Welcome to the Q&A Forum

I have written MOZ several times requesting account cancellation procedures but they don't seem interested in responding.

I pre-paid my account in October 2019, paying for one year until October 2020. I would like to cancel my account and get a refund of the pro-rated unused amount.

After not getting a response, I searched for a corporate phone number for MOZ. No phone number can be found. I am somewhat concerned as legitimate companies have phone numbers.

Can someone advise me as to how to get my refund?

Also, I subscribe to MOZ local. I need to know of canceling MOZ pro will inadvertently cancel MOZ local.

Thanks, 
Alan

Our SEO provider has been creating content (6 blog posts per month as well as building page write ups) and has been promoting that content.

Several links per month have been created as a result of this effort. Many of the links have been  from commercial real estate publications.

I am concerned that the quality of these links is not high enough to improve our ranking. Most links do not appear on AHREFS, Google Search Console or MOZ.  Is this a red flag that these links are weak?

Ranking and traffic on the site have improved considerably since this provider began the project in April of 2019. They have been writing about 30 pages about New York City. commercial buildings each month in addition to 4 short blog posts and 2 extremely well researched and authoritative blog posts.

My concern is that the links are not of sufficient quality to result increased ranking. That the improvement in ranking is solely due to the addition of new content rather than the creation of these links. Basically, that I am incurring the cost on an ongoing basis of an link building campaign with little to no benefit. That being the case, I would shift resources to content creation and increase and improve content rather than develop links with little value.

A sample of links are below:  Would greatly appreciate some feedback as to whether these are in fact helpful to the domain authority, reputation and ranking of our website.

Thanks, 
Alan

https://patch.com/new-york/bayside/bayside-queens-priciest-area-retail-office-space-study

https://qns.com/story/2019/12/04/these-commercial-streets-in-queens-were-among-the-most-expensive-in-2019/

https://patch.com/new-york/brooklyn/flatbush-ave-priciest-retail-spot-outside-manhattan-study

http://thejewishvoice.com/2019/12/07/nycs-most-expensive-commercial-streets-neighborhoods-in-2019-would-surprise-you/

https://atalyst.com/investment-banking-interview-metro-manhattan/

Our YouTube Channel was endorsed by a celebrity and suddenly gained 22,000 subscribers. We are now posting videos 2-3 times a week and get a lot of engagement. Each video has an average of 10,000 views.

The result of this is that we get about 200 direct visits to our website every. Almost twice as much as organic traffic from Google. Assuming that this is sustained over time, will it improve the Google  of our website?

Is there anyway to use the popularity of our Google channel to reinforce the ranking of our website?

Thanks!!
Aln

Hi Pat:

Thanks for your answer/response! Our URL is www.metro-manhattan.com

To answer your questions:

1. When we moved the site to a new theme/database the URL structure did not change. However, about a year before we migrated to a new domain and and went HTTP to HTTPS (secure) so there are redirects. 301 redirects were used.

2. All the on page optimization moved when we changed themes.

3. Yes, there are some unnecessary URLs, but they are managed by robot.txt.

4.  Gzip compression/caching/cdn has been implemented to speed up site. My SEO provider is constantly adjusting but the site is not particularly fast.

If we were to custom develop the same functionality without purchasing a theme, would the performance (Google Page Speed, GT Metrix) be much better?

If we are satisfied with the structure, design and functionality of our site, is custom coding a costly venture?

Thanks, 
Alan

Last year we purchased a $79 them and coded a new designer our real estate website. The  database of listings was transferred to the new theme.

A year later we realize the new theme is not that fast; does not perform great, so despite optimizing our server we are not getting very fast performance.

So, my question is, can we take the design, the CSS of our current theme (and database) and transfer it to a better performing theme?  We are in a very competitive niche and our website must perform quickly both desktop and mobile.

If this is feasible is this a major production? Note we are very happy with the design and this would solely be to improve download speeds to improve the user experience and get better ranking.

Thanks,

Alan

That is awful!!!

There must be a way to restore this data!!!!!

