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.
-
It's always tough to speak in generalities, but unfortunately I've seen many examples in the past 2-3 years where footer links from clients got devalued. It's not necessarily a penalty situation, but sometimes it just means waking up and finding that those links that helped you rank for years just aren't helping you anymore. This can result in a situation where your actual ranking is much less than what your link metrics would suggest.
Obviously, as we go forward, we're trying to build better models to account for this, but it's an incredibly complicated problem. What's a "good" link changes weekly.
-
Thanks, Dr. Pete. They actually do have a lot of footer links from clients that I have advised against but.... you know how clients are. Perhaps that is/was holding them back and the addition of more internal links coinciding with their small jump in ranking was a simple coincidence
-
If you had a very large number of internal links, that could dilute your authority in some cases, but some of that should be factored into MozRank. Having too few internal links shouldn't be an issue, unless you were artificially restricting your internal PageRank flow somehow.
This is almost impossible to diagnose without seeing the specific case, but keep in mind that none of our metrics really account for any filtering or devaluation Google might do. So, if they felt some of your links were low quality, or there was a bad pattern to them (too much reliance on one type of link, such as footer links from clients), or you were hit for excessive exact-match anchor text, etc., that wouldn't necessarily show up in our metrics.
The other issue would be any sort of technical issue with the page or even an on-page problem (a low ratio of crawlable text, too many ads, bad targeting, etc.).
-
Interesting question, I'm interested to see what other people have to say.
Our site has a TON of internal links, a much higher ratio than our competitors. I'm wondering if adjusting this will help us rank better.
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
-
Finding new links to site
Is there a way to find sites that linked to my site during a certain time period? Say in the past 2 weeks or from March 1-March 15th ?
Competitive Research | | priceseo0 -
Are aboutus.org links good?
Greetings Mozzers, I've posted several clients on aboutus.org sometime ago and it doesn't look like it is showing up on OSE. Its been well over 5 weeks. I have looked on their profile and none of the links are rel="nofollow" is there another thing I can check that would take all the juice away from them? Or does someone know if this is a good place to use? Thanks for any advice and clarification!
Competitive Research | | MonsterWeb280 -
Help link building
Í am looking for a good company to help me on high cuality link building . Please can someone give any recommendations of good seo companies
Competitive Research | | maestrosonrisas0 -
One client - 2 domains / same business - good or bad idea?
This is a follow up to a previous question actually: My client has one domain that has 'hardwood flooring' in it and one that has 'concrete polishing' in it - both services they offer. **Would it be wise (for seo purposes) to have them both point to ONE domain (more general of course) ** **- They only have a few local competitors that aren't doing anything to rank well. ** **- They aren't trying to rank nationally. ** If the smart thing to do is to have them point to one (more general) domain using a 301 direct will there traffic drop significantly? (at least for a short time) Does it matter if they continue to keep the existing domains they are using now on their literature, business cards, etc. and let them continue pointing to the new domain or should they really start promoting the new domain name? (They do NOT want to do this). My only concern is saving them time and money by not having to build links, submit articles, social media, on and on for two different sites OK, that's like 3 questions Thank you VERY much for any thoughts or opinions on the matter! 🙂 Have a great week everybody! Matthew
Competitive Research | | Mrupp440 -
Link Analysis Tool
Does anyone have/use any really good link analysis tools? I have been using SEOmoz open site explorer but don't find it that indepth or find that many links. I don't mind paying once the link analysis tool is good and I can export links to excell. I was thinking of buying this software http://www.link-assistant.com/features-and-editions.html Cheers,
Competitive Research | | Socialdude0 -
How does this domain / page rank for this particular term?
Hi everyone, I'm wondering whether someone can enlighten me as to how a particular page / domain is ranking for a term that the page appears to be in no way optimised to receive traffic to. The search engine is Google Australia and the Search Term (albiet low volume) is "Bunbury Builders" the top organic result is the homepage for "Content Living" www.contentliving.com.au/ There is one single mention of Bunbury on the page (as a phone number in the footer of the page). I've disabled javascript, css, and spoofed my user agent as Googlebot and I can't see anything suspect going on here at all. I also ran the domain through open site explorer and I couldn't find a single anchor text reference to bunbury directing visitors back to this domain. We haven't yet begun targeting this term, but I was curious to see (for my own education as much as anything else) how they were achieving this ranking position. Any feedback would be appreciated.
Competitive Research | | NaomiC0 -
Viewing Specific Links in OSE - For a Specific Month
(1) Can I use OSE to see the number of links per month a site acauired over the past year (month by month)? For example, I might be interested if I see a competitor acquired a surprisingly high number of links during December, 2010. (2) Can I use OSE to see the a list of links a site acquired during a specific time, such as December of 2010? For example, if I see a competitor suddenly acquired an unusually high number of links in December, 2010, I'd like to see a list of those links, to figure out how they acquired those links. Thanks!
Competitive Research | | GregMoore0