What is best way to evaluate external links to my site?
-
What is the best way to evaluate external links coming in to my site? I have been working on trying to build links by commenting on blogs/forums and adding to directories, etc. I've run link reports through Open Site Explorer and Yahoo and they never seem to show the same links coming in. For example, i run link eport on Open Site Explorer and it will show links coming into my site that Yahoo doesn't show, and vice versa.
I guess I'm trying to figure best way to monitor each week new links coming into my site to determine if my efforts are fruitful. Also, is there a certain period of time that should pass from time I put my link on another site (ie, a blog) until it will show up in OPen Site Explorer?
Thanks! Oh, and I use the NoDoFollow Add-on for Firefox to only comment on those sites that do follow. Not sure if that's really effective or not.
-
I have found it hard to evaluate links on a weekly basis, too. All tools give different results. You need to pick 1 tool, create a spreadsheet, and then track links with that same tool week to week. At least you should know on a relative basis if you're improving or not, even if you're not getting the exact true link count.
The Link Analysis tab of SEOmoz shows some stats (external followed links, followed links root domains, unique C-blocks) that are useful to track over time, but they only update about once a month (note to SEOmoz: weekly would be great)
The one thing you CAN track week to week is your SERP rankings, on the Rankings tab. You can track number of phrases you have in the top 3, as well as number of phrases on page 1. If your external link building is progressing then those numbers should go up week over week.
And those numbers drive your organic search visits per week, which you can view on the Traffic tab, or in Google Analytics directly.
As far as follow/no-follow goes, remember that you want a 'normal' anchor text distribution and usually a normal anchor text profile will include some no-follows. So keep some no-follows in there...
-
It sounds like your question is about measuring the effectiveness of your SEO efforts more than anything. In this case, number of external links really isn't going to give much away. Here are some alternative metrics:
Search traffic excluding brand name
Increases in search traffic volume is strongly and positively correlated with SEO. Because you will always rank for brand name queiries and searchers will always find your brand if they are searching for it - these searches add noise which is why we exclude them when measuring SEO effectiveness.
Keyword rankings
You may be focusing on 10 to 20 keywords on your campaign. Measure the rankings and see if the pattern is increasing. However, this metric on its own can be misleading as keyword ranking may not improve while long tail (search) traffic is sky rocketing!
Absolute conversions
The end goal. Have you seen an improvement in the number of conversions? Use Google analytics to set up goals and measure the number of goals coming from visitors that found you through search.
Apologies if I've somewhat strayed from your original question - but I feel that you should not be measuring whether or not your SEO "efforts are fruitful" by monitoring new links.
Nick
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
-
Has your site ever been targeted by malicious link building executed by a competitor?
I'm pretty sure one of my client's sites has been targeted by malicious black hat link building tactics employed by a competitor site. Over the last few weeks we've gotten 100s of super low quality spammy backlinks. No one has been doing link building, so the only thing I can think of is that competitor entered our URL into some spammy backlink building sites. Has anyone else experienced this? It's the real estate industry, so I wouldn't be surprised considering how competitive it is, but I'd love to hear your experiences.
Link Building | | JBMediaGroup1 -
No follow external links
Hi all, Our blog utilizes a fair amount of guest blog articles. Each article includes a link to the authors site. Some memebers of our team believe it is best practice to no follow all of these links while others believe we should follow the links, Our page rank and domain authority are almost always much higher then the guest blogger's site so we want to know the pros and cons of nofollow vs follow of these links. Since the domain authority and page rank of guest blog sites are low will this have a negative effect on our site? They aren't spammy and are legitimate sites covering similar content. Any feedback would be greaty appreciated!
Link Building | | STP_SEO0 -
Best Ways To Get Influencers To View A Guide Document
Hi There, We have recently put together a really good guide for our client as our buying persona research proved it needed one. I am stuck though in two minds at the best way to promote it for maximum visiblity and possiblly influencer linkage. Would you recommend using the pdf as lead gen where people need to enter their email address and name to download it or should I be on it's own page as a possible power page. If I do it as a lead gen how do I outreach to it. Could I send influencers a link to view it privately for review or what method have people found useful. Just after general guidance really. Cheers as always.
Link Building | | nezona0 -
Does the ratio of external nofollow links to external "do follow" links matter in terms of SERPs ranking?
My site has an external link nofollow:dofollow ratio of approximately 1:1 That is, there are about as many nofollow external links as "do follow" external links. I have an impression that the ratio of no-follow to "do follow" links is a factor in the way that our website shows up in SERPs. I have the impression from reading a variety of sources, and from looking at Seomoz, that calculate "trust" factors as if they mattered (in SERPs), that seem to value a relatively low nofollow:dofollow ratio. Am I correct about that? Thanks,
Link Building | | tcolling
Tim PS - I don't know whether or not this matters, but our website is at: www.trustworthycare.com - Tim0 -
Best way to combat spammy links
Hi folks. A client of mine has taken to building spammy links from commenting on forgein blogs etc. Since hes started this his site has totally dispeared from the SERPS apart from company name searches. I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on how to bets combat this? Many thanks in advance
Link Building | | EclipseLegal0 -
OSE - why are some external links not showing up?
We use PRWeb for our press releases and carefully choose the anchor text with a link back to our site at metrix.com. This year, we've put out about 8 releases, all with these links included. However, when I drill down to prweb.com in Open Site Explorer, I'm only seeing one link coming from one of those releases. It is definitely an external, followed link when I highlight the releases with MozBar, and I don't see any other differences that would help explain this. Can anyone explain why these links aren't showing up? Thank you.
Link Building | | IFSNA0 -
Best Keyword reseach tool for spanish site?
Good morning to all. I am looking for a good keyword research tool for spanish website. The google keyword tool does not give enought long tail keywords and wordtracker does not provide good results for spanish sites. Does anybody here have experience with a good keyword tool for spanish sites?
Link Building | | seoroyal0 -
Do sites on the same c-block and same server count as seperate linking root domains when linking to each other?
Lets say there are 50 businesses who have their website on the same server and are on the same c-block but the owners of the individual sites are different (i.e. they are all completely different sites not relevant to each other). Each of those sites are linking to each other due to a feature on the sites. This obviously increases the number of total links to each site but does it also increase the number of linking root domains? Or does this just show up as one linking root domain due to all of them being on the same server and the sharing the same c-block?
Link Building | | cinternicola0