Over at SEO Chat (http://forums.seochat.com) member clasionediscusses ways to count links to a website.

If you were to speak to a client about obtaining links for them, what would be the best way to determine how many links they would need to beat their competitor? Can you stop by looking at the back links from the Google toolbar? That would seem to be just a bit too easy.

you gotta look at the link text and the type and variety of sites the links come from

The problem is, especially in Googles case, that it's not really the quantity of links, but the quality (often measured as PR).

It's very possible to have a site with 10 IBL's outperform a site with a hundred. Often, PR is a better way of measuring it, which isn't very helpful since PR isn't a very good way to do it either.

A PR 8 page with a hundred links on it will often pass on less PR than a PR7 page with 10, for example, so you can't even just count PR.

Then throw in the fact that apparently certain authority sites pass on more link pop then others in Yahoo, and things start getting messy....

I usually don't aim for a specific number - I just look at the competitors IBL's and say "some good ones" or "a LOT of good ones" and then get as many as practical for the site.

Think of it like a race - rather than trying to figure out how fast your competitor will be going and then trying to go a bit faster, it's easier and safer to just go as fast as you can and forget about them (especially since they can change speed, or get more IBL's, at anytime anyway).

Cheers,

Ian
errrr..... IBL = "Incoming Back Link" ;)

Think of it like a race - rather than trying to figure out how fast your competitor will be going and then trying to go a bit faster, it's easier and safer to just go as fast as you can and forget about them
wonder if it is that line of thinking that causes those poor racecar drivers to crash into the walls... ;)

LOL - good point, seobook!

OK - so you still need to look in your mirror and watch where you steer (rankings or racing), smartypants.... :p

Ian

just look at the competitors IBL's and say "some good ones" or "a LOT of good ones"

what if your competitor has 40,000 + backlinks you really need a VPN access to google to get all of them lol

Can i ask what a IBL is and what a VPN is?

)Independent Back Link?

havnet a clue on VPN...

Nick

Yup with the above points - it's often a juggle between quality and quantity. Too many people think that there number equals value, when it does not at all.

havnet a clue on VPN...

VPN = Virtual Private Network.

Most large and medium sized companies enable outsiders (either employees, consultants and others) VPN access to specific networks internal to the company. VPN is fairly secure and reliable. (I can go on more, but its not relevant to the thread :) )

Would you count back links by using the Google toolbar mechanism or use something like what was referred to at seochat (http://forums.seochat.com/t17184/s.html) i.e.:

"Here's a simple Google inside trick you can perform that will crack open the search safe to shed light on the true link popularity of your website hidden within the vast Google indexing data.

Simply perform the following Google search query example using your domain name in conjunction with the "+" sign placed after the "." & before the "com", "net", "org", etc.

Example:
"YourDomainName.+com"

--------------

the way i do it, is spider the first 1000 results, then collect all the larger sites and remove them in the spider query and spider again then build a database

collect all the page rank of all the pages then run them throw a IP checker remove all the Urls from the same Class C and then start at the top in PR order..

and start requesting links ;)

DaveN

Great!!!! Thanks. :)

Regarding the quality of links - I always try to get as many links as I can from pages that rank in the top 1-200 for all of my search terms at Google. It's a good way to make sure you're getting what Google thinks is a quality link.

and don't forget to link to a few of those sites from your homepage,


if you sell bmw spare parts always link to BMW... if you get what i mean ;)

As my life becomes more unmanageable, I seemingly revert back to the Google toolbar. And ... go from there.

As my life becomes more unmanageable, I seemingly revert back to the Google toolbar. And ... go from there.

NNNOOOOOOOOOOOO.... the only thing the Google toolbar is good for is getting new pages looked at.... do you really want some BIG Brother watching over you...

lets say you become a bit outspoke about Google, and they wanted to teach you a lesson, tell me which person goes to your site the most and visit other sites on that class C... you tell google everything about you site and your visiting patterns.... Just say NO to GTB

DaveN

Thank goodness I've finally seen someone post this. Thanks Dave. I was beginning to think maybe I was the only one who had figured that out.

well i have not used toolbar since I became a mod at wmw, I reckon that google would soon pick up on forum urls That where private ... like the backrooms.. once they had found those from toolbar data my days would be numbered... so we developed a pagerank extactor that ran Via proxies and always checked an extra 80% of domains that i did not need...

Later I join a partnership with some computer hardware suppliers to always install the ISP dial-up that I own with the Googletool install and yes you guessed it they all go through my Proxies ... just to put up a larger smoke screen..

DaveN

I'm not as comfortable divulging how I do it as you. I think that means you should be commended as there are MANY, MANY people who would be well served by employing the techniques you are so graciously willing to share and find a way to wean themselves from the G toolbar. There are better tools to do everything that tb will do and those don't track everywhere you go and every word you say.

