Over the years, link building has emerged as one of the key SEO strategies. But you cannot just build links and leave them without monitoring and managing the results of the efforts invested. Also, you cannot simply count the links and vouch for the work you have done on building them and bringing results.
There are certain Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you can track for keeping an eye on your link building efforts and subsequently making improvements in the areas where required. Here are some KPIs that you can use for this purpose.
Organic search traffic
Perhaps, the most important improvement that you would want to witness by investing in link building service would be in the form of higher search traffic to your website. A larger number of people accessing your websites by clicking on inbound links is definitely good news for your campaign.
At the same time, this is not a singular factor that you can consider because there is a lot more that may contribute to increasing the traffic volume to the site. For example, content improvements and technical on-site SEO also have a key role in this aspect.
Referral traffic
Another metric that you can use for assessing the results of your link building efforts is referral traffic. A high figure indicates that you are building your links smartly rather than just increasing their numbers.
Guest posting coupled with content promotion, for example, does a great job at boosting the referral traffic to your site and is an indication of a quality backlink as well. The idea is to post quality content on niche-relevant, high-quality sites, and promote the publications as well.
Traffic to target pages
Every link building campaign, whether it involves guest posting or content promotion, is directed towards certain target pages. The objective of building links is to drive the users towards these target pages and engage the audience with them.
Therefore, traffic, organic rankings, and visitor engagement for these target pages can be considered as the critical performance indicators that you need to monitor.
Relevance
According to experts at OutreachMonks, the KPIs for measuring the results of your link building campaign should extend to qualitative metrics as well. Relevance is the most significant amongst these because Google prioritizes the links that are natural and relevant.
When you build links, make sure that you do them with sites that belong to the same niche and have a good authority on the internet. After all, you cannot expect to come in Google’s good books if you run a tech website but build links to a fashion blog.
Domain authority
Besides the relevance of the source website, its domain authority also matters when it comes to fetching results with your link building strategy. Efforts should therefore be concentrated on creating backlinks to websites that have a high Domain Authority because such links are capable of adding true value to your backlink profile.
Even though proving the efficacy of your link building strategy is challenging, these KPIs can help to a great extent. So you should make sure that you keep an eye on them consistently so that you can measure and improve it over time.