How Do You Leverage Linkscape Data to Overcome Your Competitors?
-
Hi everyone...I used Q&A a long time ago when my company had a paid subsription but I haven't used it in a while, so I'm excited! And since the Q&A is apparently addressed to the Moz community, I figured I would embrace it and ask all of the Mozzers out there:
How do YOU use Linkscape to reverse engineneer a competitor's website? I understand how to use Linkscape. What I'm looking for is specific filtering or "out of the box" uses of Linkscape to truly understand how a website has obtained it's ranking in the search results.
In particular, I'm really curious about how everyone (including those who truly know how Linkscape works, i..e the minds behind it) make sense of the "DJ Passed" #'s or "most important links" criteria. I realize Linkscape is wonderful, but what I've found is that often times the links that "pass the most juice" or the links that are the "most important" AREN'T actually the most important links on a site. For example, I often find that the links that have the highest "DJ Passed" are directories. I could be wrong, but my guess would be that directories actually pass very little link juice. If directories gave as much link juice as the linkscape metrics indicate, then they are by far the best linking source, which I think we all know isn't the case in most instances.
To be clear...My intention is not to "debunk" the value of Linkscape...On the contrary, I think it's a wonderful tool and I want to understand it's nuances so I can identify "false positives", use it to get a true picture of a website, and get any tips/tricks from those who've successuly used it to overcome there competitors.
Thanks ahead of time!
-
I agree with this wholehearedly. OSE is without a doubt the best tool for analyzing a competitors linking strategy. Seeing the competitors strategy is great, but another reason I really like it is because I can know how good the person is that I'm up against. If they have links that I have no idea how they obtained them, then they know something I don't, and vice versa.
Have you figured out a way to successfully use OSE or Linkscape to get an idea of how well somoene's onsite optimization is? I'm familiar with the "internal MR passed" but that's one of those metrics I don't trust as much as the others. Do you have any other strategies?
Thanks!
-
See...This is my problem though...I often find that the links in the top of OSE aren't the most powerful links. I think this is especially true because a the Page Authority seems to be manipulated relatively easily. For example, if a directoy has a DA of 70, the the internal pages of that directory will have a PA of 40 from internal links alone. To me, a link from an internal page of a site that's linking out to 30 other sites on the same page...and which is likely getting it's links decredited by Google because it's a direcotry...is not a particuarly strong link, althouth the numbers would indicate otherwise.
A trap that I've found myself falling into is using the PA and DA to determine how good of a job I'm doing in terms of SEO, when in actuality I've been using those metrics for such a long time that some of my tactics evolved around inflating those numbers to a certain degree.
What I'm trying to figure out is how...using Linkscape or OSE...to determine what are truly the most powerful links on site. The links that if you took it away, their rankings would drop. (Or if you added to your own site, your rankings would increase.)
-
I use OSE for competetive analysis. For me it's greatest benefits are in seeing how competetive my niche are, but more importantly what competitors are doign to get their links.
Once I have the link information I can find out where competitors are getting links, the types of links they are getting and how valuable these links are. I can decide which of these ideas are worth copying, which areas they don't appear to have targeted or whether they may have targeted an area but didn't get any joy. That last part comes with knowing your niche well.
-
For me, OSE lets me see my customers competitors back links that are related to their industry sector and go after them. Not always possible, but I have had great success with this in the past. It is a manual process for the most part for me but a great starting place - then the hard work begins
Regards,
Andy
-
Linkscape and OSE let me know where my competitors get links from. They hint me on the kind of links they are capable of obtaining, from what kind of sources, and how (what kind of content, etc.).
For instance, OSE let me know that my competitors get their best links through "dumb" link exchanges. They don't have great articles on big authority websites pointing to them.
OSE let you reverse engineer the kind of SEO work your competitors are doing.
-
I find the linkscape useful not so much in grouping but sorting competitor links by strength and priority leaving the least potent stuff at the bottom and focusing on the most juicy links at the top of the list. Often I'll split it up into two groups and assign different people to work on different link strengths.
-
The way I like to work with Open Site Explorer is to group the link data (after downloading it in a spreadsheet) by site types.
This is done partially by searching from certain strings within the URLs, page titles or even anchor text, and partially by manual review.A typical way of grouping the links would be into:
- directories
- partner sites
- forums
- article directories
- dofollow blog comments
- etc.
I also like to sort the links by country, especially if I'm trying doing SEO for a local version of Google.
I don't really look at how much juice a page passes, I haven't found the MozRank to be too useful when sorting out through the link data.
Cheers
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 sift "site search" data from Google Analytics for trends
I apologize in advance if this has been asked a million times but I'm just not able to find anything on it for some reason. Probably the words "site" and "search" come up a lot in this area... Anyhow, my question: How do I find trends in "site search" data from Google Analytics? I set up "site search" a long time ago. I have thousands and thousands of searches people have made on my site logged and squirreled away. The plan was to review them on a weekly basis, find the trends and start writing content to address interests people seem to be having but not finding on our site. Sounded great at the time. The problem I have, of course, is that among my 10,000 searches (many shown in Google Analytics as "no-results:cats and dogs", etc), there are slight differences that make it difficult to total up search trends. Let's say the list is like this: Term | Search Count Cats | 500
Moz Pro | | rtkl
Dogs | 500
Cat | 250
Dog | 250
Cat food | 5
Dog food | 5
Birds | 1
Bird | 1
Cats are great | 1
Cats are really great | 1
Dogs are great | 1
I like birds | 1
Seriously, I like Cats | 1
Turtles | 1 ... 10,000 more entries, every single one only 1 search per term. OK, so it looks like people like Cats and Dogs a lot, but also Birds and Turtles. But maybe there are snake searches. Maybe there are "cat pajamas" searches and variations on all of the above. Who knows what else is really trending in there??? The review of this data is MIND-NUMBING. Especially when you get into plurality and misspellings, this rabbit hole has no bottom. Is there a tool people in the SEO jam use to take a big ole CSV dump and have it magically sorted by at least potential trends? I mean, there's gotta be, right? And I'm silly for not already knowing what it is.0 -
Drop in domain authority for myself and all my competitors, was something changed?
On the 1/11 report all four websites dropped, and starting on 2/12 they all dropped a few more times. These are all large companies who are completely white hat. Was something changed? The reason I asked is all of our linking C-Blocks dropped as well. Mine dropped from 114 to 42 and I have no idea why. All of my competitors dropped as well, is this related?
Moz Pro | | EcommerceSite1 -
How can i find competitor title and descriptions in SEO moz PRO
Hi I can't seem to find competitor title and descriptions in SEO moz PRO. I am missing something?
Moz Pro | | smashseo0 -
Sometimes we could not download all the data of inbound links from all linking domains
Sometimes we could not download all the data of inbound links from all linking domains. (Around tithe.) Don't you have any idea?
Moz Pro | | crossfinity0 -
What happened to OSE/Linkscape data?
Can any member of the Moz team or of the community comment on the most recent OCE/linkscape update as of 09/08/2011. It appears that the link data capture for one of our platform is dramatically different than previously and that there are some huge discrepancies? Any update on the change would be appreciated as we use all these updates as benchmarks. Thanks
Moz Pro | | OlivierChateau0 -
How Long For New Keyword Rank Data?
I have a PRO account and added the initial keywords and got the immediate rankings for those. Then I added new keywords and those have not been updated. How long do I have to wait to get Keyword Ranking data on those keywords. I know it says they are updated every Friday, but does that mean I have to wait until next Friday for my first run of data on new keywords?? I ask because I have to present to a client before then and I require the data for that meeting. Any insight is appreciated.
Moz Pro | | mc418720