Backlink count is WAY high vs. competitors

[fullerton]

Hi all!

My site was managed by a SEO company that is no longer around.  I started to look for a new agency and in the process, found Moz and decided to try out the report.  While running the report, found out that my I have 3K links vs 173/1600/6344 links that my three other competitors have.  Any simple guidance will be appreciated.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Not sure what you are looking to hear. There are sooooo many more factors than just # of links to look at.

• Number of linking domains
• Authority of links/domains
• Penalization status of the linking domains
• Anchor text distribution
• Nofollow distribution

You need to consider all of these variables when performing competitor analysis, not just the number of links.

Cheers,
Oleg

[fullerton]

When considering Nofollow... I see some w/o it.  Is it better to have non or some?

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Nofollowed links are worse than "dofollowed" links as they do not flow link authority.

Its unlikely that all of your links will be dofollow but if you have too many nofollowed links, could be a bad sign. Usually nofollowed links are 1-15% of the profile but depends on industry. Compare your portfolio to successfully ranking competitors to see where you should be at.