Want to argue about ethics and spam? How ethical is it to give the general public a free tool and bundle it with crap whose primary mission is to increase revenue by showing you more ads you never asked to see? If showing me a contextually relevant, (yeah right), ad in my own email, IM and everything else they can think of to bundle in by tracking my personal web habits, is not the very defintion of unsolicited advertising, I can't imagine what is.

This is of course assuming the real mission is simply to just serve better converting ads giving Google an unfair advantage. It may end up being something sinister.

I'm not knocking Google. Microsoft I'm pretty sure has the same basic world domination, take all the money 'cause we can and nobody can stop us, kind of mindset. In fact, I believe most "free" stuff is nothing but crap with an ulterior motive. But I don't run a MS toolbar either and in my opinion, if you're in this business, you shouldn't as well.

Good job DaveN

Well thanks for the kick in the pants. I guess I need a shove. I had explained some of the methods about counting links to a couple of clients yesterday and their eyes started to glaze over and well ... the post

then collect all the larger sites and remove them in the spider query

How do you determine the larger sites? :confused:

example : site a has 20,000 backlinks, they may a purchase 15,000 fron cnn or some other news site, so you need to remove that site from the backlinks..

remember google will only show you 1000 links you just need to get as many has possible, not 800 from cnn and 200 others..

ok we all know that google backlinks are know broken any way but he an example

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&q=link%3Awww.bbc.co.uk

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&q=link%3Awww.bbc.co.uk+-site%3Awww.bbc.co.uk&btnG=Search


DaveN

How about this:

domain.+com -site:domain.com

ok we all know that google backlinks are know broken any way but he an example

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&q=link%3Awww.bbc.co.uk

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&q=link%3Awww.bbc.co.uk+-site%3Awww.bbc.co.uk&btnG=Search

that second search there shows pages containing the text "link: www.bbc.co.uk"

I don't think google normally allows multiple advanced search operators at the same time if one of them is the link: function. (of course if anyone knows how to get that to work you would likely be the person)

How about this:

domain.+com -site:domain.com
Yahoo! allows multiple operators

linkdomain:www.searchenginewatch.com (http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=fp-pull-web-t&p=linkdomain%3Awww.searchenginewatch.com)

filter out internal links linkdomain:www.searchenginewatch.com -site:www.searchenginewatch.com -site:searchenginewatch.com (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain%3Awww.searchenginewatch.com+-site%3Awww.searchenginewatch.com+-site%3Asearchenginewatch.com&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-pull-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt)

filter out internal links and the links from another site
linkdomain:www.searchenginewatch.com -site:www.searchenginewatch.com -site:searchenginewatch.com -site:internet.com -site:www.internet.com (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=linkdomain%3Awww.searchenginewatch.com+-site%3Awww.searchenginewatch.com+-site%3Asearchenginewatch.com+-site%3Ainternet.com+-site%3Awww.internet.com&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-pull-web-t&fl=0&x=wrt)

added: google only shows some links to the given page you are looking for backlinks to. yahoo shows links to any page in that site if you do the root URL. if you use the full filepath or search for the backlinks to an inner page Yahoo! will give the links just to the page in question.

without the www seems to include alot of sites with just email links. Do the email links count as links to your website or do they weigh more or less heavily one way or another?

oops sorry it was supposed to be Yahoo not google

Thats why i put :

ok we all know that google backlinks are know broken any way but he an example ...... it should have been a Yahoo sample .... Thanks Aaron i owe you one for point out the errors of my ways ....

DaveN

I have my example working almost perfectly with Google, I think :confused: . Tested it through 3 domains.

Thanks Aaron i owe you one for point out the errors of my ways ....
I am sure you have and will point out many many many errors in my ways and help me more than I could ever repay ;)

Yahoo! allows multiple operators

linkdomain:www.searchenginewatch.com

filter out internal links linkdomain:www.searchenginewatch.com -site:www.searchenginewatch.com -site:searchenginewatch.com

filter out internal links and the links from another site
linkdomain:www.searchenginewatch.com -site:www.searchenginewatch.com -site:searchenginewatch.com -site:internet.com -site:www.internet.com

added: google only shows some links to the given page you are looking for backlinks to. yahoo shows links to any page in that site if you do the root URL. if you use the full filepath or search for the backlinks to an inner page Yahoo! will give the links just to the page in question.