Thanks,

Alan

Accidentally Deleted My Campaign, Possible to Restore It?

A design service is using Figma to create modified form. Once the design is complete, Sigma will export CSS files. If we provide these CSS files to a coder, will this greatly reduce the required time to implement the. design on our website?  Our website is designed. with a modified real estate theme.  We are using exactly the same fields and functionality of the previous form.

We are seeking to reduce coding time and subsequent costs.

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Nozzle:

That is an intriguing idea, however I think it would take the user more time and they would  leave before investing the time to view the video.

Our real estate website (www.metro-manhattan.com) now requires visitors to login in if they want to search our listing database.

The result is that. 9 out of 10 visitors leave without searching; they simply refuse to set up an account.

I have attached images of the search bar and login form.

Is there a way to increase the percentage of visitors that login? We have tried to make it as simple as possible, allowing visitors to login by Facebook, Google or by providing their email address. We do not send any verification email.

We are forced to. keep this login unfortunately. But is there anything we can do to reduce the visitor bounce rate?

Thanks, 
Alan

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Hi Joe:

About 35% of our traffic is derived from mobile so maximize mobile conversion probably worth the effort.

Do you think it would be most effective to display the phone number as an actual button with a similar design as the other 2?  Is there any form of protocol for displaying phone numbers on mobile devices?

Thanks, 
Alan

We are attempting to keep the number of CTAs (Calls to Action) on our commercial real estate website to a minimum. Our adjusted design (see attached) has 2 CTAs. One is "Contact Agent" the other is "Schedule a Tour". We are focusing on the listing page, which is the primary product page and critical in terms of CTA.

Our mobile version does not show a phone number while the desktop version (also attached) displays a phone number.

Should the mobile version also display a button a phone number? Some members of our target audiences, business owners and executives who are often in their 40s and 50s may prefer to call us up rather than communicate by written message. Any suggestions for elegantly displaying the phone number without causing confusion? I have read that the number of CTAs should be limited so I am on the fence as to whether or not to include a phone number

Thanks, 
Alan

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I was horrified to learn that my hosting company, InMotion Hosting does not offer redundant backups, that it is on the customer to set up backups to ensure they don't lose their data.

I plan to back up to Google Drive 3 x a week for 12 backups and also create 3 backups on our server (Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday). So if something goes wrong and we catch it within a week we can generate the backup directly from our server.

There are website backup services such as BlogVault. Do they offer any meaningful advantages to taking the contents of the entire server (16 gigs) and backing it up? They do offer Malware removal. Does this have value?

Is back up on an external service like Google Cloud while simultaneously backing up on the server a safe way to proceed? If not, what is the simplest and most effective manner to backup? I prefer to avoid adding any plugins to WordPress as our site already has too many (about 30).

Thanks!!
Alan

Dear Effect Digital:

Thanks for your very detailed and thorough response. Confirms what I suspected, but with ranking factors in flux great to have this confirmed.

Thanks so much,

Alan

My SEO has advised me that Google has stopped using title and description tags for search results and as such, it is no longer necessary to write specific title and description tags.

I see that Yoast seems to pull text to create these tags and sometimes it looks like it reflects the best elements of the content, sometimes it does not.

Should I be asking our SEO team to write dedicated title and description tags or is it best practices  to leave it to the Yoast plugin? My SEO is of the opinion that writing these tags is not a productive use of time as Google will serve results based on the user inquiry rather than the content on his tags. It sounds logical but it would be reassuring to receive further confirmation of this.

Thoughts?"
Thanks, Alan

Hi Tom:

So are you saying that generally the number of plugins for a Wordpress site should be limited to about 15?

Do you think the Kinsta or Servebolt will be a better platform than a Virtual Private Server on InMotionHosting (what I have now)? I prepaid the annual $1,100 which I will lose if I move, so need to make sure it is better. What can I expect these hosting companies to provide that InMotion does not?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Tom:

The old domain www.nyc-officespace-leader.com

The new domain is: https://www.metro-manhattan.com/

The google search:

site:www.nyc-officespace-leader.com

Returns 794 results for the old pages. This does not seem normal.

