One of my favorite, easy-to-use features in Linkscape is the ability to compare pages and domains side-by-side to see which ones have earned what relative quantities of links. For example, I was curious to see how people linked to SEOmoz (since we're on a .org and I see lots of links to .com). Linkscape to the rescue:
Obviously, www.seomoz.org is the most linked-to and highest mozRank of the pages, but it's fascinating to see what percentage of folks link to seomoz.org (with no www) and to www.seomoz.com (which, thankfully, we own and redirect). I can then take a look at some more interesting data in the advanced report, specifically the number of unique domains pointing links at those different sites:
(BTW - see how 7.79 is only 11.99% of 8.82? Crazy, but that's how the logarithmic scale works. Good to think about next time you're comparing mozRank or PageRank for URLs or domains)
We'd be losing out on quite a bit of external link juice if we didn't own/redirect these domains properly. Furthermore, seeing those stats on the number of unique domains that actually sent the links is utterly fascinating (and something we've never had access to before). I think domain diversity of links is a phenomenal stat just on its own.
There's another key application here that I've been leveraging on some client campaigns of late - the ability to check out multiple pages for a single domain and better judge how to use them for keyword targeting. I'll walk through the process I use:
Step 1 - Run a query at Google for the keyword phrase + the site. For this example, I'll use link building site:seomoz.org. I can take that list of links and go to step 2...
Step 2 - Plug them into Linkscape's Comparison:
Step 3: Smack Self on Head - Seriously, it's like I've got dumb written all over me. Of course most external links point to the link building guide (an updated version is set to be re-released in the next 3 weeks, BTW!), and of course no one links to the blog category! If I had any brains at all, I would get my internal links (and all the mR I've built up there) lining up with my external links and point them at the link building guide. I'll bet I could get some much better rankings for the search phrase link building in the engines and probably drive a lot more high value traffic.
Now obviously, this won't always be so simple to implement. For us, it's just a matter of adding more internal links to the guide and maybe changing the name of the blog category so we're not keyword cannibalizing. For your site, it might be a more involved process. Nonetheless, the power of comparing reliable, trustworthy link data is immense. I'm not at liberty to show the client site we recently used this on, but I know they're getting a lot of really high value, high converting traffic thanks to the data uncovered.
BTW - I don't want to make it out that Linkscape is the only way to do this. Technically, you can do some of these processes (minus a few of the metrics and the domain diversity stuff) using advanced link queries at Yahoo!.
How quickly would doing something like this burn up the 20 credits we have as default? Does each comparison of 5 pages use up 5 credits or is it considered one report?
Or does this not use up any credits at all like not running a full report does?
I'm just scared to use up all my credits playing with it this month :)
Yeah - these are all basic (except for the one advanced report I ran to get the domain diversity data), so they don't cost you any credits. I believe anytime it's going to use a credit, there will be a pop-up box asking for confirmation.
Must sleep - 2:15am and I have to be at the show early again tomorrow :0
Thanks Rand. That makes sense. Hope you have a good day at the show tomorrow. I think this new tool is going to get you tons of new subscribers. I'm already going to dump all my other link gathering tools. This is more expensive but how can I ever go back after using it? Where can we buy more credits anyway? I didn't see the option in the tool or in the store.
One way: You have to be logged out and navigate to this page: https://www.seomoz.org/pro_landing.html If you're logged in, it will redirect to your pro tool set.
The other (better) way is by going here: https://www.seomoz.org/store/3 Logged in or not that should work for you.
How about adding an option :
Additional to PRO Membership :-
Add 5 linkscape credit to PRO - 20$Add 10 linkscape credit to PRO - 35$
Add 5 Analytics credit to PRO - 15$Add 10 Analytics credit to PRO - 30$
Add 2 Q&A credit to PRO - 15$Add 4 Q&A credit to PRO - 30$
I was actually going to suggest this. STELLAR IDEA.
Some people want more Q/A. Others want Tools, others the articles and others ALL of it ;) RAND, monetizing opportunity here!!!
Credit packages are coming soon! I promise. We're just working out the final details.
Thanks Nicknick!
Amazing tool, we just uncovered a crap load of links pointing to a sub domain (that I found about a month ago) that we could not have found before with this depth of detail. Keep the tools coming...
