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
-
The best way to track internal links in Google Analytics
Hi there, we are a retail business and we have invested in quality editorial content which sits in our Blog at ourwebsite.co.uk/blog/ The Blog links to the main site (an online store) and I want to track the 'value' of the blog by how many clicks the blog content generates back to the main store. At the moment we're using this code on the end of every link in the Blog: ?utm_source=Blog&utm_medium=Widget&utm_campaign=FromBlog Does this affect SEO and is there a better way of doing it? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Bee1590 -
Cross Domain Tracking for multiple sub-domains with multi-lingual and culture versions
Hi, I have a question regarding cross-domain tracking that I haven't seen answered completely elsewhere. A client has a main domain, we'll say www.example.com and 4 or 5 sub-domains e.g. shop.example.com, support.example.com, account.example.com and service.example.com. The different sub-domains are managed by different third parties, with just www.example.com and account.example.com under our control. To add a further dimension, these sites all have multi-lingual versions as folders and in some cases multi-cultural versions e.g. www.example.com/de/ for Germany and www.example.com/ch-de/ for German-speaking Swiss. Not every language/culture has an equivalent site in place for each of the sub-domains e.g. the UK support site serves Denmark and Swiss-German users will use the German site: www.example.com/dk/ links to support.example.com/uk/ for support-based content
Reporting & Analytics | | Nobody1565908128979
www.example.com/ch-de/ links to support.example.com/de/ At present, they use different analytics tracking codes and accounts. Moving forward, they would like to consolidate the data together to be able to see the collective and separate performances. They would also like to be able to see goal completions from referrals when someone clicks from the main domain to the sub-domain or across sub-domains or potentially across language and culture too. I have several questions I would really appreciate some guidance on: What will be the best way to configure Google Analytics to achieve this? Will we need to decorate the HTML links in between each of the sites? Will we need to use a new Google Analytics property? It may not be easy to answer this based on the information above, so I'm happy to provide additional information if required. Thanks in advance for your help.0 -
Get anchor text, nofollow info etc from a list of links
Hi everybody. I'm currently doing a backlink audit for a client and I've hit a small problem. I'm combining data from Ahrefs, OSE, Webmaster Tools and Link Detox. I've got around 27k links in total now, but the issue is that WMT does not provide data on target page, anchor text and nofollow/dofollow. This means I have around 1k links with only partial information. Does anyone know of a way that I can get this data automatically? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Blink-SEO1 -
Google webmaster links vs Moz Reporte do follow links
A bit confused about my seo reports for a site I am tracking in Moz. Google webmaster reports i have 1836 links to my domain.
Reporting & Analytics | | KenW
Moz reports 273 external followed links.
Website Auditor reports 449 dofollow and 338 no follow.> total 787
What is important factor that I should be reporting to my client that really matters?0 -
Google Analytics: Okay to change domain?
So, we are a long time user of GA and we're planning a domain change.
Reporting & Analytics | | jmueller0823
Does anyone know if I can 'change the domain' in GA so we don't lose our past data?
Thanks!0 -
Google Webmaster Preferred Domain Settings Help
I was recently running my SEO Moz report for my domain and saw a drastic drop in page rankings on the report. After some trouble shooting, I checked my Google Webmaster Tools and saw the "Preferred Domain for my Site has changed" the last week in which I saw the drastic drop. Under the "preferred domain" area, I have it set to www.marware.com but on most of the links to my site, it reads www.marware.com/ . We also have http://marware.com , but am not sure if this carries any relevance as the preferred domain is set for www.marware.com . Does the "/" make a difference in the "Preferred Domain" section? If so, how do I update it? Is there a way to confirm it is set up correctly? In the photo attached, what does "Linked Property" "Analytics Web Property" and "Associated Webmaster Tools Site" mean? Thanks in advance! T5tSCxm
Reporting & Analytics | | Khadaran0 -
Multiple Domains in Webmaster Tools
Our client has four domains all redirecting to one domain. aquatron.info, www.aquatron.info, and www.aquatronhardwatersolution.com are all set up to redirect to aquatronhardwatersolution.com. I would like to make sure that we are getting the most link juice and that they are set up correctly in Google Webmaster Tools. Any help would be great. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | PolarisWebSEO0 -
Google Analtyics Cross Domain Tracking - in a form
I have a 3rd party booking engine that is causing my own domain to show up as a top referreral in google analytics. The vendor is on my very last nerve 🙂 So they're not helping. Would anyone be interested in helping a newbie out with a frustrating problem? Code: Reservations Page - function SubmitReservationForm() {. . . .
Reporting & Analytics | | jenny05
ResLink = "http://www.bookingengine.com/res/vn4/checka.aspx?month=" + Month + "&day=" + Day + "&year=" + Year + "&nights=" + Nights + "&rooms=" + Rooms + "&adults=" + Adults + "&children=" + Children + "&B1=Check+Availability&hotelid=xxxx"
pageTracker._link(ResLink);
return true;
} On Every page: Any thoughts would be appreciated! I believe the problem is pageTracker._link(ResLink); but I'm clueless on fixing it.1