SEO Tycoon

**cowsgonemadd3** · 06-17-2008, 12:45 PM

Does anyone know of a service that tells me the links back to my url or the code you put into say google that says this?
And what about a tool to tell me where my URL's are on certain keywords beyond just a few pages. Some tools only search the first 3 pages.

Thanks a lot!

**nyef** · 06-17-2008, 02:52 PM

Google this:

Code:

link:www.cowsgonemadd3.com

**chrishirst** · 06-17-2008, 05:41 PM

I keep asking these questions and as yet nobody has come up with a realistic answer.

Why do you need to know how many backlinks you have? And what do you hope the information is going to tell you?

the Google link: command doesn't really work. It never really has worked the way that people seem to think.

**johniman7** · 06-17-2008, 05:50 PM

I would use yahoo since google witholds a lot of backlink information. Use the same method though "link:mysite.com" without quotes. For your other question, try http://seodigger.com . It is limited, and new sites take a while, but it is pretty helpful.

Quote:

Why do you need to know how many backlinks you have? And what do you hope the information is going to tell you?

I check them so that I can see how I am doing compared to competitors or just to see how many have shown up so that I do not do too many at one time. Often when I do directory submission they take varying amounts of time to be added and then seen by the search engines, so it is just a precaution to make sure that my link building is going as planned. It also is a good way to see if your content is naturally linked to by anyone and if so who.

**chrishirst** · 06-17-2008, 07:47 PM

Quote:

I do not do too many at one time.

You'll have to think much bigger to even care about "too many links" showing up in a short time. 250,000 new external references to ONE URI showing up in a couple of days might raise a flag. A couple of hundred directory links simply isn't likely to cause a ripple.

You have to remember in an index of billions of pages with several thousand being added every day and hundreds of thousands getting reindexed every day. The chances of a few thousand new references to any one entity appearing is pretty high.

Quote:

It also is a good way to see if your content is naturally linked to by anyone and if so who.

Now this could be a good point, not for link building, but to see how effective and "attractive" your content/copy writing is. Just the one flaw is that the SEs do not usually show this type of linkage.
Instead they prefer to show the crappiest scraper links, third tier PPC crap bulking out their sparse "content", MFA sites built from SERP scraping and all the rest of the Internet low level dross.

**johniman7** · 06-17-2008, 10:00 PM

Quote:

You'll have to think much bigger to even care about "too many links" showing up in a short time. 250,000 new external references to ONE URI showing up in a couple of days might raise a flag. A couple of hundred directory links simply isn't likely to cause a ripple.

That is true. I havn't really thought of the scale of the web. I am mainly very worried about it ever since my one site that got 3rd for its competitive keyword and then went to oblivion after about a day. That was with a ton of links with the same exact anchor though so I should be ok as long as I change up the anchor text.

Quote:

Instead they prefer to show the crappiest scraper links, third tier PPC crap bulking out their sparse "content", MFA sites built from SERP scraping and all the rest of the Internet low level dross.

I mostly see my directory submission and like you said, some weird sites that had my exact title tags (domain and all) as headers and a link to my site. They didn't have any of content luckily though. I did one time find a legit backlink to one of my sites from a high PR links page of a reputable site.

**nyef** · 06-17-2008, 10:47 PM

Quote:

Why do you need to know how many backlinks you have? And what do you hope the information is going to tell you?

Here's my realistic answer:

Backlinks provide traffic, and backlinks increase your SERP rankings. They are not the only factor, of course, but they do affect it. All other things being equal, a site (or page) with more backlinks will rank higher than a site/page with fewer.

So why would you want to know how many you have? Because there is no way to measure your progress unless you have a number. If you can see that your backlinks increased by 25 last week and 50 this week, you know you are improving.

That's like asking, why would you want to know how many unique visitors you have? Because all kinds of different numbers can help you know where you are, where you've been, and where you're going.

