It goes without saying at this point that link building is incredibly difficult. But what makes it even more difficult is not using the right SEO metrics for the job. But if we’re getting ahead of ourselves, allow us to slow down and let you know about the process of link building and the types of SEO metrics that you should be focusing your link building process on.
First of all, backlinks have played a crucial role in SEO in the last decade or so and work side by side with certain keywords for lead generation in order to boost a website’s search engine ranking. According to Moz, link building refers to acquiring hyperlinks from third-party websites to your very own. For novice web owners and operators, a hyperlink (or link) helps users navigate between various pages online.
When any other website links back to the content from your website, it basically informs Google and other search engines for that matter, that the content on your website is legitimate and will improve its search engine ranking.
However, not all backlinks are quality-driven and should be pursued. This is where SEO metrics come into the picture. There are a variety of metrics associated with links that we need to be wary of. It is with the help of these metrics that we can determine the value of the potential link so that we know whether it is worth acquiring or not.
But if you want to know which metrics you should be focusing on for your link building strategies, just follow the ones that we’ve highlighted below for you:
Most Crucial SEO Metrics for Your Link Building Campaign
1. Domain Strength
This is a metric that measures a website’s total authority or value all over the Internet. There are several pieces of data that it can provide us about a website including its age, popularity, quantity of content, and the number of backlinks it has.
The best way to inspect a website’s domain strength is to use the Moz Link Research tool. The reason for this is because Moz is the creator of all this. It’s also because Moz is highly renowned and seasoned for quality metrics.
Moz uses a term known as “domain authority” to determine a website’s domain strength. When hovering over that metric, it will write in the index “predicts a root domain’s ranking potential” compared to other websites.
2. Page Strength
Page authority is another metric from Moz, which is somewhat identical to domain authority, except it measures a single webpage’s authority. Page authority has a measuring scale of 0 to 100. Every new page starts with a score of 1 before it increases after some time by how online users ‘love’ it on an external basis and within your website hierarchy.
For instance, the page authority score of the BMW website’s homepage is 65. As such, this the highest page authority compared to the other pages on their website, both internally and externally. Another page regarding the BMW car compatibility has a relatively lower page authority score of 47.
Overall, the BMW website’s homepage will have a higher ranking than the car compatibility page. In other words, the higher the score, the higher the ranking.
3. Anchor Text
Anchor texts are also known as keywords that can be used to incorporate backlinks internally and externally from websites. For example, let’s assume that your website focuses on hairstyling. If you insert quality backlinks in keywords like ‘best hairstyling tips by experts,’ you’ll be informing your leads to inspect the services that link back to your website’s pages.
Also, the anchor text will enable Google to notice these keywords very closely so that its ranking algorithm can give them a higher ranking for better outreach and visibility.
4. Number of Links
This metric pretty much explains itself. It talks about the total number of backlinks to your website, making it to understand and track. Despite the total number of links on their own, not necessarily guaranteeing success, they are still quite useful for measurement.
This metric can help web owners determine whether they’re losing active links. Those active links are pretty useful websites that need to be prioritized. If they’re previously linked, then they can do so once again. This keeps your campaign running.
Secondly, it’s also a great way of comparing your domain to your competitors that rank above you on SERPs. It’s excellent for gauging your performance against your rivals to let you know whether they’re gaining or losing links.
5. Linking Root Domains
Linking root domains is an extremely powerful ranking indicator for Google. And when we’re talking about root domains, we’re referring to the numerous distinct domains that link back to us and not just the raw links. For instance, if CNN linked back to you from 5 separate news stories, that would be considered 5 links, but just one is linking the root domain since all 5 of those links came from CNN.com.
For instance, the BBC links to you from one story that will be regarded as a single link and a single linking root domain. Linking root domains serves as a more powerful signal than the raw number of links as it gives us a better indication of a website’s true popularity.
Getting several links from one domain could be due to various things. Linking back from multiple pages is one of them, but the most common ones out of them all are known as sitewide links. Such links are placed in a website’s template element, such as a footer, a sidebar, or a header.