Any ideas?

Hi Thomas:

Thanks for your suggestions. I looked at Github but don't quite understand what it is. Would it allow me to trouble shoot code issues? For example, my developers can't get the wt3 total cache plugin to work. They think our InMotion Server does not support it. Very surprising as InMotion is  a reputable hosting company. So they have installed multiple plugins to replace WT3.

At the moment the site has 50 plugins of which 35 are active. The domain is www.metro-manhattan.com

I ran a dareboost test and the home page received a test of 68%. The interior pages are will certainly be worse.

I am not technical so these issues are really confusing.

Thanks, 
Alan

We completed a Wordpress redesign of our website in December. The project took about 8 months. Important URLs on the new site are performing slowly according to Google Page Speed Insights. For instance, a key product page gets a score of 18 on mobile and 61 on desktop. Home page scores 37 on mobile and 80 on desktop.

My new SEO believes the website is hindered by an excessive number of plugins and widgets. That reducing the number of these may increase performance. Also, my developers were unable to get WT3 Total Cache to work with our InMotion server and have used about 3 plugins for cache.

We purchased a real estate theme (wpcasa) and heavily customized it. Any suggestions for improveing performance? If we recoded the website from scratch without a pre existing theme (using the existing design) would that speed up performance? Is there anything we can do remove complexity and improve URL download speeds? We are in a very competitive niche and we need decent performance in order to rank.

Thanks, 
Alan

One year ago we migrated domain "X" to domain "Y". We did the proper redirects and used Google Search Console. Everything was done by the book. Now when we enter "Site: X" in Google about 650 results listing the old domain still come up. When clicked these redirect to the new domain.

My SEO says that the old domain should not be indexed by Google, that these pages with the old domain should not appear.  Is this in fact an incomplete domain migration?

Our search traffic dropped considerably when we migrated the domain a year ago. My SEO thinks this may explain the drop.

Thanks, 
Alan

We have worked with the same Wordpress developer since 2012. They recently redesigned our Wordpress site. We purchased a real estate theme and they performed major modifications to it. The project took 8 months. There are many customized widgets and multiple plugins.

We hired a new SEO. The SEO is very comfortable coding. The SEO performed certain modifications and the code broke. The original developer stepped in and and helped restore the code. The SEO stated that the site should not be so delicate; that too many plugins and widgets are used making it inherently unstable. The original developer is claiming that the SEO did not follow best practices (they did not use a dev server to test). For a non technical business owner this is very disturbing. We finally agreed that the new SEO would make changes on a dev server and the original developer will check these changes to ensure they do not break the code.

My question is, shouldn't a Wordpress site be simple enough to hand over to a decent coder with little risk of breaking the code? Are there any standards regarding the hand over of a site? I am comfortable with my developers, but what if they change professions or close their company? How would I transition the site?

There must be standards and protocols that allow a third party, such as an SEO to change code without causing havoc. Any one have some insight?

Greetings:

We are considering hiring a firm specializes in developing .EDU links. Is the ROI on EDU links better than non EDU backlinks from reputable domains? Will obtaining EDU links results in greater domain authority and improved ranking for search engine results?

Thanks,

Alan

Hi Egol:

Thanks so much for your response!! In 2018 we focused on UX, now the plan for 2019 is to improve content and build back links.

After reading your answer, I am not sure about our SEO's plan for 6 blog posts per month. The topics would highly researched and  pertinent for visitors, answering potential real estate questions. From what you are saying we should focus more on . developing and improving internal content.

Assuming the quality of the content is excellent, how many blog posts per month are optimal?

Thanks,
Alan

To what extent will posting quality blog posts 2 to 3 times per week have the following effects:

1. Improve ranking for specific keywords?
2. Create backlinks to our website
3. Increase MOZ domain authority
4. Increase  organic search traffic

Assume that the blog posts are geared towards answering user inquiries and are also posted on our social media accounts. Would such an approach be better than engaging in a link building campaign, in the sense that the links will be created organically by users that want to link to our site?

