Individual Link Value
-
We understand the PA, DA, trust and all of that. My question is, is there a process or formula anyone uses that shows an individual links value as to the link juice it passes. The old Domain Juice seemed to be that, but after further investigation (And Rand setting me straight) I now understand it's not a good metric.
Today, we use PA divided by the number of external links on that page to get some sense of an individual links actual value to the site or page we link to. I understand this is a very sloppy system, but seems to be the only choice we have?
It's based on this simple thought. If you get a back link on two different pages, and both are equal in every way, except one has 3 outbound links and the other has 30, the link from the page with 3 will be significantly stronger as far as passing juice.
So... anyone using something to determine an individual links value? I did ask the SEO staff, and they do not current have it.
-
I believe that the problem is.... people are spending too much time worrying about the value of a link and not enough time producing something worth linking to.
-
Nobody knows but Google... but I think that advertising links and reference links (usually) have very different formats.
-
you mention reference citation. My question to you is does the google algo actually look out and read titles such as references ? As it would in a similar way to spot advertising links ?
-
Rather than use numbers I would use qualitative measure....
- How relevant is the site?
- Where is the link on the page? (in footer?... in contextual paragraph?.... in sidebar?... above the fold?.... in reference citation?
- Is the link on a kickass domain or a dog?
I think that these are much more important than numbers.
-
Ryan, yes there are a lot of factors. But .... going back two page example. Two pages of the same value. One has 3 outbound links, the other has 30. Clearly in most cases the page with 3 is better. In other words, if you have this situation 100 times, you might see it proving correct 70 or 80.
I doubt that figuring out several of the SEOmoz metrics is much (if at all) more difficult than the one I am describing, and a Link value would be of huge.
Every metric we see on reports is in fact a guess. PA, DA, Trust, Cblocks, Backlinks.. none can be completely trusted and we all use these tools with that understanding, and the hope that they are at least generally correct. What would be any different in a link value report that took as much into consideration as possible?
Can you imagine the time savings and efficiency acceleration of Link building if such a tool existed and was even somewhat accurate.
I think SEOmoz attempted this with the old Domain Juice passed metric. But seeing the formula for it, I can understand why they felt it was not very helpful.
-
I am not aware of any solid tool that provides this information. You may find a tool which estimates or otherwise provides a link value, but the challenge is that guesses are being stacked upon other guesses.
If someone responds "yes, try the Link Valuation Tool from Company X" my questions would be:
-
What metric is being used to value the link? PA? DA? PR? If PA/DA are being used, then those metrics are limited by the Linkscape crawler and the various factors concerning it's use (i.e. 1-2 months behind, issues mentioned by Carin, etc). If PR is being used, then the tool's PR is a guess and may be quite different from Google's PR
-
How is decay being handled? Is the PA/DA/PR being fully distributed? Or is the natural decay being calculated, and if so how? It's another guess factor.
-
How is the weighting of links being handled? The SEO consensus is that links in content are given more weight then links in footers and other site-wide links.
There are other factors such as multiple links to the same domain, multiple links to the same page, etc. I feel there are too many unknowns for a tool to provide a meaningful link valuation. I would love to be proven wrong. Such a tool would clearly offer great value to SEOs.
-
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
-
Duplicate pages coming from links from the login page - what should we do about them?
This is a follow on to an earlier question which was well answered by Dirk Ceuppens regarding abnormal crawl issues. We are seeing that the issues relating to Duplicate Pages are coming from links from the login page which shows information about where the user was redirected from. For example, if the visitor is not logged on and wishes to wish-list an item, they will be redirected to the login page, with the item code and intended action in the url; which can then continue on to the desired page once logged on. The MOZ crawler is seeing these pages as having Duplicated Content whilst they are all the same apart from a piece of information in the URL. Should we be blocking these duplications? Are they a risk to us? What should we be doing? Many thanks, Sarah
Moz Pro | | Mutatio_Digital0 -
Massive drop in linking domains - please advise!
Hi guys! Our site www.carwow.co.uk appears to have been punched in the face by the latest Moz update. It's claiming our #linking root domains has dropped from 225 to 135 and has subsequently hit our DA from 38 to 35. We haven't disavowed any links and our off-site strategy has been going well the past 2 months. Search performance has increased by around 15% (around 5k sessions) and rankings have improved week on week. Any idea if this is a Moz error? That's almost a 50% drop in linking root domains. Thanks, James
Moz Pro | | Matt.Carwow0 -
How can I increase the number of links downloaded with the Opensite Explorer Just-Discovered tool?
I recently just tried to download the list from the OpenSite Explorer Just-Discovered tool and it only downloaded 233 links. When I checked to see how many URLs were available it was over 4,000. It does seem as though it only downloaded today's links although I'm not quite sure about that. Is there a way to increase the number of links downloaded to match what is listed in Opensite Explorer? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | searchysearchy0 -
Benefits of reducing on page links
This is more of a discussion point. What would be the measurable results of reducing the number of on page links, specifically on a home page, but let's assume by way of a large navigation menu most of the pages have a lot of links" For instance, would any of the stats on the MozBar be affected (let's start with the home page). Would the Page Authority or MozRank change at all, perhaps because there is less "juice" flowing out of the home page? Thanks! 🙂
Moz Pro | | ntcma0 -
In the middle of Link Building campaign! Do you think Dog Blogs are a good Idea?
Hello Again, Here's I thing, my main website is my Digital Web Agency www.FenwayMedia.co.uk but I also hold good affinity with dog lovers on Facebook over 2100 friends and have a website www.Sepperro.com dedicated to my kennel of 9 racing Siberian huskies. In return I would give them exposure to my dog mediums (articles, links etc.) My only slight concern was relevance. However my thinkning is that as a Digital Agency surely you would be expected to have links coming from all sorts of sources as you "may" have had some input into the development of their site/ marketing etc. What do you guys think? Thank you once again. Kind Regards, Craig
Moz Pro | | fenwaymedia0 -
To Many Links on site
I've had an issue with to many links on the site. My drop down menu, secondary footer and footer. The report told me that I had 253 links on each page. I then programmed my secondary footer to dynamic and ran a crawl and my links reduced accordingly to 201. Then turned the footer into dynamic and ran a crawl with my links increasing to 1500. This also happened between each phase but en went away. Oddly enough, my domain authority increased as well as other factors in the crawl report. This too many links thing is driving me crazy. Please provide some guidance.
Moz Pro | | CHADHARRIS0 -
Why is Followed Linking Root Domains higher than External Followed Links?
Surely there must be at least one external link for each linking root domain? Some results for smaller sites give a higher number of domains linking in than incoming links - e.g. www.forbesandsawyer.co.uk Under Subdomain metrics: External Followed Links - 1 Followed Linking Root Domains - 2 Surely 2 root domains would mean AT LEAST 2 external followed links? Thanks, Andrew
Moz Pro | | Silktide0 -
Will Open Site Explorer ever show number of links over time?
OSE is an amazing tool, but do you guys at SEOmoz have any plans to develop it so we can track numbers of links over time. I need to demonstrate to clients how the link building is going, and this would be a great quick report to see how many links you found on a given day, month, year, etc. A bit like magesticSEO backlink history graph, but better 🙂
Moz Pro | | timwills0