You're right that the google link command isn't perfect. Neither is the yahoo linkdomain command, which is similar. But every tool in the toolbox helps you do a better job, doesn't it?

**chrishirst** · 06-18-2008, 04:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by johniman7

That is true. I havn't really thought of the scale of the web. I am mainly very worried about it ever since my one site that got 3rd for its competitive keyword and then went to oblivion after about a day. That was with a ton of links with the same exact anchor though so I should be ok as long as I change up the anchor text.

Sounds like just the normal fluctuations of rankings and probably nothing at all to do with what you attribute the cause to.

**chrishirst** · 06-18-2008, 04:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nyef

Here's my realistic answer:

Backlinks provide traffic, and backlinks increase your SERP rankings. They are not the only factor, of course, but they do affect it. All other things being equal, a site (or page) with more backlinks will rank higher than a site/page with fewer.

Strictly speaking the volume of backlinks doesn't always positively affect rankings. It's the anchor text of the backlinks that has an effect on the SERPs, but only for Google, and even that is less significant than it used to be. Added to this is the fact that it can only have effect for the ONE phrase, so using directories etc for branding makes better marketing sense.

Link based "optimising" (which is really advertising), is another hang over from the days when Internet commerce was in it's infancy and search engines were new and easily manipulated.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nyef

So why would you want to know how many you have? Because there is no way to measure your progress unless you have a number. If you can see that your backlinks increased by 25 last week and 50 this week, you know you are improving.

This;

Quote:

Originally Posted by nyef

Backlinks provide traffic

Is the only tangible value you can put on links and what you should be measuring. If these same links have a positive effect on SE traffic. Well, that's a bonus.

**cowsgonemadd3** · 06-18-2008, 11:45 AM

"It also is a good way to see if your content is naturally linked to by anyone and if so who. "

That is one of the reasons I wanted to do this. The other was just to see how many links I had period to see if my linking strategy is working. Yes I tried that link: thing in google but it did not work so I came and asked. It did work in yahoo.

Should a goal be to get links for rating purposes such as keyword searches in search engines by getting links with tags in them? Or should I only go for links that provide traffic and let the word of mouth do the linking when they see how good my content is(its not so good yet)?

**chrishirst** · 06-18-2008, 04:25 PM

Get links that could provide traffic from interested visitors. And if the content on your pages is good enough, people will start to link naturally. Which, is far better for gaining more traffic from search engines in the form of ranking for things that REAL people are looking for.

**blogdog** · 06-20-2008, 12:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrishirst

You'll have to think much bigger to even care about "too many links" showing up in a short time. 250,000 new external references to ONE URI showing up in a couple of days might raise a flag. A couple of hundred directory links simply isn't likely to cause a ripple.

You have to remember in an index of billions of pages with several thousand being added every day and hundreds of thousands getting reindexed every day. The chances of a few thousand new references to any one entity appearing is pretty high.

But couldn't SE's measure this change easily in their algorithim? and couldn't they have a red flag pop up based on what's relative to the site? In other words site A goes from 10,000 IBL to 10,200, ok, no big deal. Site B goes from 0 to 200 IBL in a couple days, and a red flag pops up.

Secondly- Do they even care about this increase. I mean, you can't control inbound links. So why would they penalize you for it? It should be only positive or in a worst case scenario, neutral. Right?

**mndwebdesign** · 05:52 AM

One of the tools that I use to find out this kind of information and a lot more is the free version of webceo, scroll down the page to the free version. Hope this helps.

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**Kaabi** · 06-20-2008, 11:49 PM

I think Google Analytics helps you with this, although other free tools are fine too.

**juliensimon** · 06-27-2008, 05:34 PM

Quote:

One of the tools that I use to find out this kind of information and a lot more is the free version of webceo

I must agree. I have used WEB CEO myself and find it very useful. Although, every single tool seems to provide different results for the same analysis/keyword. I like to use multiple tools and do an average of them. I believe it gives me the most accurate idea of what's going on.