How Succesful?

[wedmonds]

Hi All,

How would you identify how succesful you have been to date when link building and trying to improve rank?

I have been running a campaign for a client that I think has been going pretty well.  However, I would now like to show this but I am finding it hard to explain in my first report.

Its only been around two months and the client is use to looking at google analytics for their information but I wondered if someone might be able to give me an idea of what I should include in my report intially.  I dont want to swamp with information so really want to be specific if possible.

Domain Authority: 29 now 28

Domain Moz Rank: 3.30 now 3.98

Domain Moz Trust: 3.47 now 3.76

Total Links: 3,053 now 6,123

Ext. Followed Links: 2,995 now 378   (hoping someone might be able to explain this also!)

Linking Root Domains: 21 now 28

Followed Linking Root Domains: 18 now 26

Linking C Blocks: 16 now 22

Are these poor results or are they clear signs of progress?

I guess I want to end up with a report saying some key point and giving some information on the above results, why the changes have happend etc.  Obviously I would like to continue and up the link building but would appreciate some feedback from others as to whether the time has been wasted   (i dont think it has incidentally but proving it might be another issue)

Thanks all

[CraigBradford]

Hi Wayne,

Firstly I would look back at what the scope of the project was, what were the aims and objectives of the project? This should help you answer whether or not you have been successful in achieving those goals. Let me first address some of your concerns on the drop in links etc:

Domain Authority: 29 now 28

Domain Moz Rank: 3.30 now 3.98

Domain Moz Trust: 3.47 now 3.76

Total Links: 3,053 now 6,123

Ext. Followed Links: 2,995 now 378   (hoping someone might be able to explain this also!)

Linking Root Domains: 21 now 28

Followed Linking Root Domains: 18 now 26

Linking C Blocks: 16 now 22

SEOmoz have made some updates to the crawling - sadly, with a few hiccups. The new crawler is built to be fresher, but it is going deeper into domains, and, unfortunately, not visiting as many domains. Domains with a high MozRank are getting crawled deeper, but domains with middle to lower MozRanks are not getting crawled. Their top priority now is to get the domain diversity back up to or better than that of our last update (as was originally designed) so that they should have many more inbound links.

The above can be your answer to any questions regarding the drop in stats, explain that it's not that anything has been done badly, it's just the way it's being measured and should return to normal after the next update (hopefully).

If you have been building links you should also have a list of domains that you can prove you have been building links so again I wouldn't worry about explaining that.

Some good ways to measure success other than ranks are:

-Traffic volumes

• Number of referring domains

• Number of referring keywords

• Average time spent on site

-Reduced bounce rate

Some of those might not be relevant if all you have been doing is link building but take what you need and leave the rest. I think the best is to look at traffic and number of keywords referring traffic. The reason being, while you might not be position1 or on page 1 for a lot of terms yet, you may be getting a lot of longer tail traffic which you can definitely take credit for.

I hope this helps

Craig

[wedmonds]

Thanks for reply, all of that helps.

Some other questions:

Q. When are the updates usually rolled out from SEOMOZ?

Q. How does one go about explaining to their clients the differences between Google Analytics and SEOMOZ?  Traffic seems to differ somewhat as one example.

Q. How many new links would one hope to create a week for a client?

Thanks all

[CraigBradford]

Q1 - Usually there is one update per month, sometimes more, they are trying to spped this up.

Q2 - Always use analytic for traffic reporting, any data you get from within the SEOmoz app is pulled from the Google analytics account anyway so their shouldn't be any difference. (perhaps I've miss-understood that question)

Q3 - The number of links depends entirely on the client, what the budget is, where the links are coming from so it's impossible to answer that question, not all links are created equal after all.

Craig

[EGOL]

If I was a client and the service provider gave me a bunch of numbers I would not be too impressed.

The thing that would get my attention is something ringing.

That could be my telephone or my cash register.

How can you make something ring? That will make you an unquestionable success.