backlink analysis – SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies https://cognitiveseo.com/blog SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies Wed, 31 Jul 2019 08:41:56 +0300 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.3 Custom Backlink Filters and Page Speed Improvements https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/3283/custom-backlink-filters-and-page-speed-improvements/ https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/3283/custom-backlink-filters-and-page-speed-improvements/#respond Thu, 05 Sep 2013 13:44:14 +0000 http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/?p=3283 During the summer time we focused on analyzing our customers’ feedback. One of the most requested features was the ability to create custom backlink filters.  We carefully thought about this and decided to implement this new feature as it makes a lot of sense. This will save you a lot of time as you will be […]

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During the summer time we focused on analyzing our customers’ feedback. One of the most requested features was the ability to create custom backlink filters.  We carefully thought about this and decided to implement this new feature as it makes a lot of sense.

This will save you a lot of time as you will be able to save your favorite filters and apply them later on.

Here is a quick guide on how to do it:

1. Apply a set of normal filters. (minimum 2)

2. Save as Custom Filter

3. Apply Custom Filter later on.

 

You can do whatever combination of filters you want. Here are some ideas for custom filters:

1. Quickly view new links that are actually live that appearead in the last week.

  • Link History = Last Week + Link Status = Live

2. Quickly view Unnatural Links that appeared in the Last week.

  • Link History = Last Week + Link Naturalness = Unnatural and Suspect Links

3. Quickly spot high quality referring domains that have In-Content Links.

  • Domain Authority = Good and High + Link Context = Content

4. New Links in the Last week that are 301/302 or 4XX.

  • Link History = Last Week + HTTP Status Code = 301 or 302 or 4XX

5. New Links in the Last week that contain a specific anchor text.

  • Link History = Last Week + Link Anchor Text = “my anchor text”

I could go on forever on the combination of filters that you could create in order to speed up your research.It is up to your needs to create the ones that fit you best.

Improved Page Load Speed

Another major improvement was done on the Inbound Link Analysis page load speed. We improved it with 10%-20%. This page is a very heavy page containing a multitude of charts and data. There is still room for improvement and rest assured we will optimize it even more in the shortest time possible.

Smaller Bugs

We also solved a lot of smaller bugs, all around the toolset.

We believe the user experience will be improved with this new feature and speed updates.

To Your Faster Productivity!

PS:  do not hesitate to send us your feedback. We listen to every person making a smart suggestion! Just mail us on support [-=at-] cognitiveseo [-dot-] com

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4 Important Backlink Analysis Misconceptions still kicking in 2013 https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/2968/4-important-backlink-analysis-misconceptions-still-kicking-in-2013/ https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/2968/4-important-backlink-analysis-misconceptions-still-kicking-in-2013/#comments Mon, 10 Jun 2013 15:34:02 +0000 http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/?p=2968 There is a huge amount of misconception going on since the existence of the actual “backlink”.  With all the latest improvements in the Google’s algorithm these misconceptions should be cleared so that the correct backlink concepts get understood correctly. 1. The Blindness of the Total Link Counts A lot of SEO professionals are impressed, and  guided, […]

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There is a huge amount of misconception going on since the existence of the actual “backlink”.  With all the latest improvements in the Google’s algorithm these misconceptions should be cleared so that the correct backlink concepts get understood correctly.

1. The Blindness of the Total Link Counts

A lot of SEO professionals are impressed, and  guided, by the total raw link counts of a site.

I often hear people talking about the number of links a site has, when, in fact, they should talk about the number of referring domains.

Example: Site XYZ has 100k links.  This number is useless … it does not mean anything.

Let’s me put it like this:

It is not about the link counts … it is actually about the referring domains when you try to quickly understand the popularity of a site.

Those 100k links are all coming from 1 referring domain. This isn’t a popular site. It is a link profile generated out of tons of site-wide links. These links do not increase the value of the site at all.

What about, if the site had 1000 links from 300 referring domains.

Much more popular site when you look at the referring domains number.

Forget about the total raw link counts when you try to quickly grasp an overview on the popularity of the site. Referring Domains is the important number.

