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How can they get to first page with so few backlinks?!

by huangyouyou117
21 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I was searching in Google on my target keyword today and wanted to do a little bit research into my competitor's backlinks. It is a local keyword with a city name in it. The No.1 guy has like 1 million backlinks. But almost all other sites on the 1st page for that keyword has less than 100 backlinks according to Yahoo Site Explorer. I checked the URL PR and domain PR too and they are not so high. Can anyone explain this to me? Thanks!
#backlinks #page
  • Profile picture of the author Chris Sorrell
    Yahoo site explorer is completely useless and isn't even 10% accurate so I wouldn't even bother with it. I know for a fact that one of my sites has around 30k links but yahoo site explorer shows it as having just 9 backliknks. So, in other words, most of the backlink checkers are completely useless apart from scrapebox which is pretty good. And PR has nothing to do with rankings or traffic.
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      That's just nonsense! :rolleyes:

      Yahoo Explorer returns most of my own sites backlinks (not all of them), I would say at least 75% of my backlinks. Yahoo Explorer is good to get an estimate of your competitions backlinks that actually hold any type of value.

      I bet your running almost all, low quality profiles for your backlinks (you mentioned scrapebox).



      Originally Posted by sorrellaff View Post

      Yahoo site explorer is completely useless and isn't even 10% accurate so I wouldn't even bother with it. I know for a fact that one of my sites has around 30k links but yahoo site explorer shows it as having just 9 backliknks. So, in other words, most of the backlink checkers are completely useless apart from scrapebox which is pretty good. And PR has nothing to do with rankings or traffic.
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      • Profile picture of the author hashbury
        Originally Posted by yukon View Post

        That's just nonsense! :rolleyes:

        Yahoo Explorer returns most of my own sites backlinks (not all of them), I would say at least 75% of my backlinks. Yahoo Explorer is good to get an estimate of your competitions backlinks that actually hold any type of value.

        I bet your running almost all, low quality profiles for your backlinks (you mentioned scrapebox).

        I agree with you. If your backlinks are not indexed they will not show up in yahoo explorer. Even if they are indexed it can take some time before they show up. I have noticed backlinks that were indexed in google but took them over three months to show up in yahoo explorer.

        I actually get closer to 85 or 90% of my links after I allow time for them to be indexed.
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  • Profile picture of the author mandark
    Firstly, Yahoo Site Explorer is not always as accurate as one would hope, so I would check multiple different backlink checkers to get a better overall estimate for each one.

    That said, keep in mind that quality of links matter. If those 100 links are all PR4, that's very different from 100 PR0 links. And just because the site's PR hasn't been updated yet to reflect the PR of incoming links doesn't mean they're not being counted.

    Another thing to note is content. If the site has consistently updated high quality keyword-targeted content, that can make up for having fewer backlinks.

    If you think you can easily match the content quality as well as backlink quality for these sites, then you may have found a great niche there.
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  • Profile picture of the author Tim Wallace
    A competitor analysis doesn't include backlinks analysis, on page optimization is another factor that should be considered.
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  • Profile picture of the author OKFarmgirl
    I've been using it though to comment on blogs and whatnot for links that ARE there - is that an effective use of Site Explorer?
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  • Profile picture of the author hashbury
    Another thing you can do to check the competeting site is to put the url in "quotes" and do a google search on it.

    This is a primitive way of researching your competitor but you can often times find valuable information from the search.
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  • Profile picture of the author CikaPero
    Maybe they have better backlinks then you .

    What i am saying maybe their backlink have better value :
    1)They have they keywords in the url
    2)Less backlinks on the sites that they have backlinks on
    3)Backlinks from higher PR pages
    4)Backlinks from pages that have a similar niche as their own

    Do you have all these factors accounted for?
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    • Profile picture of the author huangyouyou117
      Originally Posted by CikaPero View Post

      Maybe they have better backlinks then you .

      What i am saying maybe their backlink have better value :
      1)They have they keywords in the url
      2)Less backlinks on the sites that they have backlinks on
      3)Backlinks from higher PR pages
      4)Backlinks from pages that have a similar niche as their own

      Do you have all these factors accounted for?
      Thanks for the suggestion, CikaPero. I ran a more detailed research on one competitor's backlinks and found most of their backlinks (actually less than 20 according to Yahoo Site Explorer), so
      1. they do have keywords in the urls, as article titles under a article directory.
      2. seems like all backlinks they have are from public article directories and social bookmarking, so I don't think they can really control how many links on those pages.
      3. PR of the domains are as below. Not that good right? it's not the PR of landing URL, but PR of domains.
      N/A
      N/A
      N/A
      N/A
      N/A
      N/A
      N/A
      N/A
      -
      8
      7
      5
      4
      4
      4
      4
      4
      3
      3
      2
      2
      1

      4. Same as above, common article directories aren't really their niche.

      This is a little confusing to me, seeing someone else beat me with just less than 20 links, unless something's really wrong with YSE... and I didn't get the real data.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        The number of backlinks is not an indicator of anything. I
        am not sure why people still come here and shocked by
        that statement. I don't know who keeps preaching or teaching
        getting a bunch of crazy backlinks.

