Sudden drop in external links... why?

[brandon_lee]

We had a lot of external links (2.5K, which was good compared to our competition), but in the last few weeks, it dropped 1.1K. I obviously did something wrong. What are the causes of such a dramatic drop like that?

Questions, suggestions, ideas, anything is welcome at this point.

Thanks!

[davebuts]

Hi Brandon,

Sounds like you might've updated the site template and removed some sitewide links to partner sites or social profiles.

Have you made any template changes (or header/footer changes) recently?

And just FYI, more external links doesn't mean you are doing better than your competition and the drop in external links doesn't necessarily mean you've done something wrong.

Cheers,

David

[brandon_lee]

Hi David,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, we did update the header and footer. I'm curious – why would that cause me to loose that many backlinks?

I didn't loose any points in my DA score nor drop in my keyword rankings, so that's a good thing. But loosing 1.1K backlinks is never a good thing to see.

Thanks! 
Brandon

[davebuts]

Hi Brandon,

It looks like you've changed the original question...

The original question was to do with a drop in the number of internal links. Are you sure it's external links you are talking about?

Cheers,

David