For checking backlinks in yahoo for a particular page link:http://www.anydomain.com is more effective

linkdomain:www.domain.com will show backlinks for a site regardless of the page the backlinks point to,

link:http://www.anydomain.com -site:www.anydomain.com is more effective to see the backlinks of that page with the same site links filtered,

linkdomain: in yahoo will also show links to images

DaveN

link: command shows links to images, I tested the backlinks of some site images with linkdomain: and it is not working,

link:http://www.searchenginegenie.com/images/final-logo-for-genie.gif is the right syntax,

No i mean the other way round i have a site all it does is serve ads

made up url ...

www.davesadsite.com/ad1/graphic1.gif
www.davesadsite.com/ad2/graphic1.gif
www.davesadsite.com/ad3/graphic1.gif
www.davesadsite.com/ad4/graphic1.gif

Google shows no backlinks at all and there isn't any.... but because the ad's, well the graphics are shown on other websites yahoo see them as links well 1350 links anyway

DaveN

Ok got it, Have never seen it before that sounds pretty weird, Thanks for the tip, ill check more into it,

then build a database collect all the page rank of all the pages then run them throw a IP checker remove all the Urls from the same Class C and then start at the top in PR order..

and start requesting links ;)

so we developed a pagerank extactor that ran Via proxies and always checked an extra 80% of domains that i did not need... Later I join a partnership with some computer hardware suppliers to always install the ISP dial-up that I own with the Googletool install and yes you guessed it they all go through my Proxies ... just to put up a larger smoke screen..
DaveN



So are you talking Google Page Rank, if not, can you recommend an alternative tool to check the page rank? Also, what do you use for the IP checker? :)

any way to check three-way or greater links?

ie: A to B to C to A?

I usually don't aim for a specific number - I just look at the competitors IBL's and say "some good ones" or "a LOT of good ones" and then get as many as practical for the site.

Think of it like a race - rather than trying to figure out how fast your competitor will be going and then trying to go a bit faster, it's easier and safer to just go as fast as you can and forget about them.

That sounds good in theory, but the downside is if you tell a client "just go as fast as you can" that may be equivelent to telling him to buy a $1,000,000 stock car without telling him whether he's racing at Daytona or in a high school parking lot againt a 16 year old kid in his mom's Buick.

Good point pdstein!

There are times, especially for less competitive terms, that you can definately get into "overkill". I haven't dealt with them for a while so I was in "heavy competition mode", but you are right.

I recently actually had to tell a client to slow down his link aquisition - he had gotten to a point where he was spending more and more money to achieve smaller and smaller results. Sometimes that's necessary, but I usually like to stand back and take a sober second look at the point of diminishing returns.

It's very possible that the majority of websites don't even need an SEO (I'm sure that would make the SE's happy) simply because they are looking at a local market and not very competitive terms. Many do quite well with just a Yellow Pages or Super Pages listing, especially with local results, heresy as that may sound in an SEM forum ;)

I can see a point coming where web designers will learn basic SEO/SEM skills as a standard and apply them more or less automatically. I can also see software coming out with more and more attention to spidering issues right out of the box.

I've seen this trend before, in the DTP and hosting arena - I expect a major shakeup in our industry within 3 years. Likely sooner.

Ian

one good way to get a general idea (not a great in depth one) is to glance at # of unique linking domains. they got a fast, free, and kinda cool tool on the new www.posttrades.com forum that checks the # of unique linking domains in the first thousand at Yahoo!

added: tool is a form box which says "analyze your site" in the upper right corner of the page

Which thread is that tool in?

I am almost positive I have the minus - to work on Google i.e.:

"+www.domain.com" -site:domain.com

I think I can remove the class c domains by running through the results and doing the - over and over i.e.:

"+www.domain.com" -site:domain.com -site:domain1.com -site:domain2.com

I think it is working :confused:. After that I have to collect the Page Rank of all the remaining sites. Does anyone know of a tool where I can just plug in the query above and get the page ranks for all sites listed?

I am almost positive I have the minus - to work on Google i.e.:

"+www.domain.com" -site:domain.com

I think I can remove the class c domains by running through the results and doing the - over and over i.e.:

"+www.domain.com" -site:domain.com -site:domain1.com -site:domain2.com

I think it is working :confused:. After that I have to collect the Page Rank of all the remaining sites. Does anyone know of a tool where I can just plug in the query above and get the page ranks for all sites listed?

I would not recommend that technique...sites like drugs.com create thousands (probably more like millions) of pages of Overture only results which show as fake links.

the best way to go about it is to use yahoo or other search engines backlinks. OptiLink allows you to filter out internal site links and query multiple databases at the same time. pretty soon seo elite will add multidatabase backlink search and a few other cool features too.

Thanks for the tip. I'll check those tools out. :)

IBL

In Bound Link

Someone gave me a bad rep vote for my link to threadwatch where I found the item related to counting links. I guess it wasn't detailed enough, but that is where I caught onto the info. The other thread is at:

http://forums.seochat.com/t17184/s.html

This Link is worth the read on Way to count backlinks, Sorry no Self promotion intended,

http://www.searchenginegenie.com/backlink-strategies.htm This document is worth posting here,