Thanks, 
Alan

Hi Lauren:

Do on page factors influence Domain Authority as much as building back links? This is a really key question!

I need to decide whether to invest resources in building back links or improving on site SEO. How about internal links? How much do they contribute to domain authority? At the moment my site lacks internal links, would adding them in a relevant manner improve domain authority?

While I greatly appreciate your last response it is somewhat ambiguous.

Thanks, Alan

Hi Again Lauren:

According to Rand Fishkin's post:
https://moz.com/community/q/da-pa-fluctuations-how-to-interpret-apply-understand-these-ml-based-scores

Domain Authority is predominantly determined by backlinks  from other websites rather than on site SEO factors (content quality, internal linking). This contradicts your response somewhat which make things really confusing. Now I don't know whether to allocate resources towards building backlinks from other domains or whether to work on improving internal links and contents.

If you could please clear this up it would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Alan

Hi Lauren:

Thanks for your response. I was under the impression that domain authority was solely determined by external backlinks. So, are you saying that domain authority can be increased by improving the internal linking structure between pages and improving the quality of pages?

Our site has many, many "orphan" pages. From what you are saying, improving the internal linking structure would improve our Domain Authority, is that correct?

Also MOZ shows certain title tags, URLs and descriptions as too long, some are duplicate and some missing. Would correcting these help improve domain authority?

Is it safe to say that improved Domain Authority would increase the likely hood of improved ranking?

Thanks, 
Alan

There are 2 or 3 URLs and one image file that dozens of toxic domains are linking to on our website. Some of these pages have hundreds of links from 4-5 domains. Rather than disavowing these links, would it make sense to simply break these links, change the URL that the link to and not create a redirect? It seems like this would be a sure fire way to get rid of these links. Any downside to this approach?

Thanks, 
Alan

The vast majority of the 140 domains that link to our website are very low quality directories or and other toxic links. Only about 20-30 domains are not toxic (according to Link Research Tools confirmed by out manual inspection of these links).

Would removing some of these links improve of MOZ Domain Rank? What if we cannot remove them, can NOZ detect a disavow file?

In general would improving the ratio between good quality and poor quality links improve domain authority?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Mick, thanks so much for your detailed response.

We took a terrible hit, losing 85% of traffic (65/day) a year ago. In April, we migrated our domain, got an SSL certificate and filed a disavow simultaneously. Everything was done by the book. The redirects implemented perfectly. The design, content of the site remained the same when we implemented this.

In December we launched the first upgraded version of the site since 2013. Within 2 weeks much of the traffic recovered. Bounce rate is way down, visitors click on more pages and spend more time on the site. We are now back up to 50 organic visitors per day.

Now I don't want to do something that will mess things up again. But I see the link profile is so awful that perhaps cleaning it up could b beneficial. No guaranties of course.

I wonder how long Google would take to index links, 3-4 months?

Regarding requesting link removal, I understand and agree, probably total waste of time.

Thanks, 
Alan

Hi Michael:

Thanks for your feedback.

Most  503 error links are from low quality directories, so I would disavow anyway.

We would disavow the majority of our links in one shot. Any risk of doing this?

Is there a reasonable chance that our ranking would improve significantly by disavowing these links? How long does it take Google to process the disavow? Is there a way of checking if Google has actually processed the disavow?

Also, do you think we should reach out to these webmasters and make a written request to remove the bad links? We tried this 3 years ago and it was a total waste of time.

Thanks,
Alan

We are using link detox (Link Research Tools) to evaluate our domain for bad links.

We ran a Domain-wide Link Detox Risk report. The reports showed a "High Domain DETOX RISK" with the following results:

-42% (292) of backlinks with a high or above average detox risk
-8% (52) of backlinks with an average of below above average detox risk
-12% (81) of backlinks with a low or very low detox risk
-38% (264) of backlinks were reported as disavowed.