2. The Natural Unnatural Link Concept

WTF is this?!

How can an unnatural link be natural?

Links, as everything else, should never be put out of context. It’s like taking someone’s phrases out of the discussion. That is called “Fallacy of quoting out of context” and it is the practice of quoting out of context. Usually you get a totally different meaning putting the quote out of the context. And a lot of people do it for various reasons … (but that is another discussion)

The same can be applied to links. Here is a quick example.

First POV – A Link Out of the Context.

Looks like a natural link. What’s wrong with having a forum profile? Nothing. In fact it is recommended to be active on your top industry forums. You will increase your exposure.

Second POV – The same link in the Context of the Link Profile.

Here is the context of the link: 667 links from 249 referring domains. Let me be more accurate. That is 22% of the entire link profile.

So it doesn’t look natural anymore …

Focus on the entire context when you are doing backlink analysis!

3. Google PR is a Great Metric

Google said several times that they intentionally randomize the Google PR on random sites in order to make it harder for webmasters to reverse engineer the quality of a page.

I often hear SEO’s talking about the PR of a site, when they try to qualify the site as a potential link building prospect.

That is the wrong way to do it.(BIG DOT)

Use other metrics in order to quantify the quality of a site. The best metric, is the ranking in Google of that site or page. If the site ranks well, we got a good prospect. If it’s nowhere to be found, ignore it.

Forget about Google PR! It is too misleading.

4. Great Link Analysis Conclusions on Outdated Link Data

This one gives you almost ZERO information, and worst … it can be very misleading.

Did you know that your link profile is made out of LIVE and LOST links.

Live links is obvious, but Lost links are links that once existed and don’t anymore. A tremendous amount of pages become broken every day. Without having a list of freshly crawled data (at least a week old or so) that analysis is not accurate and can be misleading. On a normal site you can easily have a 40% Lost link ratio. If you would include that in your analysis you would have a 40% wrong result.

You should have a system in place that crawls your links on demand and provides you with fresh data, as we do in our toolset, at cognitive.

 

These are only 4 concepts that a lot of SEO’s still work with without knowing that they might be totally wrong. Hopefully this list will clear these misconceptions and make you a better SEO professional.

I am really interested in your thoughts, and other misconceptions, that you think are still kicking in 2013.

<a href="http://depthdeception.blogspot.ro/2009/10/understanding-evolution.html" target="_blank">*photo</a>

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How to check your Brand vs Commercial Anchor Text Ratio https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/2522/brand-anchor-text-vs-commercial-anchor-text-ratio/ https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/2522/brand-anchor-text-vs-commercial-anchor-text-ratio/#comments Thu, 14 Mar 2013 15:58:29 +0000 http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/?p=2522 Can too few Brand Anchor Text or too much Commercial Anchor Text penalize a site? (note: commercial anchor text is also known as Money or SEO anchor text) Taking in consideration all the unnatural link penalties lately and the new ones to come, Google surely does not only look at the individual links, but it also looks at the […]

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Can too few Brand Anchor Text or too much Commercial Anchor Text penalize a site? (note: commercial anchor text is also known as Money or SEO anchor text)

Taking in consideration all the unnatural link penalties lately and the new ones to come, Google surely does not only look at the individual links, but it also looks at the Anchor Text Profile naturalness.

Google tries to understand if the anchor text pointing to a site looks natural or not. This can be easily done by the search engine, if they are comparing anchor text distributions for the sites ranking on a specific keyword or for the sites ranking in a specific niche.

Usually people tend to link to your site with anchor text that contains:

  • the brand name
  • an url
  • navigational queries such as : click here, visit etc
  • random words

Rarely you will see unbiased people linking with commercial keywords, because it seems that it is not in the human nature to link to a product or site with a “keyword rich” anchor text. (unless the site has an EMD or a partial EMD for a commercial keyword which kinda of explains also the value of an EMD).

