Two PR 5 websites, but little to no link data in OSE. How??

[Mark.RedGiant]

As the title states - We've recently developed two sites for clients - within the last 4 months or so.

With the Google PR update, both sites are sitting as PR 5 sites.

I've tried to have a look in the OSE for the backlink profile of both websites, but I see nothing.  Even Majestic SEO's fresh index doesn't provide much info.

The DA of each site is 11-16.

I would really love to see what's generating the link juice to these sites.

Any ideas?

The two sites are:

https://bfore.co.za
http://ictjournalafrica.net

[Audiohype]

Hi Mark,

They may have redirected a previous site which has passed on a lot of the weight. This might not have been picked up yet.

I notice both sites redirect the www. to non www. Has this been done recently? It may have something to do with it.

[Mark.RedGiant]

Thanks for the reply, Ben.

Not likely. Neither one had a decent web presence running previously. We manage their SEO and website promotion for them, but haven't experienced such quick growth in PR before, so I'd like to see what's contributing that we aren't aware of.

As for the non-www. redirect, we set up most of our sites to do that from the outset, so not likely that that contributes.

[Audiohype]

Looking at the links in OSE, they are reasonably strong, but I wouldn't have thought any of them would have been strong enough to catapult you to a PR 5.

I would be inclined to to pay too much attention to toolbar PR as it can be very misleading, but it is quite interesting how quickly it has increased.

Are there any other links you are aware of that have been built recently that wouldn't have been picked up by OSE?

[Mark.RedGiant]

5 total links to BFore.co.za? That's hardly strong.

I know for a fact there are more - for instance, there is one on the Joomla.org showcase which is a relatively strong link.

There are also several others that aren't getting picked up that I know of, but none of these links are strong enough for such a quick pickup to PR 5.

As for ictjournalafrica.net - I have done zero link-building to the site. I haven't a clue where it's picked up that sort of PR from.

My own site, which I do occasionally build links to and is quite a bit older than the two above, is only PR 3.

I'm just frustrated that there is so little link data being picked up in OSE.

[Mark.RedGiant]

Could part of the problem with OSE be that it doesn't let me enter httpS://bfore.co.za but insists on http://bfore.co.za?

The http:// version is 301 redirected to the secure version.

[activitysuper]

Have you looked at there link profile in web master tools, you might find links in there which might have not been picked up by OSE link Ben pointed out.

[Audiohype]

I meant the links themselves were fairly strong, not the total amount

There's a PR6 page linking to one of the sites which looks quite strong.

My advice would be to give it some time. OSE can take a while to update sometimes and when it does you will have a better overview of your link profile. You can then approach it with a bit more information.

Until then just keep on promoting!

[Audiohype]

This could be part of the problem. It was something I noticed initially when looking at the site, 301's will often result in different metrics being reported on and may be part of the misalignment between links and PR.

[activitysuper]

Ok try this:

"https://bfore.co.za" and then try "http://bfore.co.za" in Google not the greatest of tests but you can see the difference in results generated.

[Mark.RedGiant]

Just did that. Quite a few more links being picked up there.

I have a feeling that the backlinks coming from Joomla.org are proving to be a really significant influence.

[Mark.RedGiant]

You can't enter https://bfore.co.za in OSE?

[activitysuper]

In Google, you will see a list of websites which contain that url about 2000 against 250 with the non ssl.

Not the greatest test but does give an idea.

[KeriMorgret]

Yep, that's your problem. I just talked with the help desk to confirm. OSE/Linkscape can't crawl https for measuring your links, so it's only seeing links that are going to http and not the links going to https.

[Mark.RedGiant]

Oh no.

There goes almost the entire reason I signed up for SEOMoz in the first place.

Any idea of what tool CAN measure links back to an https website?

[randfish]

If the backlinks come from primarily other https sites, you might try Majestic SEO (or Google Webmaster Tools as mentioned above). We'll have HTTPS crawling in a few months - it's a high priority right now.