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
-
Google Analytics - Tracking multiple thankyou pages?
Hi Guys, I want to track email opt-ins for multiple thank you pages. The setup is as follows: http://image.prntscr.com/image/57632e05a15f42fda0b8ffec2d176460.png I have not yet built the thank you pages, so i was wondering what the URL should be to make it easy to track them in GA? I'm thinking: domain.com/thankyou-page/page1 Then using regular expression in GA to track /thankyou-page/ Would this be a good way to go about it? Cheers. f6c7r0
Reporting & Analytics | | spyaccounts110 -
How to track in google analytic which filters selected in which category?
Hi All, Can anyone tell me how to track which filters selected in which category like in category I have 1) price ( then different - different price) 2) color ( then difference - difference colors) same for size, width, brand etc. Is it possible to track in detail via tag manager? Other than tag manager what are the best way to track filters? Please explain me technical guidance too. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | adamjack0 -
Procedure of ecommerce tracking installation and set-up using GTM
Hello Experts, I have an e-commerce website. Google Analytic configured in Google Tag manager. Now in google analytic I have "ON" the Enable Ecommerce. Now i have to do ecommerce tracking installation and set-up? So can you please let me know the procedure? Regards, Jackin
Reporting & Analytics | | jackinmathis10 -
Magento and Analytics - Unique purchases tracking
Hi guys, My ecommerce site is on Magento and in order to integrate it with Google Analytics, I enter my GA account number on the Account Number field in the backend. What surprises me is that some purchases are not tracked at all. So for the month of may GA shows X unique purchases when Magento shows x+5. Can this occur because the customer leaves the site before the confirmation page is shown? Thanks. Regards
Reporting & Analytics | | footd0 -
Cross Domain Tracking
I want to track across domains, but also track as a virtual pageview anytime someone clicks on the link to another domain. So currently I have, for example: Checkout Now! As per Google's instructions, I need to have the link set to: Checkout Now! But this will obviously get rid of my virtual pageview. Is there a way I can do both?
Reporting & Analytics | | TeachersMutualBank0 -
Can you link several sites together in Google Webmaster Tools?
I have a client saying that there is a way to link 3 separate websites (A website for each department of a company) in Google Webmaster tools to tell Google it's basically one site but really its 3. Or to tell Google it's the same company and all the sites are one. I have never heard of this & I don't see the point in making 3 separate small sites & "linking" them as one in Webmaster tools. Is there in fact a way? Am I out to lunch on what they might be referring to? I am recommending they create one larger authority site with a page on each department & earn links for each department page & provide informative unique content for each page. Thoughts? Thanks for the help!
Reporting & Analytics | | DCochrane0 -
What's the final word on Image Search tracking in Google Analytics?
Sorry if this has been answered but I can't seem to get a straight answer to my questions by searching around. How is traffic referred by Google Images counted in Google Analytics? I know it used to be referral traffic from google.com/imgres. A lot of things I have read say that it should all be under google/organic now, but my site still gets referral traffic from google.com/imgres, so that can't be. However I also get traffic as google/organic that I am pretty sure is from image search, because we don't rank for the keyword normally, but we do for image search. What's the deal? How is traffic from an embedded image in a regular result page counted? How can I segment my image search traffic better? It would be great to see image search traffic as it's own medium. I found a script here -- http://jrom.net/google-images-in-google-analytics -- that looks promising, has anyone used it or can recommend another way? I haven't used the GA API very much so I want to make sure the script is kosher and won't screw up my numbers.
Reporting & Analytics | | tact0 -
Rel=nofollow link to a NoFollow, NoIndex Page?
I have a multitude of "schedule a demo" pages/forms on my site that are all identical, so I have on all of them. My question is, should I also place on the link to the "schedule a demo" pages? I know the generic rule is to never nofollow any internal links (per Matt Cutts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVOOB_Q0MZY), but should that still apply if the link directs to a page that is noindex, nofollow? Thanks for your input in advance; don't want to run into, as Matt Cutts puts it, "a mini kerfuffle!"
Reporting & Analytics | | BethA0