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
-
How to analyse a big drop in external links
Hi! Can someone tell me the best way to determine what caused a big drop in External Followed Links? I have used tools like remove em in the past to try and get rid of exact match keyword links but I'm unsure if this was the root cause. Our rankings went up the 3 months after this period, but this year they have dropped back to levels from 2015. I'm wondering if this drop has anything to do with this decline. See attached. EHyIy
Link Building | | KerryK0 -
GWT Lists URLs with links to my site, but those URLs don't have links to my site
There are a number of URLs that show up for my website in Webmaster Tools as having links to my site when in fact they don't. I know this to be a fact because I actually wrote some of the sites that Google is saying are linking to my site and I know there isn't any links on the specific pages to that site. For example, the site in question is: https://www.liftproducts.com/ As an example, Google is saying that about 100 URLs from https://www.lift-tables.net/ are linking to it when, I'm fairly confident that there is only 1 link to it found here: https://www.lift-tables.net/info.php?countrytabs=3 Yet Google says links exist on this (and many more) page: https://www.lift-tables.net/liftproducts/max-lift/lpt4w-030-48.php I thought at first it might have been due to linking to a image file directly instead of locally hosting it, but after checking the source, that's not the case. I am also seeing this type of non-linking being reported on sites I have no clue what they are. For example, some Spanish site about tandem bicycles is being listed as linking to liftproducts.com: http://206-225-85-34.dedicated.abac.net/tandem/inc Yet I can find no evidence of an actual link existing. Am I missing something here? Any insight of why this is happening and how I can clean up my link signature would be appreciated.
Link Building | | Nivik231 -
Google Penalty due to external links
On Sep 3, we got a Manual Action by Google: unnatural links to your site Immediately we arranged to have all those links the rel="nofollow" atttributes, these were links set by our customers since we are hosting providers. We sent a reconsideration request to Google on Sep 8 and this is their answer:
Link Building | | netbuilder
We’ve reviewed the reconsideration requestfor xxxx and modified its status, but we still believe that content on your site or links to your site are outside our quality guidelines. No more info provided. - We double checked everything but could not find anything else that could harm us so we asked Google (in a new reconsideration request sent on Sep 11 to provide us some samples. On Sep 24 Google answers with a sample of 3 sites which contains links to us. After verification, all the external links to us have the rel="nofollow" attribute !! Today the manual action is not anymore a side-wide one but a partial one and applies to unnatural links--impact links. So it seems that we need to physically have those links removed? As well I checked https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2604772?ctx=MAC and he does not refer at all about setting the rel="nofollow" attribute, Looks like Google wants the full monopoly on text links.0 -
Links from highly relevant but low Domain Authority sites: Yes or No?
We're reaching out to companies that we have a business relationship with (past and present) to find out if they would be interested in linking to us.
Link Building | | Jeepster
All are obviously in the same industry so highly relevant. But some of the sites are low in Domain Authority (with scores of about 15-25).
Should we also ask these sites -- or avoid them?0 -
Multiple links from a single web-site
When one good web-site (PR5) has a link to my web-site - it's great. But, if this site has a second link to my web-site from another page, is this also good? Or, let me ask in a different way, will my web-site get "double benefit" from that web-site?
Link Building | | ditoroin0 -
Best way to set up a support site - sub domain, separate site or com/support?
My company is setting up our support site. It has been suggested that we set it up as a separate domain - www.company-support.com, rather than setting it up as a sub-domain (www.support.company.com) or the usual www.company.com/support. The person who proposed this believes it wlll create link juice, but i wonder if splitting the traffic will create more harm than good? Opinions please!
Link Building | | googilvie0 -
Site Published Our Guest Post but Removed the Link Back
I recently developed a nice article for a career site and they agreed to publish it as a guest post. Once they published the article I noticed they had removed the link back to my site in the byline. What is a best way to approach this situation? Would you ask them to take down the article if they are unwilling to link back to your site?
Link Building | | Charlessipe0 -
If I write a PR release on a site such as PRweb with anchor-text links that is picked up and published by other news sites, do the engines consider this duplicate content or additional, beneficial links?
I recently wrote a news release on PRweb that was picked up identically by 8 other news websites, with the same anchor-text links as the original. Is the reproduction of duplicate content and links across different websites like this to the benefit or detriment of SEO and ranking power? Some of the links are: http://www.mynewsdesk.com/uk/view/pressrelease/eventa-new-eventa-christmas-parties-website-is-launched-648923?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=Alert&utm_content=pressrelease http://www.prweb.com/releases/christmasparties/neweventasite/prweb8562064.htm Many thanks!!
Link Building | | RobertHill0