO results (screen shot as well) http://www.haleleakeiki.org/ (bottom of page footer linking to BaliHaiPhoto.com) and another site here http://www.wishingwellshaveice.com/ with the same thing, footer link pointing to my website. Both sites have been indexed and the shave ice one gets a good amount of traffic, does anyone know why this isn't showing as a back link or if its passing on any link juice my way? Should I do something diffrent here? Let me know what you guys think! Aloha from Kauai, Jon Gibb qsDOM
Reporting & Analytics | | Trey30 -
Huge Decline in Links
Good Morning Everyone, Looking for some feedback as to why all of my Backlink metrics might be way down (as well as rankings)... Please see the details below that show some of the metrics from MOZ reports from August and from October. Does anyone know why these metrics are all so down? We have not done any link removal exercises or anything that would cause this drop --- please let me know if there is any insight any of you have as to what is the reason for this drop. Thanks Linking C Blocks August 3: 124 October 14: 23 External Followed Links August 3: 4486 October 14: 1558 Total External Links August 3: 4795 October 14: 1680 Total Links August 3: 21338 October 14: 17809 Followed Linking Root Domains August 3: 323 October 14: 116 Total Linking Root Domains August 3: 442 October 14: 143
Reporting & Analytics | | Prime850 -
Why does a selection of sites I have written guest posts on not come up on my link analysis?
I have done a few guests posts on different sites and they are not coming up in my link analysis report.
Reporting & Analytics | | meteorelectrical
We created an info graphic on one particular site and this site isn't coming up on the link analysis report. Would there be a reason for this. I ran a check on the sites code and it doesnt contain "nofollow" as i originally thought this was the problem. Here is an example of our work on a site that isn't coming up on the analysis report. http://www.electriciansblog.co.uk/2013/10/energy-saving-using-led-lighting/ Thanks0 -
Problem with Enhanced Link Attribution
I set up Enhanced Link Attribution yestarday on two my websites, but it still doesn´t work. When I look at numbers of clicks at In-page analytics I see the same numbers of clicks for example on heading, read more button, thumbail of blogposts - so it doesn´t work. My GA code: <script type="<a class="attribute-value">text/javascript</a>"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; var pluginUrl = '//www.google-analytics.com/plugins/ga/inpage_linkid.js'; _gaq.push(['_require', 'inpage_linkid', pluginUrl]); _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'XXXX']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); script> Could you help me? thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | mysho0 -
Google Links Disavow - Does that preclude new links from a domain?
If using Google disavow links tool and you disavow links from a 'domain' does that mean that any 'future or new links' from that domain will be blocked? Answer Yes is good if the domain is spammy but bad if the domain was submitted in error ........ Answer NO is good if the domain was submitted in error but bad if the site is spammy. Does anyone have an answer to this please? Also is there a disavow 'undo' request process available? cheers, Mike
Reporting & Analytics | | shags380 -
Ecommerce tracking problem with multiple domains on 1 web property
We recently launched 13 product marketing sites based on a Wordpress Multisite setup. To track all 13 sites we decided to use one web property, so we can use the same tracking code for all domains. To track the sites seperately, we set up a profile for each product site with a hostname filter. This works well for most stats, but eCommerce tracking is where the problem starts. Per profile we obviously want to track the products purchases on that website only. What happens now is that all purchases from all product sites are tracked on all profiles. How can we change this? Should I alter the eCommerce tracking code or can I fix this with an additional filter per profile? Thanks for your help Mozzers! Regards, Pieter van Diggele
Reporting & Analytics | | RBO
Online Marketing Executive
Elsevier Opleidingen0 -
Why is Webmaster Tools not Linking Correctly Google Analytics?
I have a global site with .com as the US site and then /country for all other markets i.e. .com/uk .com/de etc. Each site has it's own WMT profile. Each site has it's own GA profile. Since Google added Search Engine Optimization to the GA interface, I can't track these sites separately under this new feature. It seems to me that it can only be associated with a single WMT profile at a time or rather that WMT can only be associated with a single GA profile at a time. The numbers for the UK and US site are identical, but when I try and link the UK WMT account with GA it removes it from the US profile and vice versa.
Reporting & Analytics | | Red_Mud_Rookie0