SEO Tycoon

**SimpleLance.Com** · 04-21-2006, 11:40 AM

Hi i am trying to find out the exact link popularity of my website but for each site i use to try and find out it show different figures

Axandra link popularity check its a free tool puts my figure at 2,931 but other source go as low as 1,030

can someone tell me how i can find out my exact link popularity or the most accurate source

**chrishirst** · 04-21-2006, 12:35 PM

there is nothing exact in SEO.

Why do you need to know the exact figures ?? It will do you no use and probably nothing you can change.

**vangogh** · 04-21-2006, 03:29 PM

I agree with Chris. The more you learn about seo the more you'll see that there is very little if anything that is exact about it. You'll never really get an exact count of your backlinks given that the search engines will always be a little behind in finding them after they've been added and some might never get found.

Yahoo seems to give the most accurate count of the major search engines, but like Chris said knowing that count doesn't really help. Just keep getting more links for your site.

**blue-dreamer** · 04-21-2006, 06:39 PM

and the numbers will be in constant flux anyway because links and clicks to/from your site will change over time...

**ChipJohns** · 04-21-2006, 06:54 PM

Just to put down an analogy to support what both VanGogh and Chris hav said-

It isn't any diferent than trying to determine how popular a person is. if you take a poll on two people, this information only gives reference points. A poll may say that person 1 is liked by 60% of the people and person 2 is liked by 40% of the people yet during the election person 2 wins. How can that happen?

Well so it goes with popularity. Along with poularity goes relevance. I am a pretty popular person, but no matter how many people I know, if I want to get into show business and none of the 4 million people that I know is in show business, they aren't gonna do me any good. Relevance works the same way with the search engines. And there is no way of determing the exact relevance that search engines give to a site in relation to your site. impossible.!

**SimpleLance.Com** · 04-21-2006, 07:06 PM

Hi the reason was curiosity i had an inkling that i wouldt be able to check the exact number of backlinks but i disagree that i need not know as i would say all webmaster need to know weekly the stats of everything from backlinks to search engine saturation thus giving webmaster an idea of what has been working for the to gain or lose popularity.

I also have another piece of input worth discussing would you say link quantity or quality means more.

**vangogh** · 04-21-2006, 07:35 PM

I don't think you need to know the exact count though. I'll check my backlinks too every so often and all I really care about is that over time there are more of them. But the truth is knowing or not knowing doesn't change what I'll do on my site. Either way I'm still going to try to get more links.

I agree that knowing roughly how many you have can perhaps show where you stand with a certain page in comparision to other sites that are ranking and give you an idea of how many more links you might need to get to compete. It's a very general measurment though and backlinks alone will only tell you so much.

As for the quantity vs quality I'll say you should always work to increase the quantity of quality links. How's that for picking a side? Actually you should always be looking for quality links. I'd take one high quality link over a quantitly of poor links. You still want to get more though so quantity is important too.

I don't think it's a good idea to look for quantity of links at all costs however. There are many links that won't help you at all and some that can even cause problems so you do want to use a little thought in where you get links. Most of the time it's ok to just get them, but you do want to stay away from link farms and free for all links pages.

As Chip pointed out link relevance is important. The way I like to decide about links is to think about the site I'm deciding to add my link to. If visitors to that site will find my site interesting and even better be likely to click on the link to my site then I will try to add my link to that site. If they won't be interested in my site then it depends on how easy it will be to add the link. If it's a matter of a minute or two I'll probably still add it. If it's going to take some work I'll just move on to another site.

Link building can and usually does take a long time especially if you're trying to rank for competitve keywords. Most of the sites already ranking probably have a few year head start on you. I think the trick with link building is to keep at it and don't try to rush it. With my own site I'm less concerned with how many links I'll have next week as I am with how many links I'll have next year.

**SimpleLance.Com** · 04-21-2006, 08:18 PM

you made some very good points there i will keep alot of these in mind i think i will begin working on quality links more as my site has just remained the exact position for weeks since i lost a huge gap in my ranking im doing something wrong to go from 21 to 156

**webspace** · 04-22-2006, 01:00 AM

Are you the linkbuilder (part of an SEO team) for the site? How big is the staff?

Marketleap is a pretty good site to check the kind of information you want.

Here the link popularity checker it gives you a detailed report of have your links are getting indexed by search engines.

You can get a search engine saturation report as well.

My method of SEO is to look up a keyword on Google and then check the links of #1 site on MSN (msn shows the most links of any of the major search engines)

Then Get more links on MSN (times like 1.3 becuase even MSN misses a few) than the #1 site on Google has on MSN. Then In about 3-6 months provided your unsite stuff in straight you will get pretty good rankings on all the search engines.

I don't agree that counting the links aren't important. If you don't count the links you wont know how many link you have and hence you won't know how many you will have to get.

Don't think that I'm a ruthless spamster but that that technique does work. I got #1 on Google for some fairly competative keywords with my old site. Somebody bought the expired domain and made a keyword page out of it. Actually that happend to a few of my old domains.

To answer the original quesiton there is no way to get an exact count becuase you never know who will ad links to you from their site. All you can do is check search engines and check your stats for reffering sites and make an estimate.

**vangogh** · 04-22-2006, 02:34 AM

I think the exact backling count isn't important to know. You're never going to know an exact count anyway. What I meant by not needing to know the count was just that whether or not you do or don't know how many backlinks you have you should still be working to get more. Even if you're #1 for every keyword you've targeted you should still be working to get more backlinks.

I didn't mean to imply though that you should never try to find out how many you have or that knowing isn't important at all. I look at them for my site. I like knowing as a measure of my success and as a way to learn what I can. I'll also look at backlinks of top sites a lot to make a determination of how long it might take to get a site ranked for a particular keyword and help me determine an overall strategy for ranking a site in a given industry.

There is some good stuff to know about backlink, an exact count isn't one of them though, which I'm sure you'll agree.

**SimpleLance.Com** · 04-22-2006, 12:18 PM

this has become an intresting conversation and some good point have been brought up i will readt thorugh and consider it all

**kline11** · 04-23-2006, 11:54 AM

An estimate is all you need. SearchBliss for example, fluctuates in link popularity between 31,000 and 52,000 using http://www.searchbliss.com/seo-tools/popularity.asp
because MSN and Yahoo (mainly) are constantly updating the backlinks. Today for example, Yahoo shows 9,140 for sites linking to SearchBliss, and yesterday is was 13,000+. By tomorrow it will be back up. It ALWAYS changes, so estimate it.

**seohr** · 04-23-2006, 04:44 PM

Use http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

They say they show all BL.

But # of BL is not important, you can't see anything with this number, becose quality, anchor and topic of BL is more important for serps then anything else.

**vangogh** · 04-23-2006, 05:35 PM

That's true seohr. The quality of your links is just as if not more important the quantity of your links. A couple of really good links will be more valuable than 100 poor links.

**SimpleLance.Com** · 04-23-2006, 07:16 PM

Does anyone know of were i can advertise link exchanges as i have setup automatic exchange at www.simplelance.com/superlink but i am yet to get a single exchange

this has become a real intresting thread so far i have learned alot from your replies so far

**jmaresca** · 04-28-2006, 05:58 PM

build you links with consistency and over time you will be happy. worrying about how the se's see your links will only cause a headache there isnt a aspirin for.

**vangogh** · 04-29-2006, 12:20 AM

Good advice. That's really what it comes down to with backlinks. Just keep consistently getting more and don't look for or worry about instant results.