Tracking External Followed Inbound Links - Are We Getting Fooled?
-
This question is not about how to use SEOMOZ Link tools. It's about the numbers themselves and how their fluctuations are causing confidence issues....
My client wants to track inbound followed links over time. But as I understand it, this number will vary depending on the Linkscape crawling success (or even outages or partial crawls.) In the past few reports, we've had wild fluctuations which have made them very nervous.
If my client wants to track inbound followed links over time, what SEOMOZ metric should we use for the most reliable progress checks?
-
Most SEOs don't count raw links, exactly because the numbers vary wildly no matter what index you use, and also because most of the Internet is made up of "junk" links that disappear off the link graph every few months.
It's estimated that 60% of the web disappears every year. The reason for this is that much of the web is auto-generated by bots, auto-blogs, low quality aggregators and just plain spam. You often don't see many of these links because the search engines tend to filter them out indexes like Mozscape tend to ignore them as they don't influence rankings.
That said, low quality and transient links do make their way into the various indexes, including Google's. They don't count much for rankings or traffic, and they are as likely to disappear as they are to appear.
Even if the numbers were to stabilize, raw link counts tell you nothing about the value of the links. One good link can outweigh 10,000 no value links. And 100 bad links can actually hurt you.
For this reason, it's usually better to use metrics link DomainAuthority and MozTrust to gauge link building success, as well as gains in traffic and rankings.
Hope this helps! Best of luck with your SEO.
-
This is a B2B client, selling services in the $20M US range. SEO attribution can be a challenge because of the way due diligence gets conducted.
In addition to traffic, we measure several stages of the conversion funnel and do lead scoring attribution on the CRM. But, in progress meetings, I need to discuss results of SEO groundwork between observable events such as ranking changes (they are top 5 in hyper competitive phrases with some powerful uncumbants.)
Inbound followed links seemed to be one good metric to report on. I was using Linkscape for this but may need to change my approach.
-
I realise that this isn't quite the answer you were looking for, but perhaps trying to explain to the client that the number of inbound links isn't the best way to keep track of what you're doing? I know that personally I used to keep track of all the links I was building but after a while I realised it was a bit pointless, the only things that I really care about are conversions (and money coming in), and then traffic and number of terms driving that traffic (I try and keep things simple).
Might make your life a bit easier if you're not reliant on a third party number to keep him happy and you can show the end result of all your work is conversions, traffic, rankings etc?
Otherwise as mentioned above, I'd take a look at Majestic to show the numbers going up.
-
Yes thanks. The issue is not the functionality of reporting but the numbers themselves. +/- 2000 link variations between weekly runs is not okay and freaks out my clients. I'm sure we have not had that much change in link numbers.
I do think I need a 2nd tool to cross reference to. Majestic is a good one to consider.
Please, everyone keep ideas coming.
-
Hmm... I think you can have an inbound link report run at certain intervals and emailed out. Then you can do a comparison over time. You might also look into something like MajesticSEO which has a historic backlink tool. Very helpful and very credible.
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
-
Where is the link prospecting tool?
I feel like last year when Moz was still SEOMoz I used a beta tool that would help you build a bunch of queries for link prospecting. You would tell it what your sites about and a few other pieces of information, and it would give you a list of google queries to get you started (ie inurl:directory <industryname> +"add site"</industryname>). However, I'm having a hard time finding this tool, or any reference to it on the web. It's also possible that it wasn't a moz tool but I'm misremembering where I found it. Does anybody have any idea what I'm talking about?
Moz Pro | | brettgus1 -
Need help locating a 404 link
My reports are showing a 404 error for a link to a page in our WP site for which we changed the URL months ago. I can't find where the link is coming from. I used Screaming Frog, but can't find where it might tell me the origin of the link, only that it exists. I am pretty sure it's internal. Can someone please tell me how to find the originating page so I can remove the link without having to comb through every page of the site to look for it? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | gfiedel0 -
How do I get a link in my blog bio signature on my Youmoz posts?
I've done several Youmoz posts and only recently noticed for some reason that other authors have included author links and links to their websites in their bio section at the end. I edited mine with a full URL but it only shows up as text. No editor there when you edit your profile so no way of adding a link. Anyone know how this is done?
Moz Pro | | DanDeceuster0 -
Competitive Link finder tool
I tried to use competitive link finder tool. it says that it will identify 10 most important links that my competitor get that I do not. The results that I get are inconsistent with linkscape tool. For example my competitor has a link on www lawyer-links dot info Google rank of that site is 1. Is that really one of their most important links?
Moz Pro | | SirMax0 -
Why are inbound links not showing up?
I'm new to SEOmoz but have a question regarding inbound links that I don't see posted in the forum. In order to become more familiar with SEOmoz tools, I've been checking out sites that friends and family members have created as practice. Things have been going really smooth until I came across a 2+ year old page that should have included an inbound link from wsj.com but said link is not appearing in OSE for this page. Background: A friend of mine has a (basically) defunct blog that had a pretty well trafficked posting in 2009. However, when I use OSE to check out both the domain and page inbound links, I don't see the aforementioned inbound link from wsj.com. Why is that? Or, it's insanely late - am I missing something? Friend's blog posting: http://bcclist.com/2009/04/21/craigslist-killer-megan-philipcom-removed/ WSJ posting with a link to my friend's blog (4th paragraph...anchor text = "taken down"): http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/21/who-is-megan-mcallister/ No rush. Again, I'm doing this as practice and being new to the site, I figure I'm overlooking something. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | ICM0 -
Link Blocks
Sorry, perhaps a noob question. In relation to site explorer, have also searched and unable to find any information, wondered if anyone could advise as to what "Linking C Blocks" are? Found under the "Compare Link Metrics" tab. Thanks in advance. Lee
Moz Pro | | LeeMiller0 -
Still Getting Keyword Self-Cannibalization
I used the onsite optimization and made some changes to my post, but am still getting the Self-Cannibalization mention in my results. It lists this: "Real Estate Careers | Keller Williams | Career In Real Estate" as the link that is not supposed to be there. This is not a link, but the title of the post. What am I missing?
Moz Pro | | brentmitchell0