        Why has everyone forgotten relevance and authority?

        Two things that we can only measure subjectively, as we are
        not privy to google's thought process.

        There is such a thing as more relevance for the time and place of
        the search.

        Paul
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        If you were disappointed in your results today, lower your standards tomorrow.

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      • Profile picture of the author CikaPero
        Originally Posted by huangyouyou117 View Post

        Thanks for the suggestion, CikaPero. I ran a more detailed research on one competitor's backlinks and found most of their backlinks (actually less than 20 according to Yahoo Site Explorer), so
        1. they do have keywords in the urls, as article titles under a article directory.
        2. seems like all backlinks they have are from public article directories and social bookmarking, so I don't think they can really control how many links on those pages.
        3. PR of the domains are as below. Not that good right? it's not the PR of landing URL, but PR of domains.
        N/A
        N/A
        N/A
        N/A
        N/A
        N/A
        N/A
        N/A
        -
        8
        7
        5
        4
        4
        4
        4
        4
        3
        3
        2
        2
        1

        4. Same as above, common article directories aren't really their niche.

        This is a little confusing to me, seeing someone else beat me with just less than 20 links, unless something's really wrong with YSE... and I didn't get the real data.

        hm.. and what are your stats?
        on all 4 counts?

        and how similar are the keywords to the site names and domain names of your competitors and yourself?
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  • Profile picture of the author jonnyhardbaked
    Thousands of backlinks with low quality are useless. I think they have good quality backlinks that's why they are in the 1st page of Google. And also on page optimization.
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  • Profile picture of the author Big__Lebowski
    this is a good way to hide your links for main page: 301 Redirects and Search Engine Optimization
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    • Profile picture of the author huangyouyou117
      Originally Posted by Big__Lebowski View Post

      this is a good way to hide your links for main page: 301 Redirects and Search Engine Optimization
      That might be why. Say if Site A has tons of links say 1 million, and Site B hardly had any links let's say 10. Now if I do a 301 redirect to Site A to Site B, all the backlinks that Site A had will be carried to Site B right? Then can I see those tons of backlinks if I run a backlink checker to Site B? Or Can I only see the 10 backlinks that Site B originally had?
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  • Profile picture of the author Justinpage
    Maybe it has something to do with the quality of the backlinks. And don't forget on page optimization, it has a big role in SEO.
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  • Profile picture of the author jacked
    The competition must not be that bad then. I am guessing those links to the first result are not all to that URL.
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  • Profile picture of the author aero1220
    Very interesting topic, i've been searching for an answer to this also
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    • Profile picture of the author TuffeyJ
      Search engine counts the age factor too much and second may be yahoo explorer is not tell the correct number of links. I think impossible to have this amount of links.
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  • Profile picture of the author HKSEO Rotzee
    Originally Posted by huangyouyou117 View Post

    I was searching in Google on my target keyword today and wanted to do a little bit research into my competitor's backlinks. It is a local keyword with a city name in it. The No.1 guy has like 1 million backlinks. But almost all other sites on the 1st page for that keyword has less than 100 backlinks according to Yahoo Site Explorer. I checked the URL PR and domain PR too and they are not so high. Can anyone explain this to me? Thanks!
    Don't trust those man, NONE of them are accurate....and on purpose. They don't want us to have accurate numbers, they don't want us to know for sure what is working.

    In fact, they used to be a lot more accurate in the past, USUALLY things progress forward and become better and MORE accurate with time....unless you intentionally make it inaccurate..which is what they do

    Another thing to consider on the sites ranking high with an apparent "smaller" number of backlinks...is EMD (Exact Match Domain). You can have a smaller amount of backlinks, but with EMD and rank better than a site quite a few, WITHOUT EMD.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sweely99
    It's not about quantity -- but quality. I'm sure you've heard someone say so in the past
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  • Profile picture of the author TomScarn
    1 million backlinks may not be a true representation of why the website is ranked number 1. There could be other factors affecting the results. As said before though, it is really the quality of backlinks that builds the most link juice. It seems that Google respects a backlink from an authority site with a high pagerank more than a ton of low quality profile links or other low quality links.
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