Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
What is the difference between "external backlinks" & "referring domains" on Majestic SEO?
-
According to Majestic SEO's glossary, a "Referring domain, also known as "ref domain", is a domain from which a backlink is pointing to a page or link."
Given this definition, I'm not sure what an external backlink is?
-
If you've noticed this anomaly in SEOmoz tools, email the SEOmoz help desk. If you've seen it in Majestic SEO, email their help desk -- SEOmoz and Majestic are two separate companies with two separate tools.
-
If you find that example again, email help@seomoz.org and let them know so they can either see if it's a bug or let you know why it's happening.
-
You've stumped me there. Maybe its not giving you an accurate count of backlinks, or maybe its counting the www and non-www version of the domain name as 2?
-
I've noticed some cases where the referring domains are more than external backlinks. How would that be possible?
-
Say you had links coming from example.com/page1.html and example.com/page2.html. You would have 2 external backlinks from one referring domain.
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 can you rank nr 1 for high competitive keyword with low DA and only 1 backlink?
Hi! Was wondering if anyone can explain this a bit clearer...
Competitive Research | | AleksanderOlsen
Image attatched... How is it possible to rank on Google Norway for spot nr.1 (page in English language) and spot nr.2 (page in Norwegian language) , when all you competitors have higher PA, DA and a lot more backlinks and better on-page optimization according to MOZ? Is there something I´m misunderstanding?
Just when I thought SEO started to make sense 😞 7sXH00d0 -
Does link equity still count after an expired domain is purchased?
Hi guys, We've recently noticed a (very) minor competitor competing with us, as well as some of our industry's biggest names, in the Google SERPs - and the reason why has us absolutely stumped. Aside from an awful website from an aesthetic/UX point of view, their on-site content is horribly over-optimised, with keywords on the homepage even STRONG TAGGED for crying out loud! A backlink check using OSE and Ahrefs found 19 linking domains - most of which were just trash - but there were 5 that boasted some decent DA, the highest being 43. The thing is, these 5 sites are all very generic industry-relevant "blogs" that provide exceptionally poor quality content. The thing is, they have some very high quality backlinks (the BBC, the Guardian and CNN to name just three) acquired when the websites were something different entirely. The competitor has basically bought expired domains, turned them into basic websites related to our industry and linked them to their main domain. My question then is: is this competitor benefiting from the very high quality links that are pointing at sites that are then linked to their main domain? I found an article from 2009 that suggested old links stop counting after being purchased by someone else, but we are stumped as to why they could be otherwise. Thanks in advance everyone! John
Competitive Research | | NAHL-14300 -
History of Page or Domain Authority...how?
Hi everyone, is there a way (tools) to see the "history" of any given website in terms of Page or Domain Authority? Like if I went to Alexa and typed in www.angieslist.com it tells me the site ranks #**2,691 **Globally and #670 in the USA. But, is there a way to see how the rank has gone up over time, or where it was a year, two or more ago? Thanks
Competitive Research | | co.mc0 -
Is it possible to create "hidden" backlinks?
Don't miss interpret this... I DON'T mean hidden backlinks that you would stick on a page using html/css. What I am trying to figure out is if it's possible to create backlinks from sites that aren't visible by crawlers or SEO tools like Moz?... Does that make sense? Another words, let's say I place a visible/genuine/follow backlink to any external website from my blog. Is there a way to keep crawlers like Moz or other SEO tools from "seeing it"?
Competitive Research | | co.mc0 -
Internal/External link ratio
I have a client who ranked #3 for a very important and highly competitive keyword phrase. Using the 'Compare Pages' tool in open site explorer I could see that we were far better optimized than the two websites that were out ranking my client. Our PA was higher, the MozRank was higher, more internal and external links (and the external are all high quality) more linking C blocks etc.. etc... not just the page but the website, in general, was better optimized. The one thing I did notice was that although we had more internal and external links, our ratio was far heavier to the external side than the ratio of either competitor. So, at a loss of what else to do, I went through the website and beefed up the internal links to the specific page in question. I didn't over do it, just moved up from about 6% to about 12% (one competitor was at about 20% while the other was about 65%). Six days later we are number two rather than number three. Coincidence? Should I beef it up even more? Has anyone ever come across anything like this? Thank you for your comments in advance.
Competitive Research | | Vizergy0 -
Free tools to find country of origin of backlinks/urls
Hey are there any free tools out there which can allow me to insert a large list of urls, and it determines the country of origin of the domain. I know the paid version of majestic does, but i was wondering if theres any free tools? Cheers, Chris
Competitive Research | | monster990 -
Local SEO questions
Been getting into Local SEO a bit but still not completely up to speed on a few things. Would appreciate any input by experienced local SEO's to any parts of this: Ill ask my broader questions within the context of an example. I have a client who is a part of a keyword niche that isn't exactly what Google might consider "local". What i mean by this is that if you are a car accident lawyer and you type this into Google Google with spit out local results because it seems to know which terms are searched for with intent to find local results. This client makes essentially medical form software which I dont get any local results for when I search for their keywords. But they do have a local focus as in they have an address in a city which is a target market. The client told me they are looking to target other markets nationally as well down the road. However they don't have brick and mortar locations for these other cities so I am under the impression that it wouldn't be something we could target locally. This brings up a strange question in my mind though - if you need an address for a physical location for each city you want target...if you want to target the whole country locally, you would need to have a location in every city? Is there any way to target local focus without purchasing a new office in every city you target? Or can you target a state with one office etc or is Google bond things down to cities or understood regions? Does it sound like this company should even be doing local? The last part to this is whether or not there is any way (tool?) to figure out what local areas are searching for you keywords? Why doesn't Google allow us to use the Keyword Search Tool to see traffic etc for more than just a nation or the globe? What I would love to see is, which cities get the most traffic for X keyword term and have the lowest competition. Then it might justify having to buy some Regis office in a random location. I feel like this doesn't exist but maybe some of you have some ideas to direct me...
Competitive Research | | eastco0 -
Different SERP results in browsers / different result pages for keyword in browser
Hi, I am making the SEO reports for a travel agency and I have the following problem. SEOmoz shows me the website is on page 1, for a keyword. Yesterday, a google search with firefox showed me the same position, while, searching from a different computer on google using firefox gave me another position. The URL shown was also different. I asked some friends to do the search - the results were the same - first page. Today, firefox shows me the second URL on the 4'th page, and the result from the first page of google does not appear, while Chrome still shows me the first URL on the first page. I have no idea why the URL that was ranking well does not appear on the first page with Firefox, and why it appears on the first page with Chrome, or why the URL that was ranking bad -meaning page 4, appears on Firefox but does not appear on Chrome. Can someone give me some advice?
Competitive Research | | Netlogiq0