What would cause a huge decrease in total links?
-
After the latest crawl of one of my client campaigns in Moz, I noticed that their domain authority dropped by 3 since the last crawl just one week ago. That seems pretty drastic. I took a look around to see what might have been the cause, and in looking at the Links > Competitive Metrics > History section of Moz, I found that the site had a decrease of total links from 5,339 to 1,072 (see image) - also a drastic decrease. My question is, what would cause such a huge, sudden decrease in links over just the course of one month? I haven't changed anything up with the approach to their online strategy, in fact we have put increased emphasis on the creation of natural links so this huge decrease comes as a real surprise. I should also mention that Total External Links also decreased, but only from 243 to 205. Any insight into these numbers and what could have possibly caused such a drastic decrease would be very much appreciated!
-
Thanks for the great input. I think we have figured out the issue, at least partially. This particular client had a Google+ page that they had kept up for several years - lots of posts with links back to the website. That G+ page was deleted this past week, which would explain the sudden disappearance of links. I doubt the page was accountable for 4,000+ links, but I'm pretty confident that is where the majority of the decrease came from. Thanks for the help!
-
Shot in the dark but maybe a sitewide link was removed? e.g. you posted a comment on a blog, it appeared in the sidebar under "recent comments", moz picked them up, your comment is no longer recent, lose all the sitewide backlinks, see that drop.
If you've exported your backlinks previously when you had a lot, compare the current links to the old list and see where they differ.
-
Hmm, that does seem a bit drastic!
Have you tried checking your links using another tool other than Moz? Maybe on the last Moz scan there was some sort of hiccup? Try checking your link using: https://ahrefs.com
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
-
What could cause Google to not honor canonical URLs?
I have a strange situation on a website, when I do a Google query of site:example.com all the top indexed results appear to be queries that users can perform on the website. So any random term the user searches for on the website for some reason is causing the search result page to get indexed - like example.com/search/query/random-keywords However, the search results page has a canonical tag on it that points to example.com/search, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. Any thoughts or ideas why this could be happening?
Technical SEO | | IrvCo_Interactive0 -
Does reciprocal linking carry any value?
No matter how much I research this one, there's no definite answer and there's a lot of contradictions. Basically we're looking to launch an article on 24 expert interior design tips for 2015. Each tip is submitted from a different interior designer we have chosen who have a reputable, trusted website. The main goal for this article is to generate various inbound links for our site from the designers and it will help to create engagement on social media. Although if we're giving out links to these designers for their contributions, the inbound links we receive in return will be little or no value as this is reciprocal linking? Some say this is okay as it's completely natural within the blog posts, others say to avoid it as it can be seen as an obsolete practice to deceive Google. Does anyone have any more information on this and how it should be carried out? Would a better process be to link to their social media accounts? Rather than reciprocal linking? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Jseddon920 -
Did I cause my 70% drop in organic traffic?
Held top 10 SERPS for brands over the past few years, did a site redesign on May 19th, site used to have a long left hand nav consisting of each brand I carried. Site redesign was an attempt to make it cleaner and more compact. Now the site has a top nav menu with categories based on garment type and the addition of a brand category, no fly out nav menu, these links just open the sub-category page. On the 10th I checked my SERPS and almost threw up, off the map, no where to be found at all. Would a site redesign take almost 2 months to reflect? Am I being penalized by Google(no notification in GWT). I'm lost and thinking of how to tell my landlord I'm not going to be able to pay rent in a couple weeks.
Technical SEO | | scrubcouture0 -
How to fix broken links?
Hi, I use WordPress CMS with Yoast SEO plugin. I have just found out that my 403 errors increased dramatically. It seems that all my tags below of each post are being broken for some reason. When i click on the tags i get the following massage: **403 Forbidden Request forbidden by administrative rules. ** I assume it has something to do with the configuration within Yoast SEO plugin. Dose anyone know how should i fix that? Thanks, Raviv evsGujA
Technical SEO | | Indiatravelz0 -
What are the best tools for back links?
I am a new to SEO, please help me in choosing the right tools for back links. I am thinking to buy Ultimate demon, Should I buy it or not? I have a range of you tube videos to rank.
Technical SEO | | Sajiali0 -
Link Building - Quality,Quantity, or both?
Hello SEOMozzers, As I embark on yet another client's link campaign I ask myself where best to spend resources(time and money) on link building. Typically I provide a mix of blogroll links, article syndication contextual links, social media posting and high PR one way links. I would like to know if anyone here finds one form of link to carry weight over the rest. I have my suspicion and my own theory on it but I would like to know what the moz concensus is.
Technical SEO | | TheGrid0 -
IFRAME WIDGET - FOLLOWED LINKS
<iframe style="border: 2px #CCCCCC solid;" src="http://www.cpsc.gov/cgi-bin/javascripts/cpscrss.aspx" title="CPSC RSS Feed" frameborder="0" scrolling="auto" width="224" height="258"></iframe> That is the code my client wants to add to an internal page where we can keep updated news on a specific subject. Only problem is this widget has links within it, these links are "followed". Should i worry about these links being followed? There are quite a few, does anyone know if they will be counted if within an iframe or is there a way to add "no-follow" attribute to them. Can i somehow tell the HTACCESS to add no follows to all links on specific pages? Any thoughts, solutions are greatly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | waqid0 -
If two links from one page link to another, how can I get the second link's anchor text to count?
I am working on an e-commerce site and on the category pages each of the product listings link to the product page twice. The first is an image link and then the second is the product name. I want to get the anchor text of the second link to count. If I no-follow the image link will that help at all? If not is there a way to do this?
Technical SEO | | JordanJudson0