linking to yourself question

[vbsaltydog]

I have been doing some research on my competitors recently using the link:competitorssite.com in google and have noticed that my toughest competitors have thousands of links to their site but when I look to see where the links are coming from I see that the site's own product pages are being counted as links back to the domain. How are these guys doing this, it clearly works for them.

Thanks to all,

-vbsaltydog

[sugarrae]

I would use the linkdomain:site.com command at Yahoo as you'll get a much better list.

As far as their own product pages counting as backlinks - it is normal for that to occur with internal links [google.com]. All inbound links, from the same domain (internal) and outside domains (external) will count in your backlinks if they are linking to the page whose backlinks you're checking.

[vbsaltydog]

I have adopted this backlink theory (internal links) since day 1.
I have links to my home page in the format or href=/ as well as href=absoluteURL from my site's common layout design (these links exist on every page including products) yet my product pages do not get counted as backlinks to my site.
Does anyone have any tips or advise to accomplish having these internal links being counted as backlinks as this is required if I am going to be in the running against my competitors plus it would be helpful to all WebmasterWorld members I would think.

Thanks to all.

[sugarrae]

>>>do not get counted as backlinks to my site.

Do they not show in Yahoo (vs. Google, whose link command does not show as many as Yahoo's)?

[jt007superman]

I think content and keyword density will play a huge part in this. You may check to see that the keyword density for each product page is specific to each product. A dynamic, e-commerce site can often have the same title, description, and keywords on every page. If that is the case on your site, the SE's will consider all of your pages roughly the same content, and would therefore omit the backlinks. A good model to look for is link:www.amazon.com, where you can see that each page is unique in it's content.

[vbsaltydog]

My keyword density per page is fine and my product pages all have unique titles, descriptions, and keywords based on the product so duplicate content filters should not be a factor. I have looked through my competitor's code and cant see anything wonderful going on yet they backlink to themselves and I do not. ehhhhhh.

Thank to all who offer advise on the issue.

[sugarrae]

Again, if you're using Google to check whether or not these internal links "count" for you, I'd check the other two engines. Google only shows you a very small sampling of sites they know about that are linking to you. Just because Google doesn't show you you're internal pages as backlinks doesn't mean they don't know about them and they don't count (to whatever degree). If you do a site:domain.com search in Google and your internal pages show up, then you can make an educated guess that Google is seeing the links on the pages.

[vbsaltydog]

I will check the other engines for more detailed reports but I have been doing the link:www.domain.com since the beginning on both mine and my competitors site's and their product pages backlink and mine do not. This is my issue since google is a high priority engine target.

Thanks again.

[vbsaltydog]

correction on the link:www.domain.com
I meant to say site:www.domain.com

[sugarrae]

>>>This is my issue since google is a high priority engine target.

I get that. What I'm trying to get across is that Google doesn't show you anywhere *near* the amount of backlinks they know about - not just for you, but also for your competitor... and they only show a sampling of those links and it was my understanding that they were random. Meaning that they are showing your competitors internal links in their random sampling, but not showing your internal links in a random sampling. It doesn't mean they don't know about or count them for you.

Check your links in the other engines - just because Google doesn't show them to you when you do a link: command in no way means they don't know about them. They just only *show* you a small portion of the links they know about. Thus why you should use an engine that gives a more complete list (like Yahoo) because you can bet that if Yahoo knows about a link, Google does too.

[vbsaltydog]

sounds good. Your point is taken and appreciated.

[wildegray]

"If that is the case on your site, the SE's will consider all of your pages roughly the same content, and would therefore omit the backlinks."

And "...that doesn't mean they don't count them..." will this have any bearing on the strength of your page rank?

For a short while I was following the advice of the SEO Dummies guy, and optimizing the whole site for the same set of keywords. I obviously realized the error in that approach with a bit more research, but haven't had time (with my present workload, there's no looking back) to update that.

Will the PR, link count, or any such imperative measures suffer as a result of this?

P.S. I love this site. Thanks for all your insight, ladies and gentlemen.