Tracking Your Link Building Efforts

Google is by and large the best source of free traffic available on the web today, and in order to take full advantage of that traffic we have to pay attention to certain SEO (Search Engine Optimization) aspects which include link building. Generally speaking, the more links, and the more powerful they are, the better the rankings you can expect in the search engines.

Building links usually gets outsourced to SEO “experts” because website and blog owners think there is some secret aspect to the whole process, but truth be told there are plenty of high ranking sites out there that are being run by people just like you. They say “practice makes perfect” and with the repetitive nature of link building you’ll soon be an “expert” yourself.

When building links to your site it’s important to remember that your site is made up of inner pages as well as a homepage. Link generously to all your pages and then interlink within your site to take full advantage of the SEO benefits that come with those links.

Link diversity is something that pertains to building an assortment of links rather than focusing the majority of your time on one you might find “easy” or “comfortable”. Many people get in the habit of only using commenting as a means of getting links and totally miss out on the numerous other methods out there.

Here are a few of the links you can look at using in your own link building campaigns:

• Blog Commenting – Also a great way to get to know other bloggers in your niche.

• Forum posting – Most forums will allow you a signature that can include a link back to your website or blog, the more you post on those forums the more links you are effectively building from that particular site.
• Guest Posts – This is definitely one of the best ways to get a link from many of the higher profile sites in your industry. When you consider that companies are paying anywhere from $25.00 to $75.00 or more a month for a simple text link within a blog post you truly start to see the value here.
• Social Bookmarking – Generally these links aren’t as valuable as some others, but they are relatively easy to obtain, and adding them to your link portfolio is always a good choice.
• Directories – Now there are premium directories like Yahoo, DMOZ, Eaton, BOTW that carry a decent amount of SEO benefit all on their own, but there are also free and low quality ones that require literally thousands to be of any use to you at all. I’d suggest investing in at least two of the premium ones, and as many of the others as you’ve got the patience to build. (Tip: RoboForm will fill out the fields on directory sites making your job a lot easier)
• Link Exchanges – This is when blogger A links to blogger B, and blogger B reciprocates. Generally you’ll be able to choose the keyword and anchor text to be used which goes a lot further than a link using just your name, or domain name.
• Paid Links – This is where you pay for the link on a site (usually on a monthly or annual basis). These links are against Google’s TOS (terms of service) and can get you penalized if someone reports you, or if you’re found out some other way. I’d recommend staying away from these.
• Web 2.0 Properties are a great place to expand your reach while at the same time getting a link that can then be improved (by building links to the property itself). Squidoo, Hubpages, and Blogger are just a few of the literally hundreds that are available to use freely.

Now there are many more links a person can get such as software download sites (create, or have a piece of handy software designed and then upload it to the hundreds of high ranking software sites that are online. Images, Video’s, eBooks and more can all be used to generate links to your website. The only limits are your imagination and creativity.

All this link building effort should be tracked so that you can see at a glance where and how your links are being placed as well as the effect they are having on your site’s rankings. A few things you might want to keep track of are:

• Date – this is the date the link went live, you can also note dates you checked to see if the link was still in place. (You’d probably only do this for your top 100 most valuable links)
• URL – Location or website the link is on.
• Contact or email of the person or site owner responsible for placing the link.
• Anchor text used to link back to you.
• PageRank, or authority of the domain, or individual page. (A good trick is to build links to these links in order to increase their PageRank. Most website owners will also be improving their sites which will eventually trickle down to the individual articles themselves so over time all your links could become much more valuable and powerful.
• Where the link is pointing on your site. (Homepage, individual post, etc.)
• Notes Section – As you notice increases in keyword rankings or PageRank you can jot them down here.

There might be other aspects you’d like to track and there are no hard and fast rules, but the simple act of tracking your links serves to act as a performance document and tracking sheet. It also tends to lend itself toward motivation, because most of us like to see measurable results increasing over time as a direct result of our efforts. And last it also serves to legitimize your blog, or business. Inventory lists, operations manuals, sales tracking sheets, etc. all show that an individual is taking his or her blog seriously.

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