Top SEO Metrics for Link Building and Why They Matter

What is Link Building?

Backlinks are an essential part of SEO and work hand in hand with keywords for lead generation through higher ranking on search engines. An outbound link is a hyperlink that can be embedded into an external webpage with redirection toward the main landing page or category pages of a parent website.

An inbound link is a link that can be embedded on the parent website with redirection towards an external source. The entire process of link building is a business’s way of proving its credibility and reputation before Google so that its ranking algorithm can assess its online presence and boost its position on the search Engine.

Quality link building strategies are important for Google’s web crawlers to take out the trash – including your competition – so that you can acquire the position that you’ve strived for. In other terms, link building is a process that helps to explain the legitimacy of a domain – the greater the number of backlinks, the higher the ranking on Google for lead generation and closed deals for sales.

Backlinks are usually attached to keywords along with the quality of the content published on a website. In order to ensure the quality of a backlink, you’d have to make sure that the content of your preferred external resource is qualitative and worth following for cross-navigation.

There are a few key SEO metrics that might help you manage your inbound and outbound links. Mentioned below are top SEO metrics that we think might be useful for digital marketers, especially those belonging to the B2B industry.

Domain Strength – Domain Authority

The first key metric in our list is a thorough yet cumulative analysis of your brand-new website’s domain strength. In order to proceed with link building strategies, you need to understand what domain strength actually means and how important it can be for managing your inbound and outbound backlinks on newly created web pages. Digital marketers at Moz coined Domain Strength as a key metric for analyzing the position or the value of a website’s domain with reference to its age, content size, and popularity.

With this key metric, you can measure the domain authority of niche websites that you’re interested in streamlining through your services. For instance, if you want to embed a CTR on your page to an external source, then this key metric might come in handy to uncover the authority of interested domains and valuable backlinks. This will help you to focus on your SERP landing, making sure that you focus on domains that are strong, informative and authoritative.

A website’s domain authority spans from 0 to 100 – the greater the number, the higher the domain authority and quality of content on the website. For instance, CNN has a domain authority of 99, which means that it not only has quality content but is a website that is authorized by Google as prime and reputable. Ranking your page via CNN would allow Google to check into your domain authority as well, therefore boosting your page ranking and lead generation.

Page Strength – PageRank/ Page Authority

While Domain Authority helped you learn whether a CTA to a brand new page is worth embedding on your website or not, PageRank helps you cater to the opposite so that you can be treat-wise with your budget and time.

With PageRank, you can analyze whether pre-existing pages are as valuable as they claim to be before Google or not – this is termed Page Authority or Page Strength. This is equally as important as Domain Strength and, therefore, tells you whether your website is strong enough to be included among top-rated websites for higher visibility.

Anchor Text

Anchor texts are keywords that can be used to embed backlinks to and from web pages. For instance, let’s suppose that your brand focuses on beauty and skincare. By inserting valuable backlinks in keywords such as ‘skincare routine’ or ‘best skin care tips by experts’, you’re actually telling your leads to learn more about the services that are linked to the pages. Additionally, these anchor texts will then help Google take notice of these keywords with close variations, allowing its ranking algorithm to rank them higher for better visibility and outreach.

However, the latest Penguin update penalized a lot of websites that overtly optimized their content with anchor texts with little or no context. It is, therefore, advisable to cater only to high-quality and fewer backlinks so that your website and content look as natural and subtle as possible.

Relevance of the linking page is another key metric that allows Google to assess the entire content of your website with reference to the backlink placed within the anchor text on an external source. This ensures whether your website conforms to link equity with quality for the attention of your target audience or not.

Number of Links

Assessment of the number of backlinks in a designated link building campaign is highly important for two basic purposes. Firstly, it helps to assess the success of your campaign by measuring the progress entailed throughout, and secondly, it helps to compare it with that of your competitors. You can also assess your competition before actually giving into a link building campaign to have an idea about your niche industry and the struggle you might have to put up with to rank higher.

Surely, quantity matters, but it is also essential that if you’re linking 1,000 web pages to your domain, then make sure that they’re all qualitative and worth the search. If your competitor has a number this high of linking domains, then there is a possibility that your analysis of its number of links might involve some differences with gaps that you can cover with your time, effort, and budget. This will help propel you amidst your competition, therefore causing you to break the ice in your industry.

Link building metrics might be slightly tricky yet easy to understand. They help you focus on your brand’s revenue with specific attention to your ROI. You can also analyze the Cost per Link before commencing a link building campaign for your brand that just improves your SEO and brand’s visibility without any significant profitability. Make sure all that money doesn’t go to waste – competition might be stiff, but there is no reason why you can’t progress above it intellectually.