Sales & Marketing

How Do You Measure Backlink Building Campaign’s Success?

How Do You Measure Backlink Building Campaign's Success
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Marketing can be complex because you combine many tactics to achieve results. That means you must put proper metrics in place to measure each activity. If not, you may very well be pouring money down the drain.

But the complexity goes a little further. Let’s take the example of digital marketing. Under the umbrella term, there are so many strategies you may be implementing. These include search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, organic backlink building, and pay-per-click marketing. You must have KPIs or metrics to measure the success of each one of them.

We understand the challenges you are facing as a marketer. So we will simplify your life, at least in one aspect. And that is by sharing an overview of creating quality links and tracking outreach campaigns’ success.

Why Should You Monitor Your Link-Building Campaigns?

Measuring your backlink campaigns serves one major purpose, and that is to know whether they are working or not. This gives you the opportunity to improve or re-strategize in order to see a return on your investment. Having good metrics in place allow you to:-

  • Judge the value you can put on potential links
  • How to assess whether a link is worth pursuing
  • It allows you to better plan resources that go into acquiring the links
  • Metrics give useful insights based on the profile analysis to determine whether you should continue pursuing the line of action and more.

Please note that quality link building is not only about acquiring links on other websites. If you look at SEO link-building services and their reports, you will see a list of other factors. Factors like domain authority, link placement, referring domains, and more matter.

It is important to get the help of a link-building agency or link-building consultant if you don’t know how to do it. This is because organic backlink-building can yield excellent results for the brand. Indeed, white hat link-building services can boost your brand’s visibility efforts.

Search engines have guidelines for acceptable link-building practices. Engaging in black or grey hat link building can result in harsh penalties. Penalties that you will find very difficult to overcome. With that out of the way, let us look at the link-building metrics you must have in place.

8 Things to Consider When Measuring Backlink Building Campaign’s Success:

1. Start by establishing benchmarks

Before you proceed with measuring your link-building campaigns, establish benchmarks. Think of it like having a starting point in a race. A point that will be the reference for everything you do going forward.

What you need to do is conduct a backlink audit. That entails a thorough evaluation of any and all backlinks to your website. The advantages of doing the audit are numerous, including the following:-

  • Identifying backlinks that could negatively impact yours
  • Highlight links coming from high-authority sites
  • Establish your and third-party domain authority
  • Show you the number of backlinks to your site and more.

Take advantage of the numerous backlink checker tools to take care of this important step.

Related: Why Should Businesses Invest in SEO?

2. New backlinks as a quality link-building metric

How many new links you can acquire in a given period of time is one of the clearest indicators of a successful link-building strategy. Indeed, the nearest comparison is lead acquisition in sales. If you get 20 leads within a week, it means you are doing something right.

So, for your organic link-building campaigns, you should aim for the same. Look at the strategies you have in place to acquire links. These could include guest posts, directory listings, indications, influencer outreach, and more. For each, set a timeline and see how many new incoming links you get.

Set workable timelines because measuring daily would not make sense. So, a weekly or biweekly check would be a better idea.

3. Increase in organic traffic to your website

Organic link building is a powerful tool to increase traffic to your website. Indeed, it is one of the core reasons marketers undertake quality link-building in the first place. It only makes sense to have this as one of the metrics for your campaigns.

With so many online tools available, measuring an increase in organic traffic is simple. Google Analytics and Google Search Console should top the list of user-friendly tools. You need to focus on whether the page impressions and positions are growing or changing. At this point, you will appreciate having conducted a backlink audit.

See Also: Does Data Visualization Have an Impact On SEO?

4. Link relevance

Link relevance is an important qualitative metric when measuring your campaigns. If you are new to link building, you may think the goal is to acquire as many lives as possible. But the truth is that many irrelevant links can be counterproductive.

Whitehat backlink building necessitates paying attention to links that are relevant to your niche or industry. So, if you sell beauty products, getting a link in a beauty magazine means high link relevance. The reverse is true if your link is in an auto magazine.

Here is a tip worth considering, though. Do not totally dismiss non-related sites. What you should aim for is one that, in a remote way, may have some relevance. So, let’s say you are in real estate. Having your link in a bridal magazine is not a total loss. The assumption is that the blushing bride may one day hope to be a homeowner.

5. Referring domain’s authority

How much authority does the linking website have? You need to look at factors like:-

  • Page quality
  • SEO performance
  • Website age
  • Popularity
  • The number of linking sites as an indication of trustworthiness

Like in the points above, there are wonderful online resources you can use to check domain authority. As you can imagine, high-authority websites are pretty competitive. These include sites like Wikipedia, Forbes, news outlets, thought leaders, and educational outlets. Yet they are your best bet if you want to increase your domain authority.

So focus on creating great content. Also, use linkable assets like infographics or polls to increase your chances of earning links from them.

Related: 7 Ahrefs Alternatives and Competitors (Free Included)

6. Linking page strength

The linking page strength refers to the specific pages on your website you want the backlink to point to. You can use PageRank to check for this. The scale ranges from 0 to 10. For most websites, page strength is at its peak on the homepage. The following pages tend to decline in strength the further you move within the website. The same applies to newer pages. Any quality link-building campaign aims to link to the strongest pages.

In the metrics, note the traffic increase and behavior changes in the linking pages. Assume there is a lot of traffic but a high bounce rate. It could mean you need to work on the content a little more. Online visitors may need more information. As we said, metrics allow you to know what is working. It also shows which areas could use a little improvement.

7. Anchor text and link placement on the Page

A top backlink metric worth measuring is the anchor text. It is always important to focus on profitable keywords that will boost your rankings. Remember, the role of the anchor text is to provide search engines and readers with context. A simple glance should provide the readers with sufficient information on what the link is all about.

The search engines will use the same for ranking and indexing. It is critical to creating strong anchor texts for your organic link-building campaigns. A good tip is to include relevant keywords to entice the readers to click on the links.

Another important quality link-building metric is link placement. The best position is at the top or, at worst, the center position. The sad yet illuminating reality is that online readers are rather impatient. Many will not take the time to read an article in its entirety. The chances of clicking on links are higher for those at the top.

You must work on improving your chances for better placement. Content relevance, shareable assets, new research, or new information can boost your chances.

Also Read: What Are the Signs of a Bad Website?

8. Length of time it takes to get links

Does the length of time you take to get backlinks to matter? You may find the answer surprising, but yes, it does. Consider it from the perspective of a new salesperson. The first time, it may take up to 10 calls to get a prospect interested in what you have to say. But the more you lean into the job, the fewer calls are necessary to close a deal.

The same should apply to your quality link-building campaigns. If it takes too long to get feedback, it could have something to do with your email outreach. That allows you to work on your pitch to the linking websites.

Lags in communication could mean you need to take the time to nurture relationships. It could also indicate that you need to do better at follow-ups. Keeping track of your outreach helps with building focus on consistency.

Finally, look at your conversion rates. How many positive vs. negative responses do you receive in a given amount of time? Your success or failure can be a wonderful forecasting tool for future organic backlinking campaigns.

Must Read: Top SaaS Tools List for Startups

Conclusion

Quality link-building is an excellent way to gain brand visibility. It is also an effective way to build industry authority and credibility. But like any other marketing activity, you must keep track of performance. And that means having the right metrics in place.

Use our article as a guide for your next link-building campaigns and start to see ROI for your actions. You can also use the same metrics to gauge the work of your link-building agency.

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