Link building is really important for your site, but at the same time, you can’t pay the bills with backlinks. As nice as a higher domain rating is, it doesn’t really mean anything unless you see some sort of return and results with it.
In this article, I’m going to teach you how to get started on link building and exactly how to measure Return on Investment (ROI).
Link Building Doesn’t Happen Overnight
The first thing that I’d say is that because link building is a very slow process, you don’t see immediate results.
It’s not like Facebook ads, for example, where you can set up the ads one day, and then you’re going to see instant returns within a day.
Observe The Window Period
With link building, it takes a little bit longer to see results. If you’re going to measure the ROI of link building, use a 180-day window. You could use the 90-day window, but that’s potentially too early for you to see the full scope of your progress.
What you can do is check your organic traffic before you started building links, and then compare it with six months after you built links. You should see a positive correlation between the backlinks that you built, and the traffic to your site.
Build Backlinks and Produce Content
While you’re building links, it is also important that you are producing enough content that targets low competition and high volume keywords.
Link building will grow your website’s authority, but you’re not going to see the true benefits of ranking for keywords, unless you start publishing content for your site too.
The combination of backlinks and content is a must for your site. Especially when you want to grow your website’s SEO traffic.
You can easily do this by setting up the Google Analytics code on your website and then tracking the influx of traffic that comes in from SEO.
Don’t Measure To Early
If you filter specifically to SEO traffic on Analytics, it will give you an accurate picture of the results and returns from link building. The thing that you have to know when it comes to the ROI of link building, is that it’s like planting a seed.
If you plant a seed in real life and you’re expecting a plant to pop up the next day, you’d be kind of disappointed. It’s the same with link building. You have to wait, and be patient and persistent with link building before you start seeing a ROI.
Don’t measure the ROI too early. Give it a good amount of time before you start checking the results. Because you have to plant and cultivate, you’re going to harvest results later on down the line.
Be Patient and Persistent
Now you might be thinking, “six months? That’s way too long to wait. I want results right now. I don’t want to wait six months to see results on my website with link building. Why would I ever invest in that?”.
But, when it comes to link building, you have to be patient and persistent, and in the end the results will be 100% worth it.
For example, my link building agency has so many good reviews on Upwork, because my clients have seen thousands of dollars in sales simply by boosting the number of links to their site.
When you start building links to your site and you start producing more content, you’ll see a huge influx of new visitors, sales, and leads to your website. In the end, being patient and persistent is worth it for you to get your ROI.
Passive Output
Once you’ve got a good amount of traffic flow into your site, you don’t really need to do much more to keep that going. You have to maintain it, but once it is all set up it is a fairly passive process.
But, what I would normally recommend to clients, is to try to keep growing and improving on that previous SEO process.
Domain Rating
If you want to almost instantly track the ROI of link building on your website, then what you can use is the domain rating. This is a measure of your website’s authority, that is directly linked to the number of backlinks you have to your site.
Using a website like Ahrefs.com, type in your website and you will see your domain rating and how it has changed over time.
You can track it and see if the needle is moving up, staying the same, or going down. If you build in links that are high quality to your site, then 9 times out of 10, you’re going to see the domain rating gradually increasing.
But, like I said at the beginning of this article, you can’t really pay the bills with a domain rating. And it doesn’t really mean anything unless you see results and more organic traffic coming to your site. So, it’s kind of like a vanity metric.
It does give you a slight indicator of the ROI of your link building, but at the same time, it doesn’t have a direct impact on your website’s revenue. Therefore, I don’t recommend it as the number one factor for measuring link building.
Why Does It Take So Long To See ROI From Link Building?
So, why does it take so long to see the ROI from link building?
Usually, it’s because Google Scholar has to find all the links that you have scattered around the internet. And because the internet is an extremely big place, it’s hard to find and crawl each of these backlinks.
This is why it takes time for the results to gradually crawl in.
It’s important to remember that if building your own website was easy, everyone would do it. Everyone would build their own website, get a lot of links, and start ranking on Google.
But the truth is, link building requires patience and persistence. The results will be 100% worth it, but many people simply don’t have the patience for this process.
Think About Long-Term Goals
If you can bypass the need for instant gratification, then you will see much better results with SEO link building for your site. Thinking about long-term goals is the right approach when it comes to any type of business.
If you are persistent and have patience, you will eventually see amazing results with link building. But, it does take time. In my own personal experience, I can’t think of anything that is quick and easy, that is actually worthwhile.
When it comes to business, or your website, it’s always better to think long-term. Think about how you can grow your website, and what you can do next to continue your progress.
This will likely benefit you in six months’ time. If you can do that, you’re gonna see amazing results with link building in SEO.
