How Do You Leverage Linkscape Data to Overcome Your Competitors?

[LuminConsutling]

Hi everyone...I used Q&A a long time ago when my company had a paid subsription but I haven't used it in a while, so I'm excited! And since the Q&A is apparently addressed to the Moz community, I figured I would embrace it and ask all of the Mozzers out there:

How do YOU use Linkscape to reverse engineneer a competitor's website? I understand how to use Linkscape. What I'm looking for is specific filtering or "out of the box" uses of Linkscape to truly understand how a website has obtained it's ranking in the search results.

In particular, I'm really curious about how everyone (including those who truly know how Linkscape works, i..e the minds behind it) make sense of the "DJ Passed" #'s or "most important links" criteria. I realize Linkscape is wonderful, but what I've found is that often times the links that "pass the most juice" or the links that are the "most important" AREN'T actually the most important links on a site. For example, I often find that the links that have the highest "DJ Passed" are directories. I could be wrong, but my guess would be that directories actually pass very little link juice. If directories gave as much link juice as the linkscape metrics indicate, then they are by far the best linking source, which I think we all know isn't the case in most instances.

To be clear...My intention is not to "debunk" the value of Linkscape...On the contrary, I think it's a wonderful tool and I want to understand it's nuances so I can identify "false positives", use it to get a true picture of a website, and get any tips/tricks from those who've successuly used it to overcome there competitors.

Thanks ahead of time!

[Nemek]

The way I like to work with Open Site Explorer is to group the link data (after downloading it in a spreadsheet) by site types.

This is done partially by searching from certain strings within the URLs, page titles or even anchor text, and partially by manual review.A typical way of grouping the links would be into:

• directories
• partner sites
• forums
• article directories
• dofollow blog comments
• etc.

I also like to sort the links by country, especially if I'm trying doing SEO for a local version of Google.

I don't really look at how much juice a page passes, I haven't found the MozRank to be too useful when sorting out through the link data.

Cheers

[Dan-Petrovic]

I find the linkscape useful not so much in grouping but sorting competitor links by strength and priority leaving the least potent stuff at the bottom and focusing on the most juicy links at the top of the list. Often I'll split it up into two groups and assign different people to work on different link strengths.

[Julich]

Linkscape and OSE let me know where my competitors get links from. They hint me on the kind of links they are capable of obtaining, from what kind of sources, and how (what kind of content, etc.).

For instance, OSE let me know that my competitors get their best links through "dumb" link exchanges. They don't have great articles on big authority websites pointing to them.

OSE let you reverse engineer the kind of SEO work your competitors are doing.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

For me, OSE lets me see my customers competitors back links that are related to their industry sector and go after them. Not always possible, but I have had great success with this in the past. It is a manual process for the most part for me but a great starting place - then the hard work begins

Regards,

Andy

[perfectweb]

I use OSE for competetive analysis. For me it's greatest benefits are in seeing how competetive my niche are, but more importantly what competitors are doign to get their links.

Once I have the link information I can find out where competitors are getting links, the types of links they are getting and how valuable these links are. I can decide which of these ideas are worth copying, which areas they don't appear to have targeted or whether they may have targeted an area but didn't get any joy. That last part comes with knowing your niche well.

[LuminConsutling]

See...This is my problem though...I often find that the links in the top of OSE aren't the most powerful links. I think this is especially true because a the Page Authority seems to be manipulated relatively easily. For example, if a directoy has a DA of 70, the the internal pages of that directory will have a PA of 40 from internal links alone. To me, a link from an internal page of a site that's linking out to 30 other sites on the same page...and which is likely getting it's links decredited by Google because it's a direcotry...is not a particuarly strong link, althouth the numbers would indicate otherwise.

A trap that I've found myself falling into is using the PA and DA to determine how good of a job I'm doing in terms of SEO, when in actuality I've been using those metrics for such a long time that some of my tactics evolved around inflating those numbers to a certain degree.

What I'm trying to figure out is how...using Linkscape or OSE...to determine what are truly the most powerful links on site. The links that if you took it away, their rankings would drop. (Or if you added to your own site, your rankings would increase.)

[LuminConsutling]

I agree with this wholehearedly. OSE is without a doubt the best tool for analyzing a competitors linking strategy. Seeing the competitors strategy is great, but another reason I really like it is because I can know how good the person is that I'm up against. If they have links that I have no idea how they obtained them, then they know something I don't, and vice versa.

Have you figured out a way to successfully use OSE or Linkscape to get an idea of how well somoene's onsite optimization is? I'm familiar with the "internal MR passed" but that's one of those metrics I don't trust as much as the others. Do you have any other strategies?

Thanks!