Google knows this, and it tolerates it, because it still needs this signal in its ranking algorithm. It is still an important signal, until Google will be able to completely understand conversation, and I am sure this is one of their main technical challenges. Co-citation is another signal that Google started using, but the search engine is still relying heavily on anchor text as a signal to guide Google in ranking a site on a specific set of keywords.(one signal in over 200 signals)

Google already has keywords classified as being Commercial or Not (think about the PPC data they have). Brand terms are also easily spotted by Google. (sample: cognitiveseo/cognitive seo or any other derivation from that).

Knowing that Google does this, I am sure that everyone’s desire would be to have access to similar data.

To make your “SEO life” easier we upgraded our service with a feature that allows you to view the same anchor text distributions based on Brand and Commercial anchor text.

As a quick case study I did an analysis on two niches:

  • payday loans (very spammy)
  • buy flowers (almost natural)

This is how the Brand vs Commercial anchor text distribution looks like in each of these niches.

Payday Loans Anchor Text Ratio

 

Buy Flowers Anchor Text Ratio

In the first graph we can spot a very high ratio of commercial anchor text 61% to 94% for the first two sites. The Brand anchor text ratio is somewhere around 6% to 20% for those two. If we compare it to the third site, we can see a very high brand anchor text ratio of 53% and a commercial anchor text ratio of 22%. This signals Google a difference in patterns, which means that it is highly probable that either the first two sites or the third site is doing some shady stuff.

Looking as the second graph we can see that big brand sites have a high Brand Anchor Text ratio. One of those 5 sites has a difference in patterns though. This again might signal Google a potential issue and the algorithms will go deeper to investigate it. In certain cases this might be a false alarm, but in most of the cases big differences in anchor text profile distribution means something is unnatural.

Keep in mind that there is no secret distribution ratio like 60% Brand / 20% Commercial and 20% Misc. The ratio is related to the specific niche of the site. In some niches 70% Brand anchor text might be natural while in other niches 40% Brand anchor text might be natural.

To put it simply:

Brand Anchor Text is one of the signals that Google takes in consideration when deciding if a site should be “trusted” or not, while the Commercial Anchor Text tells Google what keywords might the site be interested in ranking.

Using this new cognitiveSEO feature you will be able to:

  • Understand the overall distribution of Brand,Commercial and Misc Anchor Text ( Misc keywords are navigational keywords or keywords that do not fit in the first two categories)
  • Browse over the Anchor Text Cloud to easily comprehend “What is What” (actionable also. click the keyword and you get the links using that anchor text)

  • Filter by Brand Flag and be able to segment your link profile the way you need it for your backlink analysis.

 

Here are a few other interesting articles on the anchor text distribution topic:

 

What do you think on the Brand vs Commercial anchor text distribution ? What are the numbers that you see in your niche?

 

 

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Visual Link Explorer – The Easiest & Most Powerful way to Visualize Backlinks https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/2228/visual-link-explorer-visualize-backlinks/ https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/2228/visual-link-explorer-visualize-backlinks/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 14:42:57 +0000 http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/?p=2228 Approximately six months ago we started the implementation of what is probably the most powerful, beautiful and easiest way to visualize a site’s link profile. The name of this new cutting-edge feature is:   Visual Link Explorer – Cutting-Edge Link Graphs Made Simple   This is the easiest, yet advanced, visualization that allows you to comprehend the […]

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Approximately six months ago we started the implementation of what is probably the most powerful, beautiful and easiest way to visualize a site’s link profile. The name of this new cutting-edge feature is:

 

Visual Link Explorer cover

Visual Link Explorer – Cutting-Edge Link Graphs Made Simple

 

This is the easiest, yet advanced, visualization that allows you to comprehend the ever-growing complexity of a site’s link profile.

 

No other SEO tool has implemented automatic extraction, creation, and navigation of Link Graphs. Until now only advanced technical SEOs could implement similar link graphs using complex tools such as Gephi or Fusion Tables. This did not only require advanced technical skills but it also required a lot of time to implement.

 

The New Visual Link Explorer creates link graphs on the fly (no technical skills required … and it saves a huge amount of time by having them automatically generated) based on the backlinks of the analyzed site. It also has “pure” SEO features that are dedicated to backlink analysis, such as:

  • Link Profiling – Live/Lost Links, NoFollow/Dofollow, Website Type, etc.
  • Comprehend Link Quality by using different Link Metrics.
  • Highlight Link Relations using the Search Function.
  • In-depth Zoom on each Link.
  • Navigate using Sliding and Zooming.
  • Save Link Graph Snapshots – WYSIWYG.
  • Optimized to work fast with tens of thousands of links.

