Help needed interpreting inbound link analysis please
-
Hi
I am trying to determine how effective our store blog is and am trying to analyse the inbound links it provides to our store domain but am confused with the results, can anyone help please?
For information the blog is on a subdomain of the store site, has plenty of relevant original content, and has been regularly updated over several years in line with basic Yoast SEO best practice.
When I look at analysis of inbound links and linking domains for the store site in Moz Pro, the blog subdomain does not show as providing any inbound links.
Google Search Console shows similar results, with no inbound links to the store domain showing from the blog subdomain in either 'search traffic > links to your site', or 'search traffic > inbound links'.
Open Site Explorer for the store domain also shows no inbound links from the blog subdomain to the store with 'link source > only external' selected.
But if I change to 'link source > only internal' then all of the inbound links from the blog subdomain to the main store that I would expect to see appear.
Should I be concerned by the fact I can only find these inbound links under this one specific search and not in any of the others?
Does this suggest a problem in the passing of any current and future SEO benefit from subdomain blog to main domain?
Or should I not worry about it too much?
I am looking to begin a full overhaul of all SEO for the store and blog from the ground up and want to be sure the connections between the blog subdomain and store are functioning properly before I start.
Any help in unpicking this would be really appreciated
Thanks very much
-
Hi Rob
That's a big sway in favour of shifting to the subfolder, and will absolutely take you up on your offer via PM, thanks very much
-
A lack of blog functionality can be an issue, but only if you are counting on your blog content to generate interest in your products/services. If you are only using your blog as a ranking mechanism for your store, and don't need your visitors to go there in order to influence them into a buying situation, I wouldn't be terribly worried about how UX-friendly your blog is. In this case, the pros definitely outweigh the cons in terms of switching over.
However, if your blog is very interactive and your products require review videos or "how-to's" to help potential customers make a purchase decision, then it is probably a better idea to retain a UX-friendly blog platform and forego the ranking benefits.
Rebuilding the site is likely the best option in light of the information you have provided, although if resources are tight this may not be an option. If you would like, I can take a closer look at your site - feel free to shoot me a PM and we can take a look at steps you might take to improve your SEO as cost-efficiently as possible.
Cheers,
Rob
-
Hi Rob, thanks for the in-depth answer and resources, very helpful
I would love to shift our blog to a subfolder, but this may cause problems too. This is because our main store site is built with BigCommerce, meaning the only option to get the blog into a subfolder there is using BigCommerce's built-in blog functionality.
Good news: we have all of our blog content in a subfolder
Bad news: SEO functionality of the BigCommerce blog is average at best. Layout, navigation and UX is poor
Do you think the pros outweigh the cons?
The other alternative is to rebuild the store from the ground up for ecommerce and blogging and bring everything under one domain that way in a site optimised for both.
This is likely beyond our budget right now however. I don't see this being realistically possible for another 12 months. In the meantime I am searching for the best way to maximise the assets we have (blog, main site, etc) for max SEO benefit and growth over the next year.
All thoughts and advice greatly appreciated!
-
Hello!
Great question and one many SEO's still struggle with.
Here's a great article I read recently on just this topic - it covers a lot, but the first thing it tackles is the use of subfolders vs. subdomains when creating blogs for ranking primary domains (your situation).
http://seopressor.com/blog/subdomain-vs-subfolder/
Personally I think there are benefits and problems with creating a subdomain for SEO purposes to boost rankings of a primary site. What you are describing in terms of what your analytics is showing makes sense - the subdomain still acts as part of your primary domain when it comes to passing on links, but it ranks on its own as subdomains do. Therefore, the SEO of your site is not going to be improved as much by a blog on a subdomain as it might as part of a subfolder.
(i.e. example.com/blog is a better way to go than blog.example.com when it comes to pure link juice and SEO)
In fact, the way you currently have it set up, you may be shooting yourself in the foot since the link juice that is passed from your subdomain will be reduced, and only your blog will rank organically, meaning people might not even make it to your store (as you have created a barrier from a UX perspective, requiring them to browse through a middle point to get there).
You might look at migrating everything to a subfolder instead of using a subdomain, although I would be cautious of this approach if you have a ton of content on your subdomain currently. Here's a post from a while back where Rand spoke to this procedure:
While some things have changed, this is still pretty solid advice. As a general rule, I try to show my clients the value of subfolder blogs for primary domain ranking purposes, and will only move forward with a blog on a subdomain if there is an extremely good reason.
Hope this helps and feel free to reach out if you want to discuss further.
Cheers,
Rob
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
-
Moz Pro Tools Inbound Links
Is there a way to get a date of when a inbound link was created from a external website. And if so is there a way to add that to the Moz Pro tools reports on a csv file.
Link Explorer | | willakawillow221 -
Checking link quality : help needed
In my journey of learning which links are good or bad for my website I found the series pointed out in the attached image and pasted below: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/help-implementing-google-pagespeed-suggestions where I posted a forum comment just like this one on the wordpress forum asking for advice. Apparently this links is mildly spammy (spam score of 1). What should I do with such links? Remove them? emZXKI
Link Explorer | | micvitale0 -
Why isn't OSE showing any of my links?
My domain uses a redirect of all traffic to https. The site is https://www.tallslimtees.com. I've been working on it this year and know there are several good, topical links coming in. But OSE shows nothing. Any idea why this would be the case? How can I see all of my links and the data on them?
Link Explorer | | DanDeceuster0 -
Why is the company reference of "designed by" with a link back my web development site not being indexed as a link?
Using the Mozbar I am analyzing my links and my competitors links. I am noticing other web developer sites are getting credit/index links from all their client's websites with the "designed by...." link in the footer. However, for me I only see one "inbound link" in the link analysis report. Sometimes I notice a company getting several inbound links on one site they built. I have built many other sites and have my company link below on all the footers. Why are the other sites not showing up as "inbound links" on the link analysis report? Thanks for your help! Nikki
Link Explorer | | NikkiPatt0 -
Discrepancy between number of links from web master tools and open site explorer.
Hi I am looking at number of link to www.bagnodesignglasgow.com on open site explorer shows as total links 24 but on WMT it says 937 ? Why are these two numbers so different ? Thanks
Link Explorer | | VIVOWeb0 -
Sites internal links are not showing as inbound links
My sites internal links are not showing as inbound links while my competitor site’s internal links are showing as their inbound links (In OSE). Is my site’s inter-linking weak? Or there could be other reasons.
Link Explorer | | vivekrathore0 -
Open Site Explorer Recently Discovered Links Question
Hey Mozzers, I have a question regarding the Open Site Explorer Recently Discovered Links. I know that I have receive follow link from a few sites that have more DA than my site. I am wondering why it is taking so long for OSE to discover these links? I double checked the sites to make sure that they don't have NOFOLLOW (sorry for the double negative), and the sites have linked to my site for over a month now. Any ideas? I'm not concerned about it because Search Engines have discovered those links. I am just curious why this is, or if it is normal. Cheers!
Link Explorer | | evan890 -
Why do 0 back links show for my website in Open Site Explorer?
I've read and understand that all back link tools results will vary from one another but Open Site Explorer and some others find 0 linking to my site. Webmaster tools show 46 back links. Is this because they are all "no follow"? I'm trying to get a grip on SEO but am very confused from the get go. Thanks, Todd
Link Explorer | | Grateful_Monk0