Exactly two weeks ago, SEOmoz launched Linkscape, their new link analysis tool. There has been much accusation, feedback and discussion over the inner workings of the product itself which this post does not cover. Instead I’d like to take a look at some ideas that I hope are in the development queue to improve Linkscape even further over the coming months.
Some tweaks in linkscape I’d like to see, in no particular order…
1) Export reports to PDF
In the “Advanced Link Intelligence Report” you can export raw data via CSV. That’s a great feature, but sometimes you need a document to download rather than a raw data export, particularly in a dashboard summary situation. White label the report template with uploadable logo functionality so you can make it look like your own, hard work for extra bonus points.
2) Report metrics over time
This is tough, but to see how the various metrics have developed over time (30 days, 3 months, 6 months) Would be an amazing tool to help us demonstrate how SEO efforts have added value to a client project. Obviously this would require a higher resolution of data (more frequent crawl). SEOmoz already keeps a record of your previous historic searches so perhaps this wouldn’t be *too difficult?
Reporting over time would make the last point particulary powerful, you could provide a quarterly or 6 monthly review very quickly.
*Assumption based on no inside knowledge of the SEOmoz development process!
A time graph would make even more sense in the competitor analysis as it would give you a good idea of how agressive other websites link building campaigns must be. Imagine being able to quickly and easily see the rate of aquisition of your top 5 competitors, down to a daily basis. I know this is beyond Linkscape’s crawl rate today. I suppose in the meantime we always have Google alerts!
3) Site submission (I never thought I’d say that word on my blog!)
As a paying user of linkscape I think a useful feature would be to allow requests for more detailed crawls of competitor (and your own) websites.
4) Sitemap.xml compatibility
If a sitemap is referenced in the robots.txt file then Linkscape could incorporate the urls into its database for future crawls. If you’re a subscriber, you could submit your own sitemap.
5) 8 Most common anchor text terms- exact match
When you click this link it would be handy to see a list of urls using that anchor text for link realignment purposes. Currently, clicking the text takes you back to the link intelligence report but the anchor texts don’t match exactly. For example, you might click a “car parts” anchor, but the report will include “carparts.co.uk” and so on.
6) Reformat the display of some reports
It would be nice to have a pie chart for the inbound anchor text distribution. This works very well for Advanced Link Manager.
7) All 301 and 302 inbound redirects
Urls that redirect (internally or externally) via 302 or 301 redirect to any url on my site. I would love to know how many redirects I have pointing to my site. even more so if some of them are 302’s from high authority domains!
Mouseovers in graphs give you the metric
If I mouse over a graph, it would be good to see the value for that measurement rather than just a visual representation.
9) Site architecture analysis
This was a brilliant idea from Joshua Sciarrino on the SEOmoz feedback forum (I’ve picked 2 great ideas to give my 8 ideas a nice round figure of 10). Basically Josh said:
Is there a way to have a graph of the site I’m getting intel from, to have their internal linking structure? that would be amazing.
The mind boggles with this idea, a visual representation with a competitors site architecture, every inbound link and keyword they’re optimising for? That is a nice tool!
10) A guide!
Another brilliant idea from Globusinternet on the SEOmoz Linkscape feedback forum, someone needs to write a guide for Linkscape!
So hurry along and have a go if you haven’t already, Linkscape is here to stay and I’m looking forward to watching it develop as a powerful SEO tool in the months to come.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Richard – thanks a ton for the feedback. We’ve got a lot of these already on our internal to-do list, but I’m forwarding your post over to our devs so they can put the rest into our future upgrade requests. I can’t guarantee that all of these will make it in, but we’ll definitely weigh each one against the other requests that have been made and get them somewhere in the schedule.
Just FYI – right now, a big index update (and some small improvements to the front-end) are taking place ~Halloween-early November. Our next iteration is probably with the December crawl update, but depending on the task list, might wait until January (as we’ll need to test internally, and have some other projects launching, including the toolbar for Linkscape in December).
