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How Important is Link Analysis?

Let’s say that you have built a great website and you have a good amount of traffic coming on your website generating ample business for you. Now, it’s time to do an analysis of your website traffic and the incoming links. In today’s world, it is very important to be aware of linking related data of your site and for this you can use third-party analytics tools such as Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Microsoft’s Webmaster Portal etc. You can get most fascinating and useful information through these tools which are absolutely free of charge.

You can also go for fee-based software programs, where you can get some more information about your links. There are advanced and powerful web based tools useful for knowing about the number of visitors of your website, they can also tell you the age of a link to the IP block of the site on which the link exists. You can download scripts and extensions to intense your search results. If you are only concerned with the broken links of your site, then you can use Xenu’s Link Sleuth which is freely available.

There are many questions or things that arise in our minds like which website will help your site to rank better or which sites will link to your site or won’t cause your site to be panelized? Some of the tools available on the Internet can give you a false sense of security but you will never find any software that can answer all of your questions. You will have to apply your own mind to find out what you can do with the data you get.

Link analysis tools can be free of cost, but some are web-based and some require a download and install. I will talk about the information that link analysis tools will provide you.

The first trustworthy tool is server log. This is the most useful tool to assist in understanding how and when your website pages and applications are being accessed and a log file is generated by your web server. This log file contains, among other things, which pages are being accessed, by whom, and when. The good thing about log server is that you get to know which links are sending you what amount of traffic. You must have observed that sometimes a link may not provide direct traffic for your site but you don’t have to worry about this because this link might still help in your website’s page ranking.

Another tool which can help you in finding information about the anchor text used by the linking sites is SEO Book’s Back Link Analyzer (http://tools.seobook.com/backlink-analyser/). It Supplies multiple output data including backlink status, link text, page title, outbound links, links on page, IP address, link type and Google information. If you are ready to spend some money you can use OptiLink or SEO Elite.

A different aspect of link analysis is comparing the number of inbound links with your competing websites. One way to know new link targets is by seeing who is linking to other sites in your niche. It is not necessary that if you will be able to keep up with your competing website, your website rank will go higher. To stand out from others, you should try to obtain links that your competing websites don’t have.

If you want to know which site’s links are oldest or no-followed, or the cache date or different inbound links across the search engine, you can easily find web-based tools that will help you in finding this information. One thing you all must remember that never rely on software and scripts to ensure link building success. You have to analyze yourself that what your data is telling you and accordingly what strategies you should adopt.

Lastly, I would like to say that in order to be at the first place you must have the depth of good and quality content that can earn you the links.

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