 

This is a dream come true for any SEO professional that at least once in his/her carrier needed or wanted to have that cutting-edge, that would put his/her analysis/pitch or client report above the competitors.

 

What is this good at?

 

I would like to quickly highlight some of the most useful things that can easily be achieved with the new link explorer:

  • Visually Comprehend Backlink Profiles in a Heartbeat. (understand faster)
  • Eye candy & Airplane View of a Site’s Links (get the “cool” big picture)

Visually Comprehend Backlink Profiles

  • Pitch or Report to Clients with a unique twist. (always be unique)
  • Navigate inside a site’s link profile (intuitive visual backlink navigation)

Pitch or Report to Clients with a unique twist

  • Quicker Side-Panel Visualization with Instant Link Preview Onpage

Quick Side-Panel Visualization

  • Faster Competitive Analysis. (save huge amounts of time)
  • Quickly spot link prospects on competitor profiles. (find faster)

Quickly spot link prospects on competitor profiles

 

Give me more details. It’s too vague …

 

Having spotted some of the macro uses of this tool, I would like to go a bit more in-depth and give you actual examples of some of the Visual Link Explorer use cases.

 

This visualization combined with the rest of the strengths of the cognitiveSEO platform will allow you to do your SEO stuff much smarter and faster.

  • Instantly Spot, Low and High-Quality Links.

 

Instantly Spot Low and High Quality Links

 

  • Search for links by (url, anchor text etc) and highlight them among others.

Search for links by url anchor text

 

  • View Broken Links Distributions over the entire link profile of a site.

View Broken Links Distribution

 

  • Identify Themed Linked Pages Easily

Corporate related links

 

  • Identify the most linked pages of a site and how their backlinks look like.
  • Filter out Broken Links and Analyze only Live + In-Content Links. (hundreds of other filter combinations are available )

Filter and Analyze only Live & In Content Links

 

Other Notable stuff about the Visual Link Explorer

 

While the tool aggregates link data from a multitude of backlink providers (Ahrefs, Blekko, SEOkicks, majestic SEO & Moz) to ensure the completeness of your link profile data, you can also import links from Google Webmaster Tools to make the analysis even more complete.

 

This is only the initial step in the whole on-demand backlink analysis process. After we aggregate, de-duplicate and sort the data, we re-crawl those links allowing our platform to apply a unique range of algorithms to each and every backlink, extracting information such as the type of the linking site (blog/forum etc), link type (in-content, blogroll etc) and many others.

 

We even take image snapshots and identify the visual location of the link on the page with our unique visual crawler.(for each link we gather top quality metrics that allow you to view the link profile of a site from various POVs)

 

The Visual Link Explorer is fully available on any subscription from the Professional one and up, inclusively. You can start your free 14 day trial in a few seconds. View all subscriptions here.

 

Conclusion

 

Backlink Visualization has a multitude of use cases as shown above. The Visual Link Explorer as it is implemented on cognitiveSEO is not only a visualization but it is also a new way to navigate and discover a site’s link profile. I hope you will find this new feature as useful as we, and the people that tested it prior to its official lauch, did.

 

To finalize this post I would like to make a short note on what the new Visual Link Explorer is meant to be:

Cutting-Edge Navigational Backlink Visualization that Impresses Clients and Empowers SEO Professionals to Quickly get backlink intelligence that otherwise would take ages to comprehend.

 Thank you!

