Why doesn't the Better Business Bureau show up in my link analysis

[BlakeMcGillis]

I've been working on SEO for one of the companies I've designed a website for and I'm confused by the company's lack of Better Business Bureau backlinks.

The Company in question does have a BBB account and that account links back to the company's website. However, when I check in the link analysis for the site, the BBB link doesn't appear. My competitors, on the other hand, do have BBB links in their analyses. So, I'm wondering if I somehow don't have the right type of BBB account.

The BBB seems to be a pretty good place to have a link from, and the company pays $300.00 per year for the membership, so I'd like to get the most out of it.

Here's a link to the BBB page for the company http://www.bbb.org/utah/business-reviews/plumbers/platinum-plumbing-services-in-west-jordan-ut-22199778#bbblogo

And here's the company's website www.slcplumbing.com

Now, the company site I've just listed is 301 redirected to www.platinumplumbinginc.com, but even when www.slcplumbing.com was the main site, the BBB backlink didn't show up.

Thank you

Blake

[Goetzman]

BBB makes me think 'old' , not 'trusted' but that is coming from a 2.0 designer.

In the plumbing world, the BBB probably makes a lot of sense.

[Gyi]

What are you using to check for the back link? The BBB page contains the links and the page appears to be indexed in Google. Perhaps your link checking tool hasn't found the link yet.

[BlakeMcGillis]

I'm using the SEOMoz link analysis tool. And the company has had this profile for a very long time, so if it is going to show up, it should have by now.

[BlakeMcGillis]

Yeah, a lot of people are pretty unhappy with the BBB's services. Nonetheless, in the service industry, it's one of the best backlinks that I've seen so far that virtually any company can get.

[RyanOD]

For the benefit of others, I'm going to walk through how I would investigate this situation...

1. Head over to OSE and pull a backlink report to see if the link shows up (it doesn't)
2. Check links on Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools

If the BBB link cannot be identified through those steps, move on to the following:

1. Verify the BBB page is indexed by searching the URL (it is indexed)
2. Verify the redirect is truly a 301 by visiting a header checking tool and entering URL. (yes, it is a 301 redirect)
3. Visit BBB and verify the following: a) the page is not being blocked from bots (it isn't) b) the link is followed (it is) c) the link can be crawled by bots (it can)
4. Visit the BBB robots.txt file to verify the page isn't blocked from bots (it isn't)

At this point, it's tough to determine exactly what is going on. I suppose I would consider building some links into said BBB page to 'assist' the bots in finding the page and capturing the link. Might be a good time to apply the ideas Pavel blogged about regarding SEO value from Q&A sites.

Best of luck!

[Goetzman]

I understand, from a SEO perspective the backlink probably has a lot of credibility.