Tracking and Improving Link Building Campaign Performance

In the spirit of Web Tracking Guide, how can you track the efficiency of these techniques, and choose the best ones for your business? It is not a straightforward task easily performed with an online tracking tool, but with some creative analysis, you can have reliable figures and make informed business decisions.

First of all, you need to find a way to check the incoming links you get. I recommend two official search engine tools for that:

1. Yahoo Site Explorer – Lists a lot of incoming links, and you can use it for any website, even if you don’t own it.
2. Google Webmaster Tools – You need to set it up for your own website. It is somewhat slower to show new links, and it doesn’t report as many of them, but you’ll know these links are indexed by Google. Webmaster Tools also display other valuable data, such as your search rankings, so I think this is a must-have.

A third tool you might want to check out is Linkscape. It runs its own web crawler with the specific purpose to index and provide the information on links between websites.

Another figure you probably want to check is Google PageRank. You know it is one of the major factors in Google’s ranking algorithm. Google Toolbar is the best way to check it. Using third-party tools that send automated queries to Google without a proper license is against Google’s terms of service and can get you banned.

Don’t get too obsessed with your PageRank. First of all, the value displayed in the toolbar is only updated a few times a year, and is different from the actual value used for the current rankings. Second, PageRank is only one of about 200 criteria in Google’s ranking algorithm. And lastly, Google’s search results are only one part of the traffic you can receive from your link building campaign. Concentrate on getting quality links that can bring you a lot of visitors by themselves. Google traffic will follow.

How do you make sure your link building campaign is effective? Make a plan. List the link building methods that you use, and plan ahead how much money or effort you will invest. Then track your actual results, keep the methods that work best for you, and try something new every once in a while.

Estimate and track the following for each link building technique, on a weekly or monthly basis:

• number of potential link candidates you can find with each method every week or month
• number of link requests or other attempts you can actually perform
• resulting number of links you receive

The habit of setting goals and measuring the results by itself will do wonders for your link building performance. And as time goes, you will reveal the best methods that work for your particular business, without taking chances and relying on someone else’s advice.