 

My big thanks go to our current customers for providing active feedback, to the cognitiveSEO team for developing such a great new feature and to the smart people in the SEO industry that have influenced this implementation, indirectly, by writing quality articles on the subject of backlink graph visualization and link graph networks. Read more on the subject, from their articles directly:

 … Links are Beautiful Now …

 

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The Types of Links Obtained by Competitive Industries and How You Can Obtain Them https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/1865/types-of-links-in-competitive-industries-and-how-you-can-obtain-them/ https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/1865/types-of-links-in-competitive-industries-and-how-you-can-obtain-them/#comments Mon, 29 Oct 2012 14:09:15 +0000 http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/?p=1865 Have you ever wanted to know what your competitor’s overall link building strategy was without having to look link by link through their backlink profile? If so, then you’re in luck. The inBound Link Analysis tool allows you to take a quick snapshot of one website’s backlink profile along with a few competitors to see […]

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Have you ever wanted to know what your competitor’s overall link building strategy was without having to look link by link through their backlink profile? If so, then you’re in luck. The inBound Link Analysis tool allows you to take a quick snapshot of one website’s backlink profile along with a few competitors to see what kind of links have been obtained for each website. This is a great way to see what you need to do to catch up with competitors as well as give potential clients an overview of what types of link building strategies they need to pursue.

Last week, we published an analysis of anchor text used by the top ranking websites for highly competitive keywords on Search Engine Journal. In today’s post, we’re going to take those same examples to see what types of links they are obtaining and how you can do the same for your website while minimizing the risk of being hit by Google Panda or Penguin.

Keyword: Online College

What types of links do websites ranking on the first page of search results for online college obtain? Here is a quick analysis of types of main types of links obtained by these domains.

  • OnlineCollege.org: 85% links in blogs with 64% of links in a blog post or forum thread.
  • Devry.edu: 38% links in blogs, 21% in web directories, 14% in news sites, and 9% in aritcle directories with 43% of links in a group of links and 39% in a short paragraph of text.
  • Strayer.edu: 47% links in blogs and 22% in web directories with 53% links in a group of links and 32% in a short paragraph of text.

 

Keyword: Women’s Clothing

What types of links do websites ranking on the first page of search results for women’s clothing obtain? Here is a quick analysis of types of main types of links obtained by these domains.

  • Kohls.com: 58% links in blogs and 19% in Ecommerce sites with 33% in a blog post or forum thread, 30% in a group of links, and 29% in a short paragraph of text.
  • Overstock.com: 50% links in blogs and 19% in Ecommerce sites with 38% in a blog post or forum thread, 29% in a short paragraph of text, and 27% in a group of links.
  • ColdwaterCreek.com: 44% links in blogs and 28% in Ecommerce sites with 41% in a blog post or forum thread, 28% in a group of links, and 22% in a short paragraph of text.

 

Keyword: Real Estate

What types of links do websites ranking on the first page of search results for real estate obtain? Here is a quick analysis of types of main types of links obtained by these domains.

  • Realtor.com: 54% in blogs and 15% in Ecommerce sites with 35% in a group of links, 30% in a short paragraph of text, and 19% in a blog post or forum thread.
  • RealEstate.com: 35% in blogs, 21% in web directories, and 14% in news sites with 47% in a short paragraph of text and 39% in a group of links.
  • Zillow.com: 54% in blogs with 45% in a short paragraph of text, 25% in a group of links, and 24% in a blog post or forum thread.

 

Keyword: Mortgage

What types of links do websites ranking on the first page of search results for mortgage obtain? Here is a quick analysis of types of main types of links obtained by these domains.

  • BankRate.com: 54% in blogs with 45% in a short paragraph of text, 25% in a group of links, and 24% in a blog post or forum thread.
  • Zillow.com: 54% in blogs with 45% in a short paragraph of text, 25% in a group of links, and 24% in a blog post or forum thread.
  • MortgageCalculator.com: 75% in blogs with 51% in a blog post or forum thread, 24% in a short paragarph of text, and 18% in a group of links.

 

Keyword: Life Insurance

What types of links do websites ranking on the first page of search results for life insurance obtain? Here is a quick analysis of types of main types of links obtained by these domains.

  • Metlife.com: 50% in blogs and 19% in web directories with 42% in a short paragraph of text, 37% in a group of links, and 11% in a blog post or forum thread.
  • Geico.com: 51% in blogs with 43% in a group of links, 20% in a short paragraph of text, 19% in an image, and 14% in a blog post or forum thread.
  • Farmers.com: 46% in blogs and 25% in web directories with 52% in a group of links, 20% in an image, and 17% in a short paragraph of text.

