Are we measuring link building the right way?

GetCommentFlow · Sunday at 3:00 PM

The quality and quantity of the links are both important, and they work better when combined together!

Sarah Mathews · Monday at 6:57 AM

johnyow416 said:
SEO is dead. stop wasting hundreds and thousands of dollars on useless spammed backlinks from spammed websites for backlinks.... Google will never rank your website with these backlinks and will penalize your website's ranking with package backlinks or dropped-domain guest posts which are spam too.

better flip burger in your local market or apply for job of flipping burgers at McDonald.

Fair point on spammy backlinks. But that’s exactly why I’m talking about measuring link quality, relevance, and actual seo impact, not buying bulk packages.

good link building and spam link building are two very different things.

nicenic · Monday at 11:25 AM

Counting links is probably the weakest way to measure a campaign. I’d look at referring-domain quality, topical relevance, the target page, indexed status and whether the links bring impressions or qualified traffic.

MarketSellCap · Monday at 11:36 AM

For me the clearest signal is target-page movement after the links go live. DR and link count are useful for reporting, but rankings, impressions and organic clicks tell you whether those links actually helped.

SEO Sparton · Tuesday at 2:08 PM

I would say that the best indicator of success would be growth in organic traffic and ranking for the target pages.

The number of links is just a means to an end; what matters is the effect on growth.

RTX SEO · Tuesday at 10:34 PM

One useful sign is how well the new links fit into the website’s overall profile. A campaign looks healthier when it adds credible, relevant references gradually rather than creating an unnatural pattern just to hit a delivery number.

BrownMarketing · Tuesday at 10:40 PM

honestly the simplest check is whether the page hosting your link actually gets any search traffic itself. if google doesn't even index the page or send it any impressions, that link is basically dead weight no matter what the metrics say...

GSERP · 2026-09-02T05:41:21+0100

Sarah Mathews said:
Hi,I have noticed that many link building campaigns are still measured mainly by ,how many links were delivered?.

But 100 backlinks don't necessarily mean 100 valuable links.for me, the bigger factors are referring domain quality, topical relevance, placement context, target page relevance, and the overall strength of the link profile.

A few highly relevant placements can sometimes contribute more than a large number of unrelated links.so instead of only reporting,“100 links delivered.”

I think we should also look at:

Relevant referring domains → Quality placements → Target-page growth → Ranking movement → Organic visibility

Link building should ultimately help build authority and sustainable organic growth, not just increase the backlink count.
For experienced link builders, what metric do you consider the best indicator that a backlink campaign is actually working?

Yeah.. I’d look at quality, referring domains and movement of the linked pages too. Link count be more of delivery KPI, but if 20 relevant links improve impressions, rankings, and organic traffic, I’ll take that over random links any day.

DigitalRiseHQ · 2026-09-02T05:57:12+0100

Sarah Mathews said:
Hi,I have noticed that many link building campaigns are still measured mainly by ,how many links were delivered?.

But 100 backlinks don't necessarily mean 100 valuable links.for me, the bigger factors are referring domain quality, topical relevance, placement context, target page relevance, and the overall strength of the link profile.

A few highly relevant placements can sometimes contribute more than a large number of unrelated links.so instead of only reporting,“100 links delivered.”

I think we should also look at:

Relevant referring domains → Quality placements → Target-page growth → Ranking movement → Organic visibility

Link building should ultimately help build authority and sustainable organic growth, not just increase the backlink count.
For experienced link builders, what metric do you consider the best indicator that a backlink campaign is actually working?

I'd also check how many links are still live after a few months. A campaign can look good at first, but if a lot of those links disappear, the results can change pretty quickly.

Are we measuring link building the right way?

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