We all know that link building is one of the pillars of SEO strategies from the start. But managing our link-building effort is not that simple. Its success is never measured simply by the number of links it creates. The story is much more complex. You need a lot of data to manage and improve your link-building strategy and activity. Luckily there are a lot of powerful metrics to help you measure your link-building campaign. These are at the core of any improvement that should bring you better link-building and SEO results. In addition to letting Link Department handle them professionally, you should know and use them. They are is essential for any positive change in your practices.
Link building management and SEO
Whatever you do, to improve and get better results, you need to measure the results of your efforts. This is the key to any activity. This is also true for any link-building and SEO effort. It is important to use a lot of different metrics to check your results. The only way to understand what you are doing wrong or right is to check the metrics at your disposal. In addition, these metrics are also important at the moment of link-building strategy. Knowing how you will measure results can help you be more realistic when setting your goals.
However, setting your link-building goals, taking action, and measuring results must only be done in conjunction with all other SEO activities. As link building is an integral part of SEO you should look at it from that standpoint. So, it’s important to first make well-optimized pages with all of the accompanying elements like meta descriptions, tags, and take care of the mobile-friendly aspect. The content must be compelling and well written and with proper use of tags and keywords. Once you do this you can start your work on proper link-building strategies and campaigns. This effort should be driven by some measurable results and data. So, make sure you base your actions on properly measured data.
Linkbuilding metrics
There are a lot of metrics to consider. However, following them requires a lot of preparation and knowledge. Be aware that some of them can be precisely measured, these are quantitative while others are more qualitative.
- Organic search traffic
- Referral traffic
- Traffic to target pages
- Relevance
- Domain authority, rank, and trust flow
Organic search traffic
The rise in organic traffic should be observed in a longer period of time. Measure the change in percentages and focus on the improvements and what caused them. Be aware that this change is also a result of other SEO activities so factor them in. Particularly observe the changes in link-building activities and how they coincide with the increase in organic traffic. At the same time be aware that organic traffic increase is the goal of link building. So, any change in the source of information is important as you can use it for improving the effort to achieve even better results.
Referral traffic
Referral traffic may have a sizable increase as a result of the whole SEO activity. This is not only the result of link-building efforts. Other SEO tools generate a much sizable rise in referral traffic. One of these tools is content promotion. Referral traffic may show only in the long run. However, in these cases, this traffic usually drives visitors to conversion-oriented pages. This is qualified referral traffic that is even more valuable. When checking on referrals you should monitor the DA of sites that carries our content, traffic for each link, traffic behavior, and a total of links placed.
Traffic to target pages
As any link-building effort is aimed at specific target pages any data concerning them should be closely monitored. You must closely monitor and report any traffic change, engagement, and organic ranking change. These changes indicate the results of the link-building effort and should analyze in conjunction with these actions.
Relevance
Relevance is not that measurable. It is a soft metric that is quality-oriented. However, it’s important to focus on the relevance of the links. The domain that you are trying to build links on should be relevant to your webpage. It is only logical that relevant websites naturally link to each other. The higher the relevance the better. However, you must take care that the content and text are completely relevant to your webpage and full of natural keywords.
The anchor text should also be detailed and contain exact and relevant information. In this way, through link building with relevant, you are directly targeting potential customers. Meaning you are using websites that are relevant and potential customers might visit. This is why relevance is important as one of the powerful metrics to measure your link-building campaign.
Domain authority, rank, and trust flow
Domain authority is also important for your link-building campaign. The higher domain authority the valuable link that you place on it. So, highly authoritative websites that you are linked to provide extra value for your effort. But, link building must be more detailed and specific. Achieving and placing a link on the webpage that is relevant to your industry can be even more valuable. This means that even a website with a lower DA can provide higher value if it is highly relevant to the company.
Complementing the DA are also Domain Rank and trust flow. These indicate your ability to rank in comparison to your competition. These can be good indicators of the authority of web pages you backlink to. They also indicate how relevant they are and how natural your backlink profile is. A good goal is to try and build backlinks from high-ranking websites while still making sure that they are highly relevant.
Data and metrics to measure your link-building campaign
Following up on your link-building efforts is a considerable task. If you perform it well you can expect good results. Mark your results, use powerful metrics to measure your link-building campaign, and plot your new course. This is the way of designing actions and making an effort that will pay off and provide results.