 

Keyword: Payday Loan

What types of links do websites ranking on the first page of search results for payday loan obtain? Here is a quick analysis of types of main types of links obtained by these domains.

  • PaydayOne.com: 85% in blogs with 62% in a blog post or forum thread, 17% in a short paraphgra of text, and 11% in a group of links.
  • CashFairy.com: 98% in web directories with 76% in a group of links.
  • 1min-PaydayLoan.com: 84% in blogs with 97% in a blog post or forum thread.

 

Keyword: DUI Lawyer

What types of links do websites ranking on the first page of search results for dui lawyer obtain? Here is a quick analysis of types of main types of links obtained by these domains.

  • DUI-Lawyer.com: 75% in web directories with 57% in a group of links and 31% in a short paragraph of text.
  • Avvo.com: 64% in blogs with 29% in a short paragraph of text, 24% in a blog post or forum thread, 23% in a group of links, and 14% in an image.
  • TopgunDUI.com: 38% in blogs and 29% in web directories with 40% in a short paragraph of text, 38% in a group of links, and 13% in a blog post or forum thread.

 

Major Takeaway

While some domains are still maintaining the top spots in search results with a majority of links from web directories, the majority of these sites are obtaining links in blogs and news sites. You can also see from the charts that although the majority of links are spread out through two to three different link types, many of these industries are trying to build a diversified link portfolio through press releases, social networks, personal sites, wikis, and other website types.

Competing with Panda / Penguin Friendly Links

So if you or a client share a highly competitive keyword from similar industries as those listed above, how do you compete to get your website to the top spot without risking penalization by Google Panda, Penguin, or other algorithmic changes? Here are some ideas.

  • Create quality guest posts for blogs with strong traffic and communities vs. creating basic articles for blogs with little to no traffic. You’ll usually get a link back to your website in the author bio or author bio page. Use sites like Technorati and Alltop to find great blogs on a variety of topics.
  • Leave valuable comments on posts from blogs in your industry with strong traffic and communities vs. spamming blogs for links. Consider clicks as your only goal for links from blog comments.
  • Want links from major news and media sites? Try Help a Reporter Out (HARO). You can sign up to get free daily emails where reporters are asking for input from people in specific industries. Offer up your expert advice and you might end up with a valuable link from a trusted media outlet.
  • Participate in forums related to your industry and, if it is in good etiquette, include a link in your forum profile signature. Don’t post in forums unless you have something valuable to say.
  • Look for high quality web directories that are preferably industry specific. Make sure that they do not have categories where they accept links to adult, casino, or pharmacy websites.
  • Look for high quality article directories that have traffic from actual readers (notable by the number of comments / social shares per article) and not just marketers posting links. Industry-specific or related article directories would be a plus.
  • Aim for variety in your link building. Don’t just rely on blogs, forums, web directories, and article directories. Social should be a major component of your strategy, regardless of whether the links are dofollow or nofollow.

What other link building strategies would you suggest if your competitors had similar backlink profiles as the websites above? Please share in the comments!

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How to Successfully use the Google Disavow Tool https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/1814/how-to-successfully-use-the-google-disavow-tool/ https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/1814/how-to-successfully-use-the-google-disavow-tool/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2012 13:10:41 +0000 http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/?p=1814 After Bing released their disavow tool, now it’s time for Google. A lot of people waited for this tool from Google, as with all the “Penguin” updates this year, a lot of webmasters were left in the dark having their sites penalized with no ability to remove those low quality links successfully. As Google warns […]

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After Bing released their disavow tool, now it’s time for Google. A lot of people waited for this tool from Google, as with all the “Penguin” updates this year, a lot of webmasters were left in the dark having their sites penalized with no ability to remove those low quality links successfully.

As Google warns you this is an Advanced Tool and should be used with caution. It can harm your site’s rankings in Google.

 

What cognitiveSEO will do for you is give you the needed tools to easily filter and identify low quality links that you can export and import into the Google Disavow tool.

Here is a diagram that explains the steps you need to take to successfully use the Google Disavow tool.

