In-house Link Builder

As an inhouse link builder, your ability to CONTINUE building links hinges on how clearly you communicate their impact to your boss. While you certainly have many advantages as an inhouse link builder, you won't be around long enough to leverage them if you fail to demonstrate your successes and justify your existence. We asked 7 inhouse link builders which metrics they focus on when showing the results of their efforts to upper management.

The Bottom Line

At the top of the list of course is the measurable impact on income and income-focused metrics... There are three metrics here that we grouped under "bottom line."

Here are further thoughts on the bottom line from our contributors:
Phil Buckley: "The only metric [upper management] generally understand is conversion and revenue. I work with charts to show how better ranking means more clicks, more conversions and finally more revenue. A graph that shows things getting better will always get more buy in."
Dan London: "You can get together a ton of data and charts, but revenue and ROI are all that matters."

SERP Impact

The SERPs - so long as you're effectively measuring them - are a natural place to point the attention of the deciders in your organization.

Here are further thoughts on SERP impact from our contributors:
Ross Hudgens: "I [demonstrate success] by showing them the # of links we get per week, and how those links have turned into changes in rankings." Al Scilitani: "Showing the baseline, number of backlinks what starting and showing the rankings compared to top competitors. Then showing the rank increases and number of new backlinks."

Link Count

Another way to show your impact is in the sheer number of new links acquired. We all know this is not the most accurate measure of value, but it's certainly worth noting.
5) Number of New Backlinks
Here are further thoughts on link count from our contributors:
Aaron Bradley: "On one hand raw link data, like the change over time in the number of links reported by Webmaster Tools, the average link value for pages within a cluster."

Hours Spent

How much time did you spend acquiring those links? This metric is important to clearly show the overall investment as well as to show that you're genuinely putting in ENOUGH time on link building.
6) Time Spent on Link Building
Ross Hudgens: "But the most important metric is rankings – if they see that’s going up, they could care less about the links – as long as they see a properly allocated time to the procedure."

Link Prospects in the Pipeline

Special Thanks to Our Inhouse Link Building Contributors

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