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Being a woman in the SEO industry, when talking about back link tracking, one thing comes to mind, mascara.
Yes, you read right, mascara.
A woman may use three different mascaras to make her eyelashes the perfect consistency for a night on the town. Using one for length, one that curls, and one that volumizes, they each perform the same action, but have different qualities that achieve the exact look they’re wanting.
SEOers do the same. They each have their own armory of tools that they use to come up with tracking reports that meet their needs as well as the client. But what if I told you that you could have all the goodness of several tools, wrapped up in one tiny spreadsheet?
That’s crazy you might say, a form of wizardry perhaps, but no, the answer, EXCEL!
This week I’ve spent some time compiling tutorials and how-tos about Excel and backlink tracking. I focused on a post I found on I did some experimenting with my finds, and surprisingly enough it turned out to be very helpful and easy.
In my first spreadsheet I utilized Google’s Master Tools to get a CSV of my Top Backlinks.
Of the full list of backlinks, I selected from the most recently crawled links, to the date from which we started our link building and moved it to another column. In a third column I moved links from the start date of our link building, until the beginning of the year (1/1/12), while keeping the dates the same for all.
From there I transferred all of my information to graph form, much is easier to read and I could use as a visual for clients. After selecting the areas in which I wanted the information to register, I came up with this pivot chart.
By using the timeline that I created, and was able to go back to the list of links and determine where the links were originating that caused the major spike in March of 2012. This chart was grouped by month and year, but you can just as easily select day too; it would be a bigger chart, but if there is a specific range of time that you’re trying to find the cause for your effect, that might be the way to go.
After the first report I did three more just like it in a matter of 5 or 6 minutes apiece. This is a great tool for determining the effect that your Link Building efforts had on a particular site, or in worst cases, what’s keeping your rankings from progressing.
So remember ladies, with great back link tracking and a little mascara, there is no limit to your potential.