Is there a way to manually point your crawlers to a domain? I have a client (Local BMW dealer covering a area with a population of 2 mill people) and their domain doesn't seem to have been crawled even a bit! Would love to see some stats for their domain.
We're talking internally about this right now as we've had a couple of requests. Hopefully have an answer in the next 1-2 weeks at the latest.
I'm sure you are planning on it but I wanted to say that I hope you'll continue to publish blog posts on using Linkscape. It's such a voluminous presentation of info that these posts will be really helpful I think.
And Rand...what was with your retraction of "I love you" to all of us Twits out there? I know it was a meant for @mysteryguest, but you do love us too, right? ;)
Yes - love in a platonic, community-building sort of way :) Also yes to Linkscape for SEO - there's so many applications that I've been wanting to write about since we started designing it and it's such a relief to be able to finally open up.
I belive I speak for all of us when I say were looking forward too you open up :)
You've done a great job building an awesome community Rand. Linkscape is a huge step forward for your business, but you're already a hugely successful community builder, and from what I hear, a pretty good SEO too. ;)
I can't say enough times how much I love this tool. When do we get more information about the API? I emailed you guys about on [email protected], but have yet to get a reply!
Kenneth,
Your email is sitting printed out on my desk. So don't worry, we'll get back to you very soon!
Oh, and I have another questions which isn't related to my above post.
When running queries for an URL, will domain.com/something and domain.com/something/ (with / on the end) be considered the same?
Yes - we try to mimic the search engines, so we do lots of de-duping of URLs, including the trailing slashes
I want to add that while we take some of those things into account for our algorithms and metrics (so a 301 passes a lot of juice), you can actually break out your data for non-canonical and canonical versions. This gives you the most granularity and lets you measure the effects of linking to non-canonical versions.
You can actually see who's linking to your non-www version and what contribution to your mozRank the 301 has.
This means that you should look at both the www and non-www versions' reports if you want to see all your links. If you have the www version as your canonical version this is less important since most people link with the www. For SEOmoz I think we're talking about a small fraction of links to our non-www version.
If you don't use the standard www version of your site as the canonical version, you might miss some important links:
Perhaps 30-50% of links go to the www version even if you don't use it as the canonical version.
Hi, I enjoyed reading this post, I am with Globus is that the additional linkscape credits to current memberships would be very welcome.
Haha. I wonder how many Googlers you've pissed off. :D
Go Rand, Go Rand, you get married and then have a precious baby that is causing a tremendous amount of ruccus. :)
I wonder what Rand Jr. will be like ;)
From my first blush, the advanced reports have enough depth to provide campaign level planning while the basic reports are great for extracting quick hits like the example above.
Hi Rand
in your TermTarget tool I do not understand what the variable "Inpointing Links" is. Please explain how I go about providing them.
I would love to see the ability to compare http vs https inbound links also.
Hmm. So, some 200 sites link to the .com version of your domain, instead of the .org where the site really resides. That's an interesting fact, and it backs up the mantra "never buy a domain name if you are not buying the .com version too".
It is obvious that those other sites don't run a link checker over their own sites (something like Xenu LinkSleuth for example) because if they did, they would see their outgoing link listed in the problem report - flagged up as hitting a 301 redirect.
As it is only 200 sites, it wouldn't be beyond difficult to shoot an email off with a note to say you're really on the .org - but I'll guess the number will decline naturally anyway as some people reading this post go and check what they linked to and then correct it. D'oh!
As with all of these things, the changes over time can also give some valuable insights. It will be interesting to see those numbers in, say, six months time; not just the growth, but the distribution too.
Hmm, that's wierd. Google does actually list some of your .com URLs in their SERPs: www.google.com/search?q=site:seomoz.com&filter=0 - mostly numbered categories and just one author.
I'm still confused by the payment options, and it's keeping me from getting a subscription. Why are the old payment options, like "SEOMoz Pro Monthly Membership ($49)" still listed, when there is another monthly plan on the list that is $79 per month? What's the difference? Pro and PRO, I don't get it.
Sorry about that - I think it's a bug we've fixed up. The new price for PRO memberships start at $79/month and go up $299/month for the PRO elite level.