Introducing The Majestic Link Graph Tool

Link Graph is a powerful tool for analysing backlinks and backlink profiles. Using cutting-edge technology to scan massive amounts of data, the Majestic Link Graph gives you an accurate visual representation of all the backlinks pointing to your website or any other site you choose, including those of your competitors. This analysis allows you to easily identify backlinks that may boost your SEO efforts for better rankings in the search engines, as well as backlinks that could potentially harm your rankings by leading to spammy or low-quality content. Whether looking for backlink insights for a single page or an entire website, Link Graph has everything you need to get the full picture of your backlink profile and take action based on that information.

In its simplest form, Link Graph uses the Top 50 sites that point to a domain or URL and iterates over four levels, collecting the Top 10 links for each discovered URL in that network: then it works out which of those sites link to each other. By analysing this network of websites at different levels, Link Graph provides the opportunity to build a complete picture of the relationships among websites to understand where your target site sits within this larger network. SEOs and Digital Marketers use this information to promote websites and improve the backlink profile and search engine rankings.

The most remarkable benefit of the Majestic Link Graph is its real-time functionality. Despite analysing backlink profiles for millions of websites, the link graph can quickly and accurately generate results.

This is an awe-inspiring feat of engineering, as it allows you to see the interconnected network around any website or URL instantly. With this map of backlinks, you can easily verify your website's neighbourhood and identify any untrustworthy or suspicious backlinks or networks of websites. You can view this graph from the Site Explorer Summary Page for every search you perform.

When we evaluate the backlink profiles of different websites, we do our best to identify all the backlinks. However, we cannot guarantee that our link graph will show every backlink within a network. While our tool provides an instant insight into the top backlinks that surround any website or subdomain, there may be other backlinks in these networks that are not directly visible through our Link Graph. However, by analysing the backlink profile of a given website, you will gain valuable insights into its authority and overall strength of its backlink profile. This data is invaluable to both SEOs, and digital marketers, who can use it to understand how their sites are linked to and viewed by others.

A Link Graph that Sits in Between Both of the Previous Examples.

When looking at a link graph, the white space between nodes, or clusters of nodes, can indicate a low quality backlink profile. A link graph with lots of white space means fewer links in the network; thus, it's more likely to be spam. Most link graphs have some degree of white space, but if you see a mostly white link graph, the website is likely engaging in link spam. Backlinks are one of the most important factors in determining a website's ranking, so spammers will often try to inflate their backlink count by creating fake websites or paying for link farms. If you see a link graph with very few links and a lot of white space, it's a strong signal that the website is engaging in link spam, and you should be cautious about linking to it.

Domain Name Analysis for Domain Trading and Link Building Activities

Domain traders are professionals actively buying and selling domains for a profit. The value of a domain name may depend on the quality of its backlink profile. The quality and quantity of backlinks can greatly impact the value of a domain, and our Link Graph can help understand and assess backlink profiles. The following examples illustrate how to identify Link Graph Patterns domain brokers and link builders alike should be aware of before purchasing a domain name.

Domain Names Without Tier 2 Backlinks

In this image, each red dot in the graph is a URL that points to the target website circled in yellow. The peculiarity of this graph is the total absence of any second-level (or Tier 2) nodes in the top 50 backlinks (the most that Link Graph uses to create Tier 1 Nodes).

If a URL has a link to the target site, it is called a Tier 1 link. When a Tier 1 URL has a backlink of its own that does not point directly to our site, that link is a Tier 2 backlink, and so on, to the Tier 4.

Therefore, in this case, none of this site's best backlinks has any backlinks of its own.

This powerful signal identifies an unnatural backlink profile with a direct impact on the domain name's value. If someone were looking at purchasing this domain to create a new website, such a backlink profile could imply a great deal of work to "clean" and consequent long lead times to rank prominently in the Search Engines.

Deleted Backlinks

Another signal a domain name may have been involved in manipulative unnatural Link Building Strategies is when the Link Graph shows a large number of deleted top-level (Tier 1) backlinks, such as the one in the following screenshot:

In this example, most Tier 1 level backlinks have been deleted - only four are not marked as deleted in the most recent Fresh Index. The data suggests further investigating the backlink profile and history.

The Website Belongs to a Very Large Network

When looking at a backlink profile, it's common to see backlinks clustered in networks around certain domain names. Such clustering can occur because websites tend to link back to popular or well-known sites within their vertical. However, if you see a network cluster around a domain name you were not expecting, it may be a red flag that the domain's metrics are not genuine. For example, it is not uncommon to see websites in an interlinking network cluster. Sometimes, the cluster is so large that it is almost impossible to see the target URL domain. After further investigation, we found that most of the backlinks pointing to the site were from low-quality or spammy websites. As a result, we concluded that the site's backlink profile was not genuine and you should not trust its metrics.

The Power of Toggling Websites in the Link Graph

Complex backlink profile structures can be complicated to read, especially when dealing with a dense backlink structure similar to the one we examined earlier.

While we do our best to mitigate the information overload caused by such a graph by reducing colour saturation and node naming, there is still too much data shouting for our attention. In such cases, we need to concentrate on a portion of the graph or perhaps only on the most significant nodes. In these situations, we can toggle Tiers.

Tier toggling is accessible at the bottom-left of the chart. Here you can toggle individual Tiers on and off. Our Link Graph will attempt to represent all four tiers. However, there are instances where the graph is so large it can make a browser crash: in these cases, we will limit the link graph to Tier 3 backlinks. Let's toggle off Tiers 2, 3 and 4 of the previous chart:

As you can see, there are few "big" Tier 1 backlinks. The number of Tier 1 backlinks will depend on many factors and often requires in-depth analysis. We can now move on to Tier 2 backlinks:

It is important to note that Tier 2 backlinks do not appear in regular backlink searches. In a typical backlink analysis, they are invisible unless you have enough processing power to process all your backlinks. Tier 2 backlinks significantly contribute to the node's Trust Flow and Citation Flow. The same goes for Tier 3 backlinks:

Use the Majestic Link Graph to Improve Authority Analysis and Seek Link Building Opportunities

Use the Majestic Link Graph Tool to improve your SEO strategy and boost website authority. In this video, SEO experts explain how you can identify backlinks carrying authority and how to use the Link Graph to identify link building opportunities to improve your SEO performance.