This look like a pretty bad link profile. Additionally, more than 500 of the 689 backlinks are "404 Not Found", "403 Forbidden", "410 Gone", "503 Service Unavailable". Is it safe to disavow these? Could Google be penalizing us for them>

I would like to disavow the bad links, however my concern is that there are so few good links that removing bad links will kill link juice and really damage our ranking and traffic. The site still  ranks for terms that are not very competitive. We receive about 230 organic visits a week. Assuming we need to disavow about 292 links, would it be safer to disavow 25 per month while we are building new links so we do not radically shift the link profile all at once?

Also, many of the bad links are 404 errors or page not found errors. Would it be OK to run a disavow of these all at once? Any risk to that?

Would we be better just to build links and leave the bad links ups?

Alternatively, would disavowing the bad links potentially help our traffic? It just seems risky because the overwhelming majority of links are bad.

Our website was rebranded and relaunched. The old site did not use a / at the end of the URL. The site uses a forward slash at the end of the URL.

My developer claims that this makes no difference, that in Google's eyes this is meaningless. My concern is that link juice will be lost because this necessitates a redirect. Links that were developed in the last few months now are redirected to the identical domain, but with a backslash at the end.

Is this something to be concerned about or is it meaningless?

Thanks, 
Alan

Assuming we have retained a an award winning journalist to write articles/blog posts about our business. Assuming the content is useful and engaging. Where would be the best place to publish it to create high quality backlinks?

1. Our website blog
2. Social media sites like our LinkedIn or Facebook pages. 
3. Sending completed articles to websites that might potentially have an interest in publishing them.
4. Publishing the articles on our website and then promoting them with Adwords and Facebook to demographics that would find them interesting and link to them. 
5. Combination of publishing an article on our website and posting a related article on social media and linking it back to the original article on our website. 
6. Place a custom written article of extremely high quality on affiliate website run by the HOTH or a competitor. But before publishing check the affiliate website on AHREFS and Link Research Tools to ensure that the metrics are not at all spammy (decent domain rating).

Which of the above options (or combination of) would most likely result in backlinks of good quality? Assume the quality of the writing is excellent.

If pitching the content to other websites (#3) would work, how would we identify these websites?

Thanks,
Alan

Hi Oleg:

Thanks for your response!!

My preference would be to avoid any unnecessary URLs. But I am a business owner and not a coder.

My programmer believes that setting these pages to noindex is sufficient. They cite: https://blog.seoprofiler.com/google-noindexfollow-noindexnofollow-long-run/ [^]

Do you think that adding css/js a time consuming operation to replace the print pages?

Thanks,

Alan

Our real estate website has 400 listings. We have added a button that allows the visitor to print listing pages in the for.m of a PDF.

The PDF exists as a URL ending in ?print=17076. This print URL is set to noindex and follow.

So our site has 400 additional URLs. Is this a negative for SEO? Or neutral?

I have read it using CSS it is possible to set up printing without creating all these extra URLs. Is this method better from an SEO perspective?

Thanks,

Alan

Hi Jeff:

Happy to report that improved metrics are not caused by bots or any unusual spikes in traffic. So I think we are seeing a legitimate improvement. Last year we focused on UX improvements. Will focus on content and links this year in order to solidify our gains.

Thanks for your input!!

Alan

Hi EGOL;

Thanks for your input. I am receiving a dramatically increased number  customers inquiries from the redesigned site. Hopefully there is a reasonable chance that Google will reward us with improved rankings. But I guess time will tell. 
THANKS, 
Alan

Our relaunched website has a much lower bounce rate (66% before, now 58%) increased pages per session (1.89 before, now 3.47) and increased session duration (1:33 before, now 3:47). The relaunch was December 20th.

Should these improvements result in an improvement in Google rank? How about in MOZ authority?

We have not significantly changed the content of the site but the UX has been greatly improved.

Thanks,

Alan

www.metro-manhattan.com

I hired an SEO to create incoming links to me website insisting that only white hat techniques be used. The SEO was highly recommended by a family friend. In 3 months about 14 links to my site were obtained. The URLs for the domains where the links originate are below.

I paid $8,000 for the services of the SEO provider to create the links over 4 months.

