Some backlinks not getting picked up by OSE -- confused to why

[Boogily]

I've had what has ended up being a nightmare SEO campaign. We have sunk a ton of time into link building for the site and saw little to no traction. Just as a test, I have the site on our portfolio as a site we designed years ago. The link to the site is old. Somehow, this link does not show up on OSE, and it seems to get no credit.

http://www.happydogwebproductions.com/item/spine-and-sports.html

The backlink, and troubled campaign is www.spineandsportschiro.com

There should be a few more links too that aren't getting picked up, especially the ones I have noticed using Whitespark local citation tool. Has Google got picky with all of this? How come this site seems to be getting no credit?

[RyanKent]

Somehow, this link does not show up on OSE, and it seems to get no credit.

There are two readily apparent issues with the webpage presented at: http://www.happydogwebproductions.com/item/spine-and-sports.html

Issue #1 - no visible linking. If I was located on the home page of the HappyDogWebProductions.com site, how can I get to this page? Apparently I need to click from the Home page > What We Do > Portfolio > Design/Development > HTML/CSS > Spine and Sports.

There is simply not enough authority to cause crawlers to go that deep. The page should either be moved to a URL closer to the home page or earn it's own direct links.

Issue #2 - the page lacks content.  "Spine and Sports Chiropractic needed a website to separate themselves from the competition. They ended up with just that."

The page is 90%+ duplicate content. The header, footer, comment box, etc. comprises the majority of the page's text. There is nothing worthy of indexing.

Ask yourself this question...what keyword is a user likely to type in to Google where they would receive this page listed in SERPs and think to themselves "I am so glad I found this page! It's exactly what I wanted." I will suggest none.

Even if OSE showed the link, it is highly likely Google would offer it no weight at all.

[Boogily]

Okay, I get that a link from the portfolio would not carry much weight. Understood. People aren't going to search for Roseville Chiropractor, find the portfolio and think "Eureka!"

I wasn't expecting this link to be anything big at all, it was just an example of a bunch of links that never got picked up by OSE. Maybe that was a bad example, and I should have chose a link from a directory that never got picked up by OSE.

I'll accept the answer that if it potentially carries little to no weight, OSE will not consider it. I was under the impression that if a site that has at least a little page authority has its pages crawled, then the backlinks would be indexed. I know the backlink wouldn't offer much value in this case, just was looking for more of a technical answer to why.

[Boogily]

It should have been mentioned right away, but Google Webmasters Tools shows 80 linking root domains, and OSE shows 7. I understand that linking from good sources is the best and should be the only technique, and believe me there are a few good links in there. I am just confused to why OSE only shows 7 vs. the 80 in Google Webmaster Tools.

[RyanKent]

I am just confused to why OSE only shows 7 vs. the 80 in Google Webmaster Tools.

Have you built a lot of links recently? It will often take 60 days for a link to be visible in OSE.

Another consideration is OSE does not capture every link. It examines approximately the top 25% of websites. Generally speaking, if a link is not visible in OSE and is not new, the link does not offer much value.

If you would like further analysis, feel free to share a couple links which you see in WMT but not in OSE.

[Boogily]

A lot of these links are all over 1 year old, and not many have even been made in the last 60 days. I quickly listed a few big name sites, a source related and a random forum post one.

http://www.yellowbook.com/profile/spine-and-sports-chiropractic_1820959785.html

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spine-Sports-Chiropractic/122260357799431

http://www.yellowpages.com/saint-paul-mn/mip/spine-sports-chiropractic-22853231

http://www.angieslist.com/companylist/us/mn/roseville/spine-sport-chiropractic-reviews-2098534.aspx

http://www.findhealthpros.com/index.php?cmd=show&id=2081

http://www.scsuhockey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1611&start=45

[RyanKent]

I took a look at a couple links.

The scsuhockey.com site is a very low value site. It has a DA of 4. The home page has a PA of 17. This basically means OSE wont crawl more then 1 link past the home page. Content from this site may be crawled by Google, but not OSE. The link is on the 4th page of a forum post with 10 pages. This type of link has almost no value. You should expect to see the link in WMT but not in OSE. This result is the normal behavior for both tools.

The findhealthpros.com site is in a similar situation. It shows a DA of 22, but the page your link is on seems buried within the site. From the home page I clicked the "Chiropractic" link but did not see any link to your page.

In order for your link to be seen by OSE it needs to have a measurable amount of SEO value. As a rough rule, expect OSE to go one level deep (i.e. 1 click) from the home page for every 10 DA points. If you receive a link from a site with DA 40, the link needs to be within a maximum of 4 clicks from the home page. Alternatively, the page with your link could have direct links to it which OSE might find.

[Boogily]

I get that there are some bad links or links from too deep into some sites, but I've even seen some links with not much value show up on OSE, such as the bookmarking one that is credited.  Also, then OSE doesn't show links from larger directories such as Yellowbook, Yellowpages, Facebook, Angies List, etc? If you think that the other 73 root domains and links are just too deep, and this is a case of the previous link builder building links that are so bad that OSE won't consider them, then I can accept that. I was / am just worried that there wasn't something more technical going on, like something being flagged from Google.

[RyanKent]

For the YellowPages links specifically, I would expect them to show in OSE. The challenge is how buried is the page with your link?

From the home page I tried to navigate to your page using a mouse. I clicked "More cities" then selected "Saint Paul Minnesota". The resulting page is "Currently trending in St Paul" where you business is NOT listed on the page. I tried a couple other links such as "See more trends" and "Recently Added Businesses" but was unable to locate a link to your page on their site. A crawler needs a way to locate the page through links. Clearly Google found the page but to answer why it does not appear in OSE we need to answer the question...how can a user access the page without using the site search box?

If you could research the site and learn the answer, we can offer a better analysis.

[Boogily]

I'll just accept that the previous link building that was done was crap and the links are too deep.