How to determine which links are contributing to my SEO?

Hey all

Recently I trialled a few contractors for linkbuilding. Quality over quantity and manual-only were 2 key requirements, which means its more difficult for me to judge which contractor did the best work (not as straightforward as judging by volume..)

Pagerank, and an actual subjective look at the websites where links have been posted (where possible) have been the only 2 things ive looked at to try and determine who did the best job..

Is there any way to figure which backlinks are contributing/had an effect on SEO?

This way i can figure which contractor contributed to my site's seo strength, and hire the right one for future work.

Thanks very much1

 

there are few factor that should be keep in mind while exchanging links.theme,outbound links,in which number your link have been placed,cache,home page outbound links.

 

i think you should ask to the contractors in which site's they are working link building. when you have those lists then judge your visitors from which link they are coming. then i think you can judge who is doing better seo work for your site.

 

In general, all the backlinks that are related to your niche and are coming from reputed sites, contribute in your SEO.

If you want a very precise report, you can use Google Analytics to see which backlinks are driving traffic to your website.

 

yes agreed with you, related links contribute a lot and in building , it is one great motivation to get back links from sites related to your niche

 

Any backlink helps

To determine each one how it helps that's hard/impossible ...

 

Check out wth Google webmaster tool to check your backlinks...

 

looking at what backlinks are indexed in Yahoo Site Explorer is a good start. additionally, looking at PR and Alexa of the site where the backlink is is also quite instructive.

 

Not all backlinks are expected to drive actual traffic to the site – by value, I mean value as in contribution to SEO, not visits, but yes good point – the most valuable ones will be driving visits so this would be a good way for me to find the actual functionally effective links.

 

Do you mean this will indicate to me, which backlinks have actually been indexed and taken into acct by Google in ranking my site?

 

The only links that will count are the one that are reported in Google's Webmaster Tools - Links to your site - section. But to have a link with bad or incorrect anchor text will have no real value. Also, if the link page is not indexed, or has no page rank or is blocked with a "No Follow" attribute, then the link is worthless. Oh, it also may be 6 months before Google starts posting the links.

 

When a page where you link is stable are showing in google result and cache continuously, it mean the link is contributing to SEO for you website.

 

Usually when you hire multiple contractors, its often difficult to justify the actual impact on seo overall unless you assign specific set of keywords for your contractor are promote and you can verify their work by checking the SERPs. However in your case for discussion purposes, I think you should browse through their link report (they should send you a list of links they built in excel or similar format) Go through each links and make sure your links are visible within the pages, articles, and blogs they are claiming and make sure they match your specs such as minimum PRs, geographic restrictions, static html, No follow, content relevancy, java links, correct anchor keywords etc.