Tracking Content, Link building, and Tasks - software?

[CCarter]

I'm in the middle of doing something... I got 3 questions:

1. What do you guys use for tracking content creation?

2. What do you guys recommend for tracking link building?

3. What do you guys recommend for tracking tasks to be done for clients?

I'm trying to avoid tracking this stuff with spreadsheets as much as possible - but am coming up short on good software for these 3 specifically.

 

[turbin3]

1. Tracking Content Creation
   • For Wordpress: Yoast SEO Premium has been great, and fairly well-rounded
   • Generally: In the past, RavenTools was a solution that always worked pretty well for me. Might be a bit pricey for many individuals though.
2. Tracking Link Building
   • Also used RavenTools for this. Fairly efficient workflow.
   • My mainstay is usually Majestic, since their link data is second to none. Specifically, I'd create reports for URLs or domains, so it's tracked over time. That said, it's not quite the solution needed for "link tracking" in the context I'd guess you're asking. RavenTools' solution (at least last I used it) was much more of the workflow one would expect. Namely:
     • Track HTTP status
     • Track changes
     • Track team member ownership & CRM data
     • Track link specs (follow/nofollow, text/image/redirect/etc)
     • Alert notification functionality
3. Task Management
   • Asana is one good solution. I've used it off and on for a few years. Not using it currently, but when I have, it's been a fairly efficient and complete solution.
   • Trello can work well also, though for me at least, I find it works better for creative-oriented efforts. Stuff like managing design or content teams + the more visual nature of the platform.

Generally, I have yet to find a complete solution for these things in a single platform. The closest I ever found was Raven, though there were other components lacking enough I couldn't ever justify aggregating all my team efforts to that platform.

SEMRush also now has a few more of those features, specifically in their Projects component.

 

[CCarter]

RavenTools was a solution that always worked pretty well for me.

Are you referring to their "Content Manager". I'm thinking about a feature (or separate SAAS) that allows you walk through the workflow of content management, till it goes live. It looks like that's what RavenTool's Content Manager does. I'm wondering what writers here use if they are in charge of publishing content, unless it's really all down to a WordPress Plugin.

One reason I'm thinking about this is because I'm starting a marketing agency, yeah I know - I'm crazy, and looking for the latest solutions for clients. That's when I thought - if the content manager can straight integrate into SERPWoo, then the the system can get alerts when that particular URL starts ranking, and showing up in the results and automate reports to clients.

I'm shying away from the link builder recording aspect, but that too can be annotations within a "client" or a "project". Users can see the timeline of the manual links created (or captured) and watch any impact it has across their domain or for a the specific URL.

For now I'm going to use spreadsheets and play around with these other tools to see what's possible.

 

[turbin3]

Yep, their Content Manager is what I was referring to.

I like where you're going with that concept. To date, I have yet to really see what I would consider to be an "ideal" product for this. In my mind, these are some of the characteristics I'd love to see in a content management platform, if it really intends to have that end-to-end workflow:

• Visually-oriented management capability
  • For campaign management, would be handy to have a different "view" of content campaigns.
  • e.g. Trello. Drag and drop between steps.
• Enough Metrics & The Right Ones
  • Which metrics matter, and how can I see them?
  • I might have my own KPI's. I don't want the platform to rigidly decide for me, so offering a good variety of options would be useful.
  • e.g. Word count, readability scores, other metrics like Yoast uses (links to/from, etc.)
• CRM Capability
  • With a team, there needs to be clear ways to delegate ownership, schedule tasks, and provide reporting.

Unless I'm misunderstanding, if this is a product you're considering creating, just know that it's rhetorical that I will always be a guaranteed buyer of yours.

 

[mrodriguez27]

I can't really answer question number 1.

2-Backlink Monitor. It's fairly cheap, and has everything you could want, setup scheduled tasks, checks if links are alive, if it's dofollow/nofollow, can even work with Tiered Link Building and sorts out links by T1, T2, T3. Easily check your current backlink profile anchor text % and dofollow/nofollow %. You could probably do everything with a spreadsheet but it would take you quite a lot of time and for 75$ one-time fee it's a stealer. Biggest disadvantages are it's not online and only works on Windows.

3-Trello/Asana without doubt.

 

[MuffinS]

I used to track my link building with this tool.

https://freshlinkfinder.com/
https://dejanseo.com.au/fresh-link-finder/

It would record the inbound visits via javascript, server or referral traffic and register it as a "Fresh link". This is DIFFERENT to AHREFS and other tools (based on crawling) as it INSTANTLY registered links in real time based on server code, javascript tags or analytics referal traffic reports. I found it massively helpful as it detected new links on a regular basis and kept a log.

It also let me know when I was being attacked with negative SEO.
But the higher utility was knowing when my white hat link building or outreach was working.
Often, it would just happen (the target site would link but not let me know)

It was very comforting to know people were building good links to my site.
Sadly, the project is now dead and not maintained. It has been in alpha for 4 years now (and no matter how many times i email them, no reply).

