Two links with the same quality but different effect
-
Hi,
the website I'm working for is loosing rankings for one specific keyword and since there haven't been any bigger onsite changes I assume it's the back links.
The company bought some exact anchor text links in the past, so I went through those. One specific one attracted my attention: It's a site wide link which creates over 80% of the back link profile to the specific website.
There was only one catch: part of this bought anchor text campaign is another highly targeted anchor text which is not negatively affected by the rankings.
Still I didn't like the feel of this so I ran the seomoz keyword difficulty report. And there I discovered an interesting pattern:
For keyword A we are the only ones in the top10 with such a high percentage of exact keyword usage. But for keyword B, which didn't loose rankings our top10 competitor have an even more over-optimized keyword usage or much weaker back link profile.
So now I wonder if it could actually be the case, that we loose rankings for keyword A since our competitors have a more natural profile, but for Keyword B it has no negative effect due to the worse competition.
Thanks in advance for your help!
-
Your conclusion sounds correct. Keyword A is much more competitive and you have 80% of your backlinks coming from one domain. Your competitors may have a stronger link profile with links from multiple domains and diverse anchor text.
You are able to rank for Keyword B since it is less competitive and you have a link with exact anchor text matching that term.
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 is the relationship between inbound links and linking domains?
In doing competitor research, there's a specific competitor that has fewer linking domains, but dramatically more inbound links. How do these two relate to each other? I do have a higher domain authority and more internal followed links with them having more internal nofollow and external (both follow and nofollow) links. I'm trying to understand how they can have 3.7k linking domains and 4.8 million inbound links while I have 4.1k linking domains and only 601k inbound links. What really defines an inbound link and what's there relationship between inbound links and linking domains?
Competitive Research | | grayloon0 -
What factors are effecting our rank?
Can anyone shed some light on why this might be? Our website has a higher DA and PA yet the competition rank higher for some keywords. Even though our on page grader is higher or marginally different. **Our Website ** DA - 13 PA - 20 Keywords - 390 Linking Domains - 24 Total Inbound - 37 Follow - 14 Competitor DA - 8 PA - 15 Keywords - 640 Linking Domains - 12 Total Inbound - 79 Follow - 65
Competitive Research | | Jesssherl1 -
# of links and how it impacts ranking
Hi everyone I was running a competitor analysis in Moz Pro of my site and 3 competitors that are ranked above me. One of the things I noticed is that my # of total links is very high compared to 2 of my competitors(please see attachment). Other seo tools are telling me the same. This is mainly due to a few affiliate sites that have us in their footer. I was wondering if this could impact our ranking if some of these sites have very low domain authority and have thousands of backlinks to our site? I am looking into starting the disavowing process. Walau
Competitive Research | | wdsguy0 -
Should I use an informative outbound link when trying to market a service?
Having outbound links seems like a marketing no-no as you don’t want people clicking away from your website. However, if the link provides great information (at the end of your content) that explains and markets a service that you’re offering, is it okay to have that outbound link?
Competitive Research | | medaestheticsgp0 -
Can deceptive ads help sites to rank? Pogosticking effect involved...
Hello,
Competitive Research | | fablau
I have a question for you. I have noticed that many music sites that appear in the first top results for keywords our users search for, include all the same ads that deceive people by inviting them to "Download" or get the "Full Album" of what people may be search for. Look at the following websites that are often displayed at the first spots for keywords like "Christmas Sheet Music" (just an example): [....] They all have, most of the times, the same ads. Look at the following screenshots taken from the sites above (the ads are at the top of the page): http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/storage/google/Shot1.jpg
http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/storage/google/Shot2.jpg Those deceptive ads could engage users more than legitimate websites not showing those ads or not showing ads at all, making Google think that people are more engaged on those website showing those deceptive ads. If it is quality that Google is looking for, shouldn't they do something to avoid having sites ranking well just because of some deceptive ads that take users into action, but without any useful result? I am eager to know your ideas on this issue. Thanks! Fab.0 -
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 -
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 -
Best Link Analysis Tool?
Now that the Yahoo Site Explorer is not usable on sites unless they are in your Bing Webmaster Tools, what is the best tool out there to see an accurate list of inbound links to a site? Google tools are still pretty unreliable from what I can see...
Competitive Research | | Bandicoot0