Link Popularity Building - Measuring ROI
Start with referring traffic when establishing an ROI for what you spend on link popularity building and online PR.
Often, businesses count how many links they get to define an ROI. With search engine optimization, companies make the mistake of limiting their ROI to rankings. In the PPC world, they get caught up with the click-thru-rate (CTR).
Online PR and links should be about traffic - not increased link volume. Clearly, link popularity building can influence the amount of traffic. But 100 links can bring 50 visitors and three links can bring 1,000.
It's all about quality and relevance.
As a starting point, add up your planned investment in link popularity building (i.e. research costs and your paid links/banner ad budget). Determine how much you typically pay for a visitor (through your other marketing endeavors). Divide the investment by your average cost per visitor to establish an ROI goal based on the number of new referring visitors you would like to get (i.e. over a year).
As with search engine optimization, online PR and link building can take considerable time. You may get some good links after several months. Once you have them, that traffic will continue well after you've paid for the link building. Online PR has a viral marketing effect; you can get links from places you never contact (they simply link to you because you offered a neat tool, developed a study or made a white paper).
Although referral traffic is a major way to measure online PR and link development, other metrics can offer great insights as well, including views of an optimized news release, visits to a particular page, forms filled out, phone calls, orders, etc.
Online PR and link success can be helped in many ways. Here are a few areas to keep in mind to get the best possible ROI:
1. Be selective.
Don't try to get links for the sake of links. Target outstanding industry websites and directories (paid or free).
2. Think outside of the box.
If you sell children's clothes, don't just target clothing websites. Offer valuable information about children, clothing, etc., that parenting or health sites may want.
3. Promote the right descriptions.
Websites that link to you may have their own protocols, but try to surround links with keywords in descriptive text. Keywords and links can influence natural search engine rankings.
4. Link to targeted pages.
Many companies arrange for links to go to the home page, but it's best to direct links to appropriate product, white paper or other specific pages. Conversion rates are usually higher.
5. Showcase your expertise.
Create articles, guides, and white papers and then promote them with an optimized news releases. Complement your press release optimization efforts by appealing to websites, blogs and online newsletters that may want to link to your valuable information.