How do you track new inbound links?

[Jenny8675309]

Hello Fellow SEOs,

I've been charged with managing and tracking my company's linkbuilding efforts. I'd love to hear from others experienced in this area:

-is there a way in OSE to sort links by date?

-if this isn't possible, how can you tell what new links come in every month? Is this a manual process of downloading and comparing inbound links every week? This seems pretty tedious and I would love to hear what you all do and if there is a better way.

I do have a Google Alert out for my company name, but that doesn't necessarily give me what I need.

Thank you!
Jenny

[ChiarynMiranda]

Hi Jenny,

Thanks for writing in.

There isn't a way to sort by date in OSE because the index is updated to a new, current index with each update (usually about once a month) and it isn't compared against previous indexes, so each link in the current index has been discovered again that month, even if it has been in previous indexes. Technically, the way our index is created means that all of the links in the current index are "discovered" or "rediscovered" within the past 3-4 weeks. We don't retain historical link data in the index because we think it is important to show the most current data that we can so our index doesn't necessarily show you what are considered new link, just what would be considered current links.

We do show historical link metrics regarding the number of links and linking root domains in the link analysis section of the campaign web app, but I'm afraid that they don't show specific links in the historical section.

Let me know if you have any other questions about OSE.

-Chiaryn

[David_ODonnell]

You might want to track things like # of links on a regular basis (monthly) 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.

[Jenny8675309]

Thanks, Kris! I didn't see an OSE team feature bucket, unless I missed that.

And unfortunately I don't have a paid AHREFS or Majestic account and the free tools are a little limiting.

[KrisRoadruck]

Not sure on OSE but in both AHREFS and Majestic there is a "first discovered" date on links. Perhaps this should go in the feature request bucket for the OSE team?