As you can see the steps are not that complicated. The only things that require a bit more skills is segmenting your link profile and filtering for low quality links. This can be quickly learned from this video and tutorial.

Forgot to mention that you can also import the “Google Webmaster Tools” links into cognitiveSEO for the analysis ( this is highly recommended because those are all of the links Google looks at) 

To conclude:

Google Disavow Tool + cognitiveSEO = The Perfect Solution for “Unnatural Warnings” affected sites.

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Backlink Analysis Tool – Simplified Link Intelligence https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/1385/backlink-analysis-tool-link-analyzer-intelligence/ https://cognitiveseo.com/blog/1385/backlink-analysis-tool-link-analyzer-intelligence/#comments Thu, 04 Oct 2012 13:47:06 +0000 http://cognitiveseo.com/blog/?p=1385 Finally I got to the point where I can write this. We have been continuously working for the last 5 months on this upgrade. To put it simply, this is the biggest upgrade to cognitiveSEO yet, and it improves the way you analyze backlinks by adding even more link data points into a new & simplified user interface. […]

The post Backlink Analysis Tool – Simplified Link Intelligence appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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Finally I got to the point where I can write this. We have been continuously working for the last 5 months on this upgrade. To put it simply, this is the biggest upgrade to cognitiveSEO yet, and it improves the way you analyze backlinks by adding even more link data points into a new & simplified user interface.

In the age of raw link data and hundreds of SEO metrics, we are improving the backlink analyzer concepts used in our  tool by providing:

  1. Fresh & Complete Link Data [Aggregated & De-duped] from Ahrefs, MajesticSEO, SEOmoz, Blekko & SEOKicks.
  2. Re-crawled & Classified On-Demand for You.
  3. In an “easy to digest” UI.

I want to personally thank, all of our customers, who have provided the precious feedback that allowed us to revamp the inBound Link Analysis to a simpler & better link analysis concept, integrated with the most important features that any link builder needs.

The whole concept of the inBound Link Analyzer module is about simplifying the complexity of the link ecosystem. SEO and Link Building are getting more complex than ever, and having complex tools, will not help you, the user, in making more well informed decisions about your SEO day to day activity. Going through tens of thousands of raw links gives you almost nothing, that you can actually use in your backlink strategy plan.

Total link counts, nowadays only tell you 1% of the  ranking story of a site. That is why, you should focus on backlink segmentation and classification that will allow you to understand the  link profile of the analyzed site.

A few of our customers had early access to this upgrade, and they were enchanted by it (thank you all for the great feedback you provided). Here are some of their opinions on the old vs the new backlink analyzer:

Let’s move on to the actual upgrades that the tool got. Here is a list with all the new or redesigned functionalities of the cognitive SEO tool.

 

The New & Improved Backlink Analysis Features

Based on the concept “A picture is worth a thousand words”, here are, all of the above, 18 features exemplified with screen photos and short descriptions.

First, I would like to thank you for trusting us in your SEO analysis adventures and would love to have you test the tools. You can get your free 14 day trial here!

One page dashboard to Rule all your links.

We merged over 20 pages in one single dash with 36 charts and one big table with all your links. You won’t have to browse through tens of pages anymore, loosing time and wondering how to correlate the various link data. You can print the charts and also export link data from each individual table. The “big” page even loads quite quickly!


Import even more links from Google Webmaster Tools, Bing Link Explorer and others.

We added import functionality for Google Webmaster Tools data ( Bing Link Explorer and other link data providers ) so that you can compliment the data that we extract from all the backlink providers that we use, with the data that you love most. You can even import custom lists of links with the click of a button.


Link Alerts for both your site and your competitors.

You will receive weekly mails with the new links that appeared in that timeframe. This works both on your site and your competitors and it builds out a link velocity graph inside the app. This is a great link intelligence advantage, being able to see how your competitors link profiles are evolving compared to yours, and at the same time, to have access to the exact links that create the evolution of thee backlink profiles.


