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How to analyze an external link popularity

The link profile of the website should be varied, include various types of links and a natural anchor list. A large number of poor quality external links can lead to search engine sanctions.

What is the external link popularity?

Link popularity is a collection of all external links to a website from other resources. High-quality external links continue to be one of the most important factors in ranking of a website in search results. However, the abrupt appearance a large number of the low-quality links instead of good positions can lead to sanctions from search engines.

According to Google's recommendations, you should strive to create high-quality unique content on your website that owners of other resources will link to for natural reasons, thanks to these actions, the project will be promoted. Placing paid and similar links optimized for certain queries can lead to a deterioration of the website's position in search results.

External links to your website. What should they be?

To reduce the risk of falling under the filters of search engines, you need to monitor the quality of your external links and the resources on which they are placed. Often, a high-quality link should not contain transactional words in the anchor text, for example, "buy", "order", "price". The link is organically placed in the text of the article to be appropriate in meaning and useful for the user.

The donor website on which the links are placed, must be of high quality and meet the following requirements:

Belonging to the same region where the website being promoted. Fulfilment of the condition is necessary for the projects moving forward in the local region.

Identical or similar subjects.

The lack of a large number of advertising materials, banners and external links to other resources.

Good website traffic.

The resource is not under search engine filters.

It is desirable that the age of your domain be at least a year.

When promoting a new website, the safest way to link promotion is to place non-anchor links. These include links in the form of text that is not considered as an anchor. For example, "here", "such", "there" and others.

In addition to quality control of links and donor sites, need to pay attention to the formation of the most diverse link profile:

use a large number of different options for anchors, giving preference to non-anchor links. The non-anchor links refer to any spelling of the website address and company name, as well as non-transactional queries: "here", "there" and others;

do not use many identical commercial keywords in anchors, as this is perceived by search engines as spam;

for naturalness, apply the nofollow attribute in some links;

create links in the form of pictures;

build link popularity gradually, especially for new resources. It also should not be sharply reduced;

add links to forums and social networks.

To make sure that these recommendations are followed in future and already indexed backlinks, you need to check the external links to your website. Let's consider the algorithm in more detail.

How to check the link popularity of your website using Serpstat

Analysis of the external link popularity is important for checking the quality of links, donor websites and the anchor list, as well as identifying unfair actions by competitors.

Considering that the sharp appearance on the resource of a large number of links with a spammed anchor sheet causes search engine filters, this method of competition with the project can be used by owners of other websites.

Let's use Serpstat to check the external links to the website. To do this, enter on the main page the domain for which we want to check backlinks, and go to the "Backlink Analysis" module, selecting "Summary Report":

Link popularity dynamics and backlink history

In the "Referring Domains" report, you can view the websites, where the links are placed:

A quick check of backlinks for different domains shows that many of them are not suitable by subject and region, some are no longer available or closed to new publications, which indicates the low quality of most donors. In the same report, you can see a list of new and the lost links:

Conclusion

Analysis of link popularity includes checking external links, the quality of donor websites, the naturalness of the anchor list, the smoothness of growth and various types of links.

To avoid the sanctions of search engines and achieve effective website promotion, you do not need only an analysis of external links, but also regular updating, adjustment of the resource link profile.

This article is a part of Serpstat's Checklist tool

Checklist is a ready-to-do list that helps to keep reporting of the work progress on a specific project. The tool contains templates with an extensive list of project development parameters where you can also add your own items and plans.

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