It’s a common building block of optimizing websites for the search engines – links to your site are an important part of a search engine’s algorithm and thus, where your site appears in a results page.
So suffice it to say that link building is an important part of optimizing a site for the search engines.
But how do you track sites that are linking to you?
Many webmasters and SEO professionals use different tools like Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and others to track link building. Sadly, many of these tools are inaccurate and provide different results as expressed in this HighRankings Forum thread. The undependability of these tools is best stated by Rosemary, who says “one month Yahoo would show 10,000 inbound links and the next month only 300.”
Needless to say, it is difficult to rely on tools that you don’t know much about and have no control over fixing bugs and other malfunctions. And none of them are 100% accurate.
Especially if you do SEO work for other people, you need a way to track who and how many sites are linking to you…spreadsheets are one way to do this.
(Read our post Organize Link Building Campaigns with Excel Type Worksheets for more information on tracking link building efforts)
Many replies in the thread focused on spreadsheets and their usefulness in effectively communicating link building efforts to clients. Many SEOs, including us, use spreadsheets to track where and when someone links to a site we’re working on. Spreadsheets also provide accountability, which is impossible with online tools like Google Webmaster Tools.
One more thing to think about that was mentioned – one webmaster in the thread said they don’t focus much at all on link popularity but simply compare their site’s position to others in that niche. Perhaps this is a good way to think about link building since you’re shooting for high rankings in your niche keywords anyway.
Let us know your experiences with link building and tracking who’s linking to you and when.