Archive for Back Links articles

Introducing Open Site Explorer

Feb 12010

published by Hannah in Back Links | Link Strategies | SEO | SEO Tools with 5 comments

I attended SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer (OSE) webinar last Thursday, January 28, and learned some things on how to make the most of the new link analysis tool.

If you’ve been using Linkscape you’re probably pretty happy with the functionalities that the service brings. At first glance it might seem that another link analysis tool would just be redundant and, for the most part, that is actually true. However there are some things that Open Site Explorer can give that Linkscape doesn’t really do and vice versa. In the future though Rand said that OSE and Linkscape will probably become integrated with one becoming the premium version.

One of the major difference is the number of links available per report: shows up to 10,000 links in OSE and 3,000 links in Linkscape. Note though that unless you are a SEOmoz Pro member you will only be shown details of 5 links in OSE and none in Linkscape. However, you do see the other important metrics such as overall page authority, domain authority, number of linking root domains, and total number of links including those that are “no followed”. These data are things you need to know where you stand in your link building effort, but it’s really the other data that gives you more actionable items.

According to Rand some of the things you can do with the data given by OSE include finding the following:

302 pages - What you can do is turn them into 301s
404 pages - You have to options for these pages: either put content in those pages or redirect them.
Inbound links with low quality anchor text - Contact the owner of the linking page and ask them to change the anchor text to something you prefer.
Links to competitors’ error pages - Don’t forget to analyze your competitors’ links. Do the same thing as #3 but make sure you explain to the person you are contacting to link to YOUR page, explain how linking to an error page can hurt them, and give your preferred anchor text. This isn’t really unethical since the link was pointing to an empty error page anyway.
Links to old/poor pages - Redirect these links to newer pages that offer fresh and/or more relevant content.

One other thing that Rand suggested that stood out for me was in answer to a question by one of the participants. (Sorry I wasn’t able to take note of the person’s name. If you attended the same webinar and know, do let me know.) The question was: How can we use OSE to determine what to charge our clients?

Rand suggested that you simply check out the domain and page authority of your client’s page as well as the number of links. Then you check out your client’s competitors’ pages and compare the data, after which you can do a guestimate of how much effort you need to put into link building as well as how long it will take to creep up on the competitors in search rankings.

Popularity: 15%

Link Building - Why It’s Gotten Harder

May 142008

published by Gary in Back Links | Blogging | Link Strategies | Organic SEO | SEO with 11 comments

In a previous post of mine I stated that “organic link building is making more and more sense“. A statement I definitely believe but a statement with lots of things going on behind it. Nowadays if you look at your own link building campaign efforts and compare it to the amount of effort you needed [...]

Spam Scare: What to Do

May 12008

published by Hannah in Back Links | Link Strategies | SEO | SEO Mistakes | SEO Tips with 3 comments

What would you do if you suddenly get a massive amount of inbound links and find out its all spam?
If you know anything about SEO you know that we all loooove inbound links however we don’t want a whole slew of irrelevant links from who knows where. Of course if you are into paid links [...]

The Domain Age Factor in Links

Apr 272008

published by Gary in Back Links | Link Strategies | SEO with 4 comments

We all know that the age of a domain affects search ranking. Because of this many websites have resorted in buying old domain names in order to benefit from the aging. This is not a bad thing at all especially if the domain bought is relevant to the site’s theme and the new site being [...]

Link Building Using Search

Feb 132008

published by Hannah in Back Links | Link Strategies | SEO | SEO Tips with 3 comments

If you are running out of ideas for your link building campaign and have done the usual methods of hunting for links you might be relieved to know that there is another simple method you might have missed - link building using search.
Link building using search is might be a little time consuming, depending on [...]

The Value Of Quality Link Building In SEO

Dec 22007

published by Gary in Back Links with 3 comments

Quality link building involves getting inbound links to increase the overall SERP positions of not only your website’s homepage, but also your deeper URLs.
Simply exchanging links indiscriminately with other webmasters and bloggers, although this creates lots of noise, it does not necessarily generate any great SEO value for you. In order to engage in meaningful [...]

How To Prepare Your Website For Directory Submissions

Sep 172007

published by Gary in Back Links with 3 comments

Directory submissions are important for your search engine rankings as I’ve already discussed this in Importance of submitting to Web Directories. Since almost all online directories are human-edited (humans decide whether your link should be there or not) your primary tasks is to convince that unknown editor that your website deserves to be included. How [...]

The Importance of back links in SEO

Sep 122007

published by Gary in Back Links with 5 comments

The importance of back links in SEO (also referred to as inbound links) stems from the fact the Google uses them to evaluate or at least as an indicator as to the quality of your content. In fact they attach so much importance to back linking that back in 2005 Google filed a patent application [...]

Importance of submitting to Web Directories

Jun 202007

published by Gary in Back Links | Link Strategies with 13 comments

The fundamental difference between a search engine and a web directory is that a search engine spiders the Internet to look for new web pages and then indexes the web links according the relevance it attaches to those links. In a web directory on the other hand, you submit your links manually under a suitable [...]

How to get your website indexed

Jun 152007

published by Gary in Back Links with 5 comments

The question of how well you rank on various search engines only comes into the picture once your website is indexed by the search engines. For that the search engine crawlers somehow have to crawl your website and to crawl your website they have to reach it. If your website exists in total isolation — [...]