Link Analysis Tools: The Death of Yahoo Site Explorer and What To Use Instead

Yahoo Site Explorer

Have you been using Yahoo Site Explorer to analyze the backlinks of your competitors?

Have you been using this link analysis tool to check the new backlinks to your own site?

I’ve been using Yahoo Site Explorer for several years as a reliable link analysis tool however Yahoo has announced it is shutting down their SEO Tool as a result of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance

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How to Build Links to Non-indexed Links

Content and links is the primary focus of search engine optimization specialists. Adding new unique optimized content is essential for building more entry points to your website from the search engines. Building links to that content is essential for it to be found by your readers. If you want your content to be found by people entering your main search phrase in Google or another major search engine the content must rank on the first or second page.

So how do you know if your links have been indexed by the search engines?

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How to Build Quality Backlinks

Want to generate more traffic to your website?
Want to increase your rankings in the search engines?
Want to get more sales and/or subscribers?

Build Quality Backlinks to your website is the answer to these 3 questions. Backlinks are seen as votes for your website. The more votes your website receives the more popular your it becomes. All links are not created equal. The number and quality of links pointing to your website will determine its rankings. For example a link from a brand new website carries much less weight than a well-established site. Links from unrelated sites have less value than links from similar sites in your niche.

7 ways to build quality backlinks

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How to Build a Quality Links Program

If you want to improve your search engine rankings and gain more web traffic you need to build a quality links program. If done incorrectly your site may get penalized and result in lowered rankings. The number and quality of links pointing to your website make a huge difference.

Benefits of building a quality links program

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Link Building Tip: Don’t just build links to your home page


link building

Most website owners spend their link building efforts on their home page because that’s what most visitors see first. This is a big mistake as often visitors also enter your site from other pages. If these pages don’t rank well you are leaving a lot of traffic on the table. You need to build links to all internal pages to multiply your traffic potential.

Importance of building links

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Improve Google Rankings: 4 Ways to Get High Quality Links to Your Website

Need more web traffic?
Want to improve your Google rankings?
Want to make more sales?

If your website can’t be found in the search engines you’re not going to receive much traffic unless you try other methods. If your website appears on the first page of Google it will receive much more traffic than the second page. The top 3 listings on the first page get far more traffic than listings 4-10. This is because it’s the first screen visitors see without having to scroll down to view listings 4-10. The number of listings displayed will also depend on the size of your computer monitor.

How does adding links to your site improve Google Rankings?

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Link Popularity Analysis: How to analyze links from competing websites


Link Popularity Analysis

How do your competitors achieve high rankings?
How many incoming links do your competitors have?
What types of backlinks do they have?
How can you get the same backlinks to your own site?

Creating a website for your online business is useless if no one sees it. You need to constantly drive traffic to it so visitors can read the valuable information you have to offer. One of the greatest problems new and old website owners face every day is how to generate web site traffic. Building incoming links to your website is a strategy that must be done consistently and frequently for your website to be recognized by the search engines. The quality, quantity and age of the links affect how high your rankings will go..

How to analyze links from competing websites

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Why Link Building Takes Time


Why Link Building Takes Time

Link building is one of the most effective methods for increasing the ranking of your website in the search engines. The quality and quantity of links pointing to your site determine how well your site will rank. The problem is many site owners expect to see immediate results. They think if they get 100 backlinks their site will immediately rank on the first page of the search engines within a few weeks.

Why link building takes time to increase search engine rankings

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How to Build Link Popularity and Increase Rankings


How to Build Link Popularity and Increase Rankings

Link popularity refers to the number of links pointing to your website from other websites. It’s one of the most important factors for increasing your search engine rankings. The quantity quality and age of the links will determine how well your site will rank.

How to Build Link Popularity

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Relative or Absolute Links: Which is Best?


Relative or Absolute Links: Which is Best?

Should you use relative or absolute links for building a website?
What is a server path?
What types of paths are there?
How to use the correct file path?
Which is best…relative or absolute links?
When should you use absolute links?

When designing a website in an html editor such as Dreamweaver it automatically creates relative links rather than absolute links. If you use the wrong server paths in your website structure your site may contain lots of broken links when it’s uploaded to your server. This will result in losing lots of visitors.

What is a server path?

This refers to the directory structure on the server. For instance I upload all my files to the public_html folder (directory) on the server. This is the root folder. If I create a sub-directory (another folder) within the public_html folder it will have a different file path. The key to maintaining the correct file paths is to use the same directory structure for your website files as on the directory structure on your server ( e.g. public_html directory).

What are relative links?

A relative link or path links to the file within your website. For example if you’re linking to a page within the same directory then you would code it like this:


<a href="http://www.about.html">About</a>

If you create a sub-directory for your images the file path for the image to link to would be:


<a href="images/pic.gif"></a>

If the folder is one level up from the current directory the relative file path would be:


<a href="../images/pic.gif"></a>

If the folder is two levels up from the current directory the relative file path would be:


<a href="../../images/pic.gif"></a>

Whenever you move a file one level up from the main directory use ../
So if your images folder is 3 levels up from the root folder (e.g. public_html) you would use this code to link to the image contained in the folder.


<a href="../../../images/pic.gif"></a>

What are absolute links?

An absolute link or path is where you use the full URL of the page you are linking to. e.g.


<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/about.html">About</a>

Absolute links come in handy especially if you don’t know the correct file path. It prevents making errors that cause broken links to appear on your website. For instance if you don’t know how to create the correct relative path for an image 3 levels from the root directory create this absolute file path:


<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/level1/level2/level3/images/pic.gif"></a>

Which is best…relative or absolute links?

Using relative links throughout your website file structure helps your web pages to load faster because all the files and folders are contained within the root directory (public_html folder) on the server.

If you use absolute links in your website file structure browsers need to search the internet first before finding the files on your server. This slows the loading of your website which is not good as search engines use site speed as one of their ranking factors. Web pages should load within a few seconds.

When should you use absolute links?

When you want other websites to link to content on your web page provide the html code that includes the absolute URL to the page. Do the same for the resource box at the end of your articles.

Use an absolute URL for your anchor text (hyperlinked text). Using a relative link will generate a 404 error page which means the link is broken.

Here’s an example using anchor text that includes the absolute URL to the website:


<a href="http://www.articlerewards.com/">Article Marketing Strategies</a>

Displays as:

Article Marketing Strategies

Tip
Before uploading your website to the server check all your file paths. Once uploaded to the server run the site through a link checker.

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