Always keen to verify my own theories, I used my SEOMoz pro account to ask what metrics the SEOMoz team advise to use to determine the best possible source for links in a link building campaign using Open Site Explorer as the key data source. The reply was to use DA (Domain Authority) as the key indicator tho’ I had to be wary of Directories which may appear to be ranked highly without providing any real benefit.
Digging a little deeper, I’ve also noticed that when using this approach, Open Site Explorer also favours any sub-domain driven sites i.e. sub-domained blog URL’s and other such sites with the echelons of DA ranked sites being made up of these sites.
So what does this mean to the lay SEO? Well it means that unless you’re prepared to wade through tens of thousands of results, there’s still not short-cut to finding great quality links.
Heres how I get started in sourcing links from our competitors listings.
- Use Open site explorer to download CSV’s of all EXTERNAL links that are dofollow/301 from a big ass list of competitors domains
- Combine all of these CSV’s into one document
- Clean the list using the DATA > Remove duplicates filter in the source URL only
- Sort by Page Authority
- Highlight all PA on domains with a PA over 50
- Sort by Domain Authority
- Highlight all DA on domains with a DA over 50
- Sort by External Links
- Highlight by External Links over 100
- On a page by page basis quickly scan the list removing RSS feeds and other uninfluencable links
- Add a column for PageRank
- Go through each listing adding the PR for each site (n/a for grey bars)
- Build links where possible.
Since Open Site Explorer has an API, has anyone thought about automating this process as i’d pay for a tool that did this and more as it would save me HOURS!
Just what I do man! It was a nuissance not having any PR values though – hence I am interested in the bulk link checker that you talk about in the next few posts!
I do however prefer the manual and personal approach to choosing links and contacting webmaster rather than using automated progs.
You seen linkdiagnosis.com now? Do you think Acquire collate these saved data reports on mass to do exactly what you talk about here?
Hi Red, I suspect that link diagnosis, opensiteexplorer and majestik all save our data for their own uses… i would i i was them lol.
Wow – can’t believe I already read your post and commented…I thought I had never read this article before – manic! Too much reading not enough SEO! Any hoo – the only bia-tch about competitor backlinks is the relevanchy issues – I literally created a small index of 350,000 unique domains based on the top 15 competitiors backlinks for a few short tail and long tail kwds in one very tight niche. Admittedly this was b4 the big gnarly kungfu Panda – but the backlinks were chronically irrelelvant – shockingly so! So obviously paid too – Would be interesting to set off the same index again now and compare results. It appears that more relevant kickass backlinks have more of a prevalent correlation now as opposed to 6 months ago.
Oh…n ….pay u say? coulda been an easy buck there! No need! adapt Businesshut ssheet to solve ya needs! It’s credited in the Moz members / API areas I think.
So has anyone created a bulk checking tool for OpenSiteExplorer.org yet? Their API is free and let’s you bull the domain/page authority metric so I’m surprised I can’t find any tools already. It’s time to build one for internal use then …
check linkdiagnosis.com its free and gives you OSE data plus pagerank and an overall strength score… its pretty nice
Yep TBH there aint a blinkin good backlink checker anymore for on the fly stuff…linkdiagnosis is a limpit to moz too – just wish MajSEO would pull the finger out and produce some amazing new metrics and ways of analysing data – THAT WOULD BE ACE – their index is one of the biggest aint it? (Besides G etc) they could pwn that market!!!!
why not tweet him hes pretty responsive! http://twitter.com/#!/MajesticSEO
+ the API call on SEOMoz linkscape drip feed soooo slowwww nowadays – I feel that pro membership is losing its appeal the more the Critchlow’s keep changing the site and reducing membership benefits (no offence like, but as a pro member we used to get more..now the Q&A opens opened up to the community – don’t get me wrong – there are great things and resources that this site gives out – but most can be accessed by basic membership anyhow. Pro members need more guys!
I agree however you cant fault the business behind it, i guarantee there’ll be a pro plus membership level or something
@Mark – Good shout! I’ll get on the twottersphere and send an email or two me thinks! See if they have any future plans…
NP
Just out of interested, why the “flawed” part of the title?
Because at the time there was an issue with it.