Link building reporting is much more than your in-house link builder’s weekly report.
Fully-managed SEO and Link building agencies provide detailed reports with much more than just the number of links they built.
In this article, we’ll talk about 18 metrics you should include in your link building reporting to your clients.
Link building cheat sheet
Link Acquisition Metrics
Number of New Backlinks
This metric counts the total number of new backlinks acquired during the reporting period – as well as any that were lost.
It’s the core link building metric and shows your overall effectiveness at acquiring backlinks.
Tools: Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, and Majestic.
Total and New Referring Domains
This metric measures both the total number of unique domains linking to your site and the number of new referring domains acquired.
It’s crucial because building links from a diverse set of high quality domains is generally more valuable than having many links from a single domain.
Tools: Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, and Majestic.
Domain Authority (DA)/ Domain Rating (DR)
DA (by Moz) and DR (by Ahrefs) are metrics that gauge the overall strength and credibility of a domain.
A higher DA or DR can indicate a more authoritative website, which means backlinks from such sites can significantly benefit your SEO.
Page Authority (PA)/URL Rating (UR)
PA (by Moz) and UR (by Ahrefs) focus on the strength of individual pages rather than the entire domain.
More links results in a higher PA/UR, which is often associated with higher rankings on search engine results pages.
Trust Flow
Trust Flow, provided by Majestic, measures the quality of the backlinks pointing to your site.
In Layman’s terms, it’s Majestic’s version of “link juice”
High Trust Flow indicates that your backlinks come from well-established, trustworthy sources, enhancing the credibility and authority of your own site.
Link Quality Metrics
Anchor Text Distribution
This metric looks at the variety and types of anchor texts used in the backlinks pointing to your site.
A diverse and relevant anchor text distribution is crucial for natural link profiles and helps improve keyword rankings.
Anchor texts can be exact-match, partial-match, and semantic.
Follow vs No-follow Links
This metric shows the proportion of follow links (which pass SEO value) versus no-follow links (which do not pass SEO value).
A healthy backlink profile typically includes a mix of both types to appear more natural to search engines.
Spam Score
Spam Score, provided by Moz, measures the likelihood that a website might be penalized or banned by search engines based on various spam signals.
Monitoring this metric helps you identify and disavow potentially harmful backlinks that could negatively impact your site’s SEO.
Traffic and Engagement Metrics
Referral Traffic
This metric measures the amount of traffic being directed to your site from other websites via backlinks.
It’s useful for understanding how much visibility and engagement your backlinks are generating, indicating the effectiveness of your link placements.
Engagement Metrics
Engagement metrics, such as time on page, pages per session, and bounce rate, measure how users interact with your site after arriving through a backlink.
These metrics help you understand the quality of the traffic and whether the linked content is engaging and relevant to the audience.
Growth and Trends
Link Velocity
Link velocity measures the rate at which your site is acquiring both backlinks and referring domains over time.
A natural, consistent link velocity is crucial for maintaining healthy SEO growth, while sudden spikes or drops may raise red flags with search engines and could potentially lead to penalties.
Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis involves evaluating the backlink profiles of your competitors to understand their link building strategies, your backlink gap, and benchmark your performance.
This metric is useful for identifying link building opportunities, gaining insights into industry trends, and making strategic adjustments to outperform competitors.
Toxic Links
Toxic links are backlinks from low quality, spammy, or potentially harmful websites that could negatively impact your site’s SEO.
This can also include broken internal links.
Identifying and disavowing toxic links is crucial for preventing penalties and maintaining a clean, healthy backlink profile.
Performance and ROI
Cost per Link
This metric calculates the average cost incurred to acquire a single backlink.
So, let’s suppose you have a team of 10 link builders working for $1,200/month in your agency, providing you with 400 links/month.
Let’s skip all other possible expenses related to your link building for simplicity:
12000 ÷ 400 = 30$/link
With this knowledge, you’ll be able to price your link building service more intelligently.
Additionally, you’ll need to know your Cost per Link to find your ROI.
Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI in link building measures the financial return gained from your link building efforts relative to the cost invested.
It’s an essential metric for understanding the overall effectiveness and profitability of your link building campaigns, helping demonstrate the value generated to stakeholders.
Social Signals
Social signals measure the engagement and shares your content receives on social media platforms.
These signals can indirectly benefit your SEO by increasing content visibility, driving more traffic, and potentially attracting more backlinks naturally.
Link building cheat sheet
Now Over To You
Looking to improve your link building team’s performance and provide better reports as a result?
Don’t hesitate to start your 14-day free trial with Respona to see how we can help.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is link building reporting and why is it important?
Link building reporting provides detailed insights into the effectiveness and progress of your link building campaign as well as your overall content marketing.
It is important because it helps you monitor key metrics, demonstrate value to stakeholders, and make informed decisions to optimize your link building strategy.
How often should I generate link building reports?
The frequency of link building reports can vary, but typically, monthly reporting strikes a good balance between providing timely updates and allowing enough time to gather meaningful data.
Weekly reports can be useful for more detailed, short-term tracking in fast-paced campaigns.
What tools are recommended for link building reporting?
The most common link building tool set for link building reporting includes Ahrefs, Moz, SEMrush, Majestic, and Google Analytics.
These tools provide comprehensive data on backlinks, referring domains, traffic metrics, and more.
How do I distinguish between high quality and low quality backlinks in my report?
High quality backlinks originate from authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy websites with good link building metrics like DA/DR and Trust Flow.
Low quality backlinks are typically from spammy, irrelevant, or low-authority sites with high spam scores and low Trust Flow.
What should I do if I identify toxic links in my link building report?
If you identify toxic links, use tools like Google’s Disavow Tool to disassociate your site from these harmful backlinks.
Additionally, it might be beneficial to contact the webmasters of such sites to request link removal.