When I looked at the links more carefully I noticed that the sites did not seem to have owners. That there was no phone number, physical address and scant information about ownership. I also noticed that most pages had outgoing links of a promotional nature. Also, that content created for me had grammatical and occasional spelling errors.

The links did not look bad in terms of MOZ domain authority and MOZ page authority, but when I went subscribed to AHREFS a few days ago and evaluated the links, I noticed that the URL rating (somewhat equivalent to MOZ page authority) was really low.

Furthermore, noticed that one of the domains solicits paid links from gambling sites.

The SEO who sourced the links on my behalf says he will explain why I "have nothing to worry about".

Dividing his monthly fee by the number of links and I paid $571 per link.

Is it possible the the below domains could have pages that I would want links from? Would these links be potentially worth more than a few hundred dollars? O are these sites more like a cheap PBN or maybe "the hoth".

If the links are in fact good I would be delighted. But if they are of poor quality could I legitimately ask for a refund? Also, are these domains so bad that it is imperative for me to get the links removed?

<colgroup><col width="198"></colgroup>
| https://www.equities.com |
| http://www.realestaterama.com |
| https://moneyinc.com |
| https://homebusinessmag.com |
| http://digitalconnectmag.com |
| https://suburbanfinance.com/ |
| http://www.homebunch.com |
| http://inman.com |
| https://www.propertytalk.com/ |
| http://activerain.com |
| https://www.conservativedailynews.com/ |
| http://moneyforlunch.com/ |
| http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/ |
| https://www.tgdaily.com/ |
|   |

Hi Robert:

I just subscribed to Ahrefs and see all the links that are missing in MOZ.

Oddly, when I set up a link tracking list on MOZ, 4 of the 6 missing links got indexed within a week.

Overall, I find ahrefs to be a better tool. Only think I don't like about it is the lack of a Question and Answer section.

Hi John:

Do you think it would be worthwhile for me to subscribe to ahrefs to evaluate these links?

Also, do you think it is a legitimate concern that MOZ's failure to index the links could be a reflection on the quality of the links?

Thanks, Alan

Hi John, Yes, https://metro-manhattan.com is the link!!! Most curious to hear your opinion. Thanks!, Alan

Hi John:

Thanks so much for your response.

On September 13th, before the first links were launched, search visibility was about 1.67%. The first links were live around September 21st. Search visibility peaked at about 2.9% November 2nd and is now down to 2.03%. Search visibility had been improving since before the new links had launched.

I am somewhat concerned that search visibility was increasing in any case and the new links have not had much of a positive effect. Is the fact that only 3 of the 13 links are shown as a linking domain to our  website on MOZ (10 not shown linking to our domain) an indication of lower quality? The fact that most of these backlinks have no linking domains, is this a quality indicator.

I would hate to be investing in developing these links only to find that they have little value.

Thanks, Alan

Since September 13 sites have linked to our real estate website. MOZ domain authority of these sites ranks from 45-83. MOZ page authority ranges from 25-36. Six of these links were created in the last 3 weeks. The remainder have been live since Late September/October.

Our domain authority has only increased from 18 to 19 since September. Our site has only 805 linking domains.

Why has the increase in domain authority been so little? I have read that domain authority it algorithmic and that improving up to 25 is not too difficult.

A few notes about the incoming links:

-11 of the 13 do not rank for any keywords, 1 ranks for 20 keywords and one ranks for 1 keyword. 
-One has 12 inbound links, three have 1 inbound links and the remaining 11 have no inbound links. 
-One has 4 linking domains, three have one linking domains and the reaming 11 having no linking domains. 
-7 of the 13 are listing in Google Search Console. The remaining 7 are not.
-Only 3 of the 13 are shown as MOZ linking domains to our website.
-Website traffic has increased somewhat since link building began. 
-There has was initially some improvement in ranking but that has dropped off.

From the metrics above, does anything sound deficient about these links? Is the fact that they are not being picked up by MOZ a negative sign or is it just an indication that MOZ's link index is rather incomplete? How about the fact that the links are not indicated in Google Search Console?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks, 
Alan

Our annual hosting plan expires soon. Our website is hosted on a shared server.

