Do You Know Who is Linking to Your Site? Yahoo Does!

Links back to your website are an important part of online brand management. While many people engage in the practice of building links, very few actually understand the value that this brings to their brand.

Written Jan 21, 2009, read 8640 times since then.

Links back to your website are an important part of online brand management. And while many people engage in the practice of building links, very few actually understand the value that this brings to their brand.

Sadly, we have oversimplified the benefit of many SEO techniques. We have put them in the category of "higher search rankings" without understanding their larger benefit. And with backlinks in particular, we have become so one-sided in our application that we rarely, if ever, talk about its benefits for brand research. Today, I want to spend a bit of time helping you get started gathering information and analyzing your findings.

Let's start by pulling up a list of links back to my site. There are several ways to find this information, but Yahoo seems to have the best search options with the most user friendly interface. Let's walk through an example: I have entered a search string (linkdomain:edgyentrepreneur.com -site:edgyentrepreneur.com) that will pull up outside links back to my domain. You can see that I have entered a "-site:edgyentrepreneur.com" phrase. Theoretically, that will exclude interlinks from one of the posts of my site to another. In practical application, some seem to sneak by...But you will be able to see the originations of all of the links, so you will know what originates with you and what doesn't.

Yahoo returns with a list of 500+ links, which is a really small amount compared to my other sites. This gives me my first bit of pertinent information: I have really neglected this strategy as a way to promote the Edgy Entrepreneur brand online. As a point of comparison, I searched a couple of my other websites and found that they both have 5,000+ backlinks...big difference!

Next, I see that many of the links are from social media sites: various profiles, microblog aggregators and social bookmarking sites. This is actually a good thing, since many of my posts are about using the web to build business. The other thing that I discovered is that each time a link is posted on some of these sites, it remains in place for a significant amount of time. This is important because it helps me prioritize my link posting efforts.

Finally, I see other blogs and websites that have linked back to me. Identifying other non-social media sites that are interested in my content is an easy way to do a bit of market research. It also gives me a sense of community allies and ideas for future partnerships. And, it alerts me to negative commentary/concerns on the horizon.

Yahoo's advanced search has the ability to be much more sophisticated in its results. If you feel like playing around with the features you can drill down to a much more specific level of information. But, it isn't necessary to use all of the bells and whistles to generate valuable brand management information. Analyzing your incoming links should be at least an occasional component in your web marketing plan. Give it a try, you will be surprised at what you learn!

Learn more about the author, Jean Ann Van Krevelen.

Posted by Merry McNutt, Tacoma, Washington | Jan 22, 2009

Ah. So that's how that works. I appreciate you breaking that down as I have always known that the links viewed boosts your web address up in the search results, but I did not have a concept of why that works. Thank you for writing your article in a way a non-computer savvy person can understand.
Posted by Jean Ann Van Krevelen, Portland, Oregon | Jan 22, 2009

Wow, thanks for the kudos! I love to share tips that can help the non tech crowd...:)
Posted by Kevin McLallen, Covington, Washington | Jan 23, 2009

Hello Jean Ann, This is a great article as Merry mentioned! There are so many tools and resources that can be utilized to improve traffic or business and sometimes learning to use them can be a daunting task. This article puts this resource in a great perspective and makes it easy to understand. Thanks for sharing.

Kevin
Posted by Jean Ann Van Krevelen, Portland, Oregon | Jan 23, 2009

thanks for taking the time to read, Kevin!
Posted by Gary Pickering, Bellingham, Washington | Jan 24, 2009

You can also see who Google recognizes as linking to your site by using this search string with your domain:

link:www.whatcomweb.com

Is is interesting to note that Google recognizes far few links than Yahoo, and this should be a consideration in your link building as it is generally agreed that Google recognized links are more valuable than those recognized by Yahoo.
Posted by Jean Ann Van Krevelen, Portland, Oregon | Jan 28, 2009

Yes, Google does recognize far fewer, but I also find that to be a bit of a biased view. I tend to think that just because Google doesn't list them, doesn't mean they aren't taken into account in their algorithm. Google's lack of transparency makes it difficult to know just what it might mean that they show fewer links than Yahoo.
Posted by Tshombe Brown, Portland, Oregon | Jan 30, 2009

Hi Jean Ann. Thanks for an informative article! I like how you show the practical application of this information, rather than simple FYI only.

Of particular immediate usefulness to me is your comment regarding looking at the data as another part of "market research" and getting a feeling for potential joint ventures, partnerships, and other business relationships.

I wonder if you might offer some comments or specific examples on how you have used who is linking to your site(s) for market research.

(And thank you, too, Gary, for adding the Google option, as I do use Google more frequently than Yahoo!).

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