The SEO industry is notorious for measuring the value of inbound links based solely on domain authority. When chasing rankings was the name of the game this measurement had validity. Rankings aren’t the goal of SEO today – maximizing the number of keywords driving traffic is. Besides, businesses are in the business of making money. Does domain authority measure real business value? Can it be tracked to conversions or sales? The answer is “no.” As a result, the below list includes five ways to measure the true business value of an inbound link for both B2B and B2C brands.
Advanced online marketing departments know how many visitors it takes to get a conversion and how much the conversion is worth. This makes tracking the number of visitors from a backlink a way to measure its business value.
Similar to referring traffic, the number of conversions acquired from a backlink measures real business value. It also identifies what type of content or topics resonates with the patrons of the referring site. This data can significantly help with the content marketing planning process while leading to referral traffic optimization.
This is a measure of efficiency. Companies that deploy robust content marketing initiatives often see their content syndicated. These syndication relationships can lead to dozens or even hundreds of inbound links from a single domain. By looking at the number of conversions per link a marketer can normalize the value of each individual link. This data comes in handy when deploying strategic earned media or digital PR campaigns.
Just like the above, the visit to conversion ratio is efficiency measurement. High ratios should be deliberately targeted for guest posting or media coverage. Linking domains with a high visit-to-conversion ratio should be identified and exploited because they provide real and efficient business value.
This measurement is very important for B2C brands – especially eCommerce. On the other hand, it may not be a good measurement for B2-B brands with small client portfolios. Ecommerce marketers will want to know the average and total sales from each linking domain and individual backlink. This information is critical for making future strategic outreach profitable.
Instead of tracking metrics devoid of real business value, like PageRank or mozRank, consider the above five metrics when measuring the value of an inbound link. These metrics empower marketers with the knowledge to accurately target those websites that drive the most business value with earned media outreach and digital PR.