Finally – regarding the crawl schedule stuff – give the index a try in November when we expect to nearly double. I still don’t think we’ll go extremely deep or follow links from low mozRank pages, but we are going to try biasing the crawl a bit more towards higher domain mozRank (DmR) sites so we can crawl those much deeper, possibly by the December or January update.
Hi Rand, thanks for stopping by! Really appreciate your response. By the way, if you get time, a whistlestop tour around the Linkscape algo would be cool. You must be processing some serious data over there. I remember when the Easynews team created a video tour of their new server room, which I found fascinating. Maybe there’s inspiration for something similar when the dust settles?
I’ve actually never seen the space we rent for the project, and we do a lot of computing using cloud services, too, so that might not be as exciting
But yeah – there’s definitely a ton of interesting work that went into the project, and I know Nick and Ben are putting together some academic papers, so we’ll try to share those as they’re ready.
Of course – anytime you’re in Seattle, there’s an open invitation to swing by the mozPlex and get the nickel tour
Thanks for the screenshot, saves me running a report
Sorry; this is just funny stuff. Period. Any SEO who thinks for one second they are getting some great stuff for using the tool of another SEO, is very delusional. Sorry. Why don’t you all read what Michael Martinez says and even also what Aaron Wall says about it? The issue surrounding this tool is not the value of it, or the lack of value of it, but how a prominent person striving to be some kind of industry leader, deceived the entire SEO industry…. and did so because of his investors. Matter of fact; the way he says sites can block this tool is bogus and deceiving and does not block the data of what the tool is about… links. The entire fiasco is bad stuff. Anyone praising OR using this tool is foolish and has no idea how to do their own thinking about what links are relevant TO GOOGLE and what links are not.
Only newbies and those with not much a clue would resort to a tool of someone else’s opinion, other than the opinion of Google.
Is this going to be moderated and not published? I guess I shall see shortly, huh?
Hi there Doug, thanks for your comments. Of course I won’t “moderate” them. I will ask you though, to only add comments that contribute positively in the future.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear in the wording of my post? I haven’t actually endorsed the product yet, I’ve just stated that I am looking forward to watching it develop as a powerful SEO tool, which I hope it does! Just to clarify, This post isn’t about “the issue surrounding this tool”, and doesn’t imply that I am or am not using it in my day job.
I am interested in seeing SEOmoz develop it, and in particular, how some of their quality metrics mimic Google’s results. It’s the Moz-metrics and algorithm design that I find most interesting.
Must drop by your forum sometime – hope all’s well over there!
@Patrick LOL – yeah your site was one of the SEO blogs that rolled out of my head when I needed to make a screenshot! Obviously you smashed my fledgling little site and barely broke a sweat… Give me a shout if you want the data
Linkscape reminds me somewhat of SEOeng (http://www.seoeng.com). I think that Rand and his team would do well to incorporate some of SEOeng’s Link Flow Analysis, Internal Link Flow, and Link Loss due to poor internal linking.
Definitely adding on-site link analysis would be great.
I would go even further than Dee to say that SEOMoz should really think about what they are attempting to accomplish…SEOENG is already (and has been) the premiere SEO Tool (do you call a Search Engine a tool?), and already does way more than all of these things….
http://www.johndoro.com/linkscapes-million-dollar-gamble.htm
Interesting – SEOeng looks like it doesn’t work. It claims an optional email address but returns an error because you didn’t enter an email address. Anyone else smell a rat?
Richard, I know this is an old post & comment, but I just tried SEOeng (well, entered a url anyways), and while I was presented with the email box again, it wasn’t an actual error that I got back… just a second opportunity to enter in my email address (and the capctha, and the button) in case I wanted to be notified once the report was done running. Above that it stated: “This Website is currently being analyzed by SEOENG®. Check back soon.”
So, we’ll see.
I did not enter in an email though.
Haha – I’ll bet the last thing you get is an SEO report by email if you give them an address