Is there an SEO benefit to hosting our site on a dedicated server. Could this result in faster download times which is a ranking factor?

Our traffic is currently low (only about 20 visits per day).

Thanks!!
Alan

About 65% of our visitors are male. Consultant "A" produced design "A" (see attached). This design incorporates large white areas so there there is sufficient space for male visitors with larger fingers. Consultant "A" also was of the opinion that the menu "hamburger" bar should have the word "menu" under it and that displaying it would increase conversions.

Consultant "B" is of the opinion that displaying  as much content above the fold is key to maximizing conversions. They believe that we don't have to use so much space between elements and that the word "Menu" is not necessary to display beneath the hamburger.  I have enclosed design "B" from consultant "B".

Personally I prefer the 2nd design, however I understand that conversion is down to a science and there are certain accepted protocols and standards that serve to increase conversions.

Does anyone have opinion as to which of the 2 attached designs would work best for conversions?

Thanks, 
Alan

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Hi Effect Data:

Thanks so much for the detailed analysis!!

My SEO provider has assured me the links are of high quality so I am somewhat surprised. But thanks for the evaluation.

Note that I am a real estate broker not an SEO specialists. What sources are available for me to I safely purchase high quality links (including content for those links)? You are saying the "Blogfrog" link is worth $80. Note that I am getting the content for the link and the link itself. What can I expect for $250.00? I suspect my existing SEO provider is purchasing the links and marking them up (he has to make a living which I understand). I did request information on where the links were sourced. The SEO was guarded (something about a proprietary relationship with his publishers)  perhaps he thought I might circumvent him. My concern is that he has incentive to mark up the links on order to maximize profit. What is a fair arrangement that would align our interests? The SEO was highly recommended to me and I appreciate the efforts he has made. Still I don't like an incentive to exist to buy a "C+, B-" link for $80 and sell it to me for much more. Ethically and professionally may I ask him how much he paid and exactly where these links were acquired.

Could I research common high quality links to my competitors and ask him to request links from those sites?

Alternatively, would it make more sense to invest my budget to re-write the content on my site? If this was done in an engaging way would incoming links develop naturally? For instance would publishing a blog post once or twice a week increase links? Or will I no matter what need to invest in link buildings.

Assuming I continue developing 4-5 links like the ones you have seen, will it be enough to improve ranking on Google? Will metrics such as MOZ Domain Authority start to improve? If that is not enough to move the needle I either need to invest more or stop.

How can I as a consumer ensure that I am purchasing decent quality links? I am willing to pay, but for all the time, effort and knowledge it would take to analyze links, it gets very tricky. I am in the real estate business not the link creation building business. At the same time I don't want to pay 4x for something worth x. Any suggestions?

FYI... I just notice that from the 8 links created since September 20th, I have not yet received a single click of referral  traffic per Google Analytics. Should I be concerned, does this indicate these links are of marginal benefit? But I will say that my ranking on certain keywords has increased since these links have been activated.

Thanks, 
Alan

The link profile on our domain is poor and our domain authority is only 18. In April we migrated domains and our domain authority tumbled from 24 to 8 and as of August had recovered to 18.

Since August we have engaged in a link building campaign. We are getting 4-5  new links per month. They are good quality. Can we expect to see see an increase in our domain authority? If so, when?

The domain is www.metro-manhattan.com. The new links to date are below:

<colgroup><col width="114"><col width="252"><col width="377"><col width="296"><col width="97"></colgroup>
| Status | Anchor text | Final URL | Terget URL | Live date |
|   |   |   |   |   |
| Done | office space for rent in Manhattan |   |   |   |
|   |   |   | /commercial-space/office-space | 9/20/2018 |
| Done | medical office for rent |   | /commercial-space/medical-space | 9/21/2018 |
| Done | office space for rent in Manhattan |   | /commercial-space/office-space | 9/23/2018 |
| Done | office space for rent in NYC |   | /commercial-space/medical-space | 9/24/2018 |
| Skipped |   |   |   |   |
|   |   |   | /commercial-space/medical-space | 10/8/2018 |
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