How to track link building? What metrics?
-
I'm an SEO newbie (my main roles are front-end designer and content manager).
I've been managing our company's effort to generate links.In the past, trying to develop relationships has gone nowhere. As a result, we're currently mostly creating good content ourselves and posting it on Web2.0 sites (weebly, etc.) and linking back to our site, and then using UAW (unique article wizard) to create a second tier of links to those links.
We've been doing this for a while, and our traffic from SEO is going up - but we don't really know how to track our work.
Can you please
a) give your opinion about our approach, and
b) tell me which metrics we should be using, and which tools for these metrics?Thank you so much
Greg -
Completely agree with David here - your approach to link building is quite a dangerous one that might see an initial bounce, but I wouldn't expect that to last.
I wrote an article on ethical link building that might be worth a read but you should know that Google have stated that they don't want to see poor links fromArticle Marketing, so I would cease with that immediately. Especially with the spun content. If I were in your shoes, anything that has been spun and republished, I would go back over and remove.
If yours is the sort of business that can carry off a blog / news section, I would write this great content and keep it all on your own site.
Setup Authorship from your site to your Google+ page (set one up if you don't have one) and then start posting links to articles in there. Then start building a network of others who will also be interested in sharing your content. You need to get your content out as much as possible, but this has to be handled the right way.
Hope this helps.
Andy
-
A. I'd recommend steering clear of UAW, it generates low quality spun content that is hosted on low quality (trash) sites.
The content strategy is legit, but you might want to look at moving towards publishing only unique content and working more on outreach to get published on authority sites in your niche.
B. You might want to track things like # of links on a regular basis from multiple sources (OSE, Ahrefs, Majestic, GWT). You might also track DA over time using OSE.
You'd also want to look at how the link building is affecting your organic search rankings and traffic.
-
Hi Greg,
Well the fact that you're here in Q&A is a huge step in the right direction. I've been an in-house SEO for over 5 years now, and I never used SEOMoz or Q&A until the last 6 months. There are tons of great tools, but, as you might expect, each has its own learning curve, so be patient with yourself (and the tools).
SEOMoz is amazing of course. Screaming Frog is downloadable software that makes it easy to sift through and sort large amounts of information about your pages. Ahrefs is awesome, but I've never tried the paid version so I'll let someone else weigh-in on that. I have heard great things about Majestic SEO, but again I haven't used the paid version yet...we are planning to go with a paid version with them in the next few months. SEMRush is a great tool to gain visibility to what competitors are advertising.
First and foremost, I'd begin by snuggling up with Google Webmaster Tools. It's free and it's a lot of information. I like the backlinks comparative tools in SEOMoz and Ahrefs better thanGWT because, as you well know, some links are super valuable and some are worthless. It's really good to know which are which. One amazing link can be worth thousands of low-value links.
I hope that's helpful for starters. Chances are you'll gravitate towards some tools and not so much to others depending on your site and what your needs are. Good luck!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My automated build system is creating a duplicate website
Because of the tools my company is using for CI/CD (A CI/CD pipeline helps you automate steps in your software delivery process, such as initiating code builds, running automated tests, and deploying to a staging or production environment.) an extra URL is generated. The canonical for the generated site is that of our main website, but other than that it is the same website. Could this new URL compete with our website? Will Google count it against us since it is the same content BUT with canonical (it is not noindex-ed)? Does it matter? Surely others are using this method? Answers/thoughts will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | RoxBrock0 -
Tracking sessions from a sub-domain that is 301 redirected to main domain
Hi, one of my client is launching a new site on a subdomain newsite.brand.com.au but will use a shorter URL on the packaging on their new rang of products to be sold in supermarkets, prompting shoppers to visit xxx.brand.com.au. This specific sub-domain xxx.brand.com.au will be 301 redirecting to newsite.brand.com.au How can I identify and track accurrately all the visits coming from xxx.brand.com.au to newsite.brand.com.au?The visits from sub-domain xxx.brand.com.au will be attributed to direct channel I guess. Is it worth adding GA on this 301 redirected sub-domain xxx.brand.com.au or there another way to identify those visits on newsite.brand.com.au ?
Reporting & Analytics | | mecglobal0 -
How to track mobile actions on my website
Hi, i have a website that have, as many others, a mobile version. I want to know if there exist a way to track the mobile user experience, for example, how many times scroll down the page, where touch the screen, and actions that only have sense with mobile visitors. what do you think? Thanks, Juan Ignacio
Reporting & Analytics | | NachoRetta0 -
Difference in incoming links between web masters tool and moz
Why are incoming links to my site in Google Webmasters tools totally different then in MOZ? Which is correct? According to Google as of this week I have hundreds of links coming from linkarena (dot) com (Never heard) Does any one know who they are or if they are hurting me? I definitely did not pay them to put me on there. It looks like a German site. Thank you.
Reporting & Analytics | | omakad0 -
Google Analytics VS target="_blank" internal links: How much wrong is it?
I am working on an e-commerce website, and our CEO is sure that having target="_blank" in internal search result is boosting the conversion (not sure, but it's not an issue at the moment). The problem is that Google Analytics sees all URLs visited from search results as entrances/direct visits, hence the Booking Funnel Tracking does not work as it was supposed to. Is there any way to recover the tracking? Or we shall get the rid of target="_blank" attribute?
Reporting & Analytics | | apartmentGin0 -
Too many links because mega menu within wordpress
I have a mega menu on my website with a lot of product categories. In my site analysis its coming up as a problem because there are too many links and its on every page. Is this something i should worry about or how should i correct it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Inbuilds0 -
Tracking page visits
Hi guys After a lot of effort and late nights our website has gone online. http://www.health2000.co.nz/ In google Analytics am I able to see what pages individuals clicked on before they went to the cart? Ive had a look at GA 'Flow Visualsiton' but it seems a little confusing. Thanks for your help Pete
Reporting & Analytics | | dawsonski0 -
Campaigns: How to Decide What to Track?
Hi There! I'm new to SEOMoz, but not completely new to SEO. A bit of background: 9 year old content site, medium traffic (low 7 figures unique visitors yearly) with about 85% coming from SE traffic. (It was 75% but Panda seems to have bumped that up.) I've created this with zero keyword research. I just built a site that I would have liked to have found online. It's a weight loss/fitness website with tools, calculators and articles. I'm going to be working harder on getting traffic from other sources, but I signed up here because I want to make sure I'm taking full advantage of my site when it comes to SEO. Having said that, I'm at a loss as to what to do with a campaign. My site is huge, with thousands of pages and keywords. I started a campaign, threw in a few keywords and some competitors just to get started, but this seems so...directionless. How do I figure out what I want to analyze? Thanks! Suzanne
Reporting & Analytics | | Suzany0