Building backlinks has long been the primary focus of Search Engine Optimizers, however Daniel Offer argues that watching your backlinks and how your competitors are currently building their backlinks is of equal importance.
Why Should I Watch My Backlinks?
Most people that engage in Search Engine Optimization understand the merits of backlink building, particularly on anchor text, however it has escaped the notice of most search engine optimisers that it’s also important to watch how backlinks develop and evolve.
There is an assumption by search engine optimizers that once a link has been “built” it will always remain “built” however; websites are not quite so static. Sometimes webmasters elect to remove links, change the relevancy tag or change their anchor text.
These effects can impact the traffic that your website gets through these third party channels as well as through Google, as such, if you see a reduction in your Google search traffic on particular keyword and you know that you’ve lost a powerful inbound link on that keyword you know the cause.
Knowing the cause can help you resolve issues – perhaps the webmaster has made a mistake, or a webmaster has unethically ended a business partnership that you had.
How to Retain Backlinks
Back Link Checker – A backlink checking tool developed by GoMarket automatically monitors backlinks periodically to ensure the ‘health’ of your backlinks. The Back Link Checker ensures that your links haven’t been removed, nofollow tags have been added or a change in anchor text applied.
In fact, if any change has been made to your links the tool will automatically notify you by email.
GoMarket’s Back Link Checker is completely free; however you do need to know where your back links are in advance of using this tool. If you don’t keep track of this information you can easily obtain it from third party utilities such as Open Site Explorer.
If you currently have a process whereby you monitor backlinks, or if you think that you would like to start – Back Link Checker is probably your go to app for keeping an eye on what your link partners are doing to your valuable link!
Back Link Checker is valuable as it identifies backlink change so you don’t have to.
Find Out Which Links Give Traffic.
Compete.com – Whilst Compete.com doesn’t directly give away where a competitor’s backlinks come from, it does yield an insight as to where their traffic is coming from.
Remember, backlinks can yield value by-way of boosting a website on Google with certain keywords and phrases but they can also provide valuable incoming referral traffic. The two link building benefits aren’t necessary mutually exclusive.
Compete’s system gives up the secrets on where your competitors traffic comes from, and if based on search whether it’s pay per click or organic as well as on which keywords. This business intelligence can provide valuable information on what a competitor is doing such that you can respond accordingly.
Additionally, Compete’s system also tells you the keywords and phrases from which traffic comes from, and the extent of the traffic on each of those keywords.
There are however two problems with Compete’s system – it is US only and it’s an expensive subscription.
Find out Where Your Competitors Backlinks Come From
Alexa.Org – Alexa provides an indication as to a “websites traffic rank” so you can understand whether a websites link portfolio yields value or not, if a link portfolio provides “value” – i.e. a decent amount of traffic from favourable countries, it may be worth going through the links that Alexa has discovered and seeing if you can also arrange links to come in from those sites that link to your competitors into yours.
Furthermore, Alexa provides an indication as to your competitors linking strategy.
Open Site Explorer – This tool by the famous SEOmoz provides a very complete indication as to where your own and competitors back links come from. The value that the tool attaches to each link is another useful measure, you can compare the link text that is linked to most frequently and how that effects its traffic – data that you can obtain from compete.com
Open Site Explorer also provides an indication as to the authority of given pages as well as domains and the “mix” of followed and no-followed links.
Though there is a free plan, you are likely to find that you need a subscription to make best use of Open Site Explorer. Having said that, one cheeky way in which to use Open Site Explorer is to discover the links to your own website, or for a competitors and to use GoMarket’s Back Link Checker (which is free) to understand the anchor text as well as the tags (followed/nofollow) used for those particular links. It is this anchor text and tags that Open Site Explorer doesn’t give you without subscription.
Ahrefs.com – Ahrefs and Open Site Explorer are pretty much perfect substitutes. This tool provides a lot of information on the portfolio of backlinks that a given site domain has, it gives away information such as the amount of backlinks, the anchor text, the relevancy tag used (follow/nofollow) and the types of domains that are linking it.
Perhaps, most importantly it shows where new links are coming from as well as where links are being lost. Again, it only shows so much information – unless you subscribe.
Similar to the strategy mentioned with Open Site Explorer, you can cheekily grab the missing anchor text information using GoMarket’s Back Link Checker that the authors of this tool want you to pay for.
Where Your Links Come From…According to Google
Google Webmaster Tools – Google’s webmaster tools provides an indication as to the traffic that Google tells you that you are getting on certain keywords and phrases as well as our CTR.
Of debatable use is the indication as to where you are getting your back links from that it provides– arguably the link portfolio that it describes isn’t complete.
If you know your position within Google on your keywords and phrases, it gives you a good idea on the types of sites as well as keywords on which to focus on. One thing is for sure: Building backlinks is necessary, but it is just as necessary to watch backlinks and their development over time.
No comments:
Post a Comment