Anchor Text Cloud & Common Anchor Texts

Finding common anchor texts between your site and the competitors and visualizing anchor data has never been easier. You can easily use this data to understand the strengths & weaknesses of your link building plan, in terms of anchor text distribution. Spotting over-optimized anchor text is like a breeze now!


New Link Velocity data points.

On each campaign re-crawl, we save different data points that allow you to see the evolution of your backlink profile. For example you can view the evolution of a link profile from the site type, point of view or from nofollow/dofollow links. Many more are data points are saved.


Top Linked Pages

View the most linked pages of the sites that you analyze. You are also able to visualize how the referring domains vs links are acquired for each individual page of the analyzed site.


Better Competitive Link Analysis

One single page where you can compare over 20 charts and correlate the most important seo metrics to tell you what makes the difference between your site and your competitors sites. It has never been easier to compare such huge amounts of link data in an easy to digest & fast interface.


Side-by-side Competitor Comparison

In the Competitive Link Analysis area you will find the Winner vs Loser comparison, based on different link metrics. You can even apply different filters and the comparison will change dynamically. So many possibilities here! Link building and analysis is all about creativity and what you are looking to accomplish.


Analyze 1 link per referring domain

In certain situations you might only want to check the most important link from each referring domain individually. Keeps your analysis even more focused!


Common Links, Common Referring Domains & Common IPs

Easily compare and identify unnatural linking patterns using the common referring domains and common IPs. You can easily spot link networks from this chart alone!


Full Domain & Sub-domain Analysis

Until now, you where only able to run subdomain analysis on the campaigns that you created inside cognitiveSEO. From now on your possibilities are endless because you can run both full domain analysis and subdomain analysis. If you want you can even run the analysis on a custom list of URLs.


Recurring & One-time Snapshot Campaigns

Adding campaings in cognitiveSEO is  cleaner now. We splitted the campaign concept in two: One-time Snapshots & Recurring Campaigns. The big difference is that “Recurring Campaigns” will be automatically re-crawled weekly and also allow continuous rank tracking. “One-time Snapshots” are best for one-time site benchmarking & analysis and client pitches.


in-Content Links Distribution Chart

We were detecting in-Content links since the initial launch of cognitiveSEO in December 2011, but until now we missed to add this chart. We believe this is a great addition to our range of charts as this tells part of the story on how links were built to the analyzed site.


Link History Dimension

The Link History dimension was added. Now you can filter the links, based on a selected timeframe. You will be able to analyze only the links that appeared in the last 2 weeks for example. Great for detailed link velocity analysis!


The New Trust & Citation metrics from MajesticSEO

MajesticSEO introduced a few months ago their New Trust & Citation metrics. We have integrated them in cognitiveSEO, in these beautiful charts that tell you what each point means and what it actually represents.


Highly scalable system for Enterprise users

We did not work on this revamp, for 5 months, without taking in consideration our Enterprise users. Our system is scalable with dedicated servers and custom enterprise plans (contact us at support@cognitiveseo.com), to allow you to analyze millions of links on demand, with the detail and granularity that no other backlink analysis tool gives you.


Dynamic Full Page Link filters

The whole page, with all the charts, can be filtered dynamically, and you will get the entire page re-drawn with the new filtered data. For example if you only want to view the link profile of the backlinks that point to your URLs that contain the word “blog” and have a rating of 3 to 5, after you apply these filters your page will be refreshed and you will see only the filtered data & charts.


Extended / Condensed View for better visualizations

The link analysis dashboard is a really long page (“Extended View”). If this design does not fit you, we have the tabbed view, which we named the “Condensed View”. Either way, these are great link visualizations that will help you understand backlink profiles and allow you to make decisions faster.

 

The two biggest challenges of this upgrade were:

  • Simplify Complexity
  • Scale the system for Enterprise users.

I want to thank the entire team here for the continuos work that they have put into this new upgrade.

It was a real challenge and we hope that you will LOVE IT.  Get your free 14 day trial here!

 

Share any thoughts, ideas, issues … by commenting on this blog post.

 

Enjoy your link analysis!

The post Backlink Analysis Tool – Simplified Link Intelligence appeared first on SEO Blog | cognitiveSEO Blog on SEO Tactics & Strategies.

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