If you could build a clone, I will throw money at you I would love to see a clone activated again.
The logic to build such a clone is detailed here.
https://dejanseo.com.au/smart-link-building-with-referrer-traffic/

 

[CCarter]

Backlink Monitor

Do you have a website link for this? Googling "Backlink Monitor" doesn't really give a good answer.

It would record the inbound visits via javascript, server or referral traffic and register it as a "Fresh link".

THIS is an interesting idea. The problems I could see are from the server traffic side - analyzing server logs can get messy especially on different http server setups.

The javascript side might be the best option but it's more resource intensive since it will essentially be logging all traffic coming to that website like a tracking pixel. I think things can be cut down significantly by simply getting the current page URL and sending the referring data IF there is referring, otherwise "do nothing" - and bypass privacy laws by never sending IP address or personal data, nor load cookies.

It may not be server intensive on our side, but if some mega website starts using the tracking code... we'd have to have our servers beefed up enough so there is no lag created for all our clients like some of these hosted pixels have when users load up websites with hundreds of ADs on them and slow down the experience. But it's definitely do-able...

One thing we've been avoiding doing is querying Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics for anything within our tool since they'll probably have some hidden TOS against a service like ours and try to pull a "Raventools Kill" like they did before. Perhaps though... the user can import past backlinks... But I guess that defeats the purpose cause this is for "Fresh Links" and not necessarily needed to monitor ALL backlinks cause that can get messy for no real reason.

Can anyone think of a reason to monitor old backlinks? Perhaps see if a link dies? Is this really important?

 

[MuffinS]

Can anyone think of a reason to monitor old backlinks? Perhaps see if a link dies? Is this really important?

Yes.

1. One of the methods I use for my clients is to "sponsor" aka pay websites for links (on a per month basis). It happened frequently that a well-meaning new web admin would come along and delete my links. Unless I had this tool, I would have to have my VA do regular checks. At worse, my VA could forget. That means months of money lost down the drain.
   
   
2. I used to do a lot of Wikipedia link building. This tool helped me know that the link was removed.
   
   
3. This tool would let me know when a PBN died. I either forgot to pay to host, the domain expired or it was hacked.

But that was mostly an afterthought. I only really cared about NEW links as an agency.
Mostly for client management!

1. Sometimes I didn't have anything to report. Fresh link to the rescue. Id look at the report and lo... an EDU link that my VA hadn't detected was reported. I'd report this and I would be praised for hard work.
   
   
2. You can apply that for any link building
   
   
3. Again, if you work in a competitive niche, you can sell this product as a "Sheild". You would know the same day when you were negative SEO'ed, and a log export could be extracted and put straight into the disavow. Having such a feature made it a handy tool in my ORM toolbox.

I didn't use the server version. The Javascript version was just fine.

--

Also, the feature didn't work well in this tool (so AHREFS was a good replacement in that regard. Failing that, manual checks)
With this tool, I only really cared about NEW links. Mostly for client management at an agency (and to double check my SEO team were actually building links!)

 

[CCarter]

Having such a feature made it a handy tool in my ORM toolbox.

Here is the scenario I'm trying to avoid, some clown puts in 100 million backlinks to track, some from obscure domains with zero traffic, zero metrics - and they want that tracked daily, hell probably hourly knowing some of these guys. I'm not really interested in creating software that tracks trash links, or someone in that above scenario. I'd rather create software (or SERPWoo Add-on) for quality stuff that I know moves the needle in terms of SEO rankings.

One way to do this is simply avoid any importing of data, and monitor only backlinks sending traffic.

Looking at the "sponsored" link scenario - as long as the link is sending traffic, even if only 1 person in the last lets say 28 days or even 90 days visits through the site, monitoring of that backlink continues. If it stops sending traffic, a "final" check to see if the link is live is done and daily tracking turns into weekly tracking instead. Would that make sense?

In terms of Wikipedia/EDU link building - again the traffic scenario of 28/90 days should at least stop us from wasting time and resources on checking backlinks of useless pages.

The PBN dying is a problem - cause if people are buying links from PBNs with no traffic - it's not going to get "monitored" in the "Fresh Links" scenario. So my question is how important is it for people to track PBN links that generate no traffic?

Allowing for an export makes sense, using the "disavow tool" angle works. I'm curious though if someone is negative SEOing your website with backlinks - there wouldn't really being any traffic coming in from those links though? Unless they are also manipulating bots to visit the specific site. But bots do not execute javascript or store cookies, so a bad bot can be easily detected? Or am I wrong?

 

[MuffinS]

Again, the feature to poll old backlinks didn't work very well. It would only serve as an indicator for me and was a (final guard) should my VA forget.

See here for an old screenshot. The algorithm I think was that it would recheck old links every now and then to see if it existed (and then found would say no). It was years ago so it is not clear in my memory.

You're correct that this tool wouldn't work unless traffic was sent.

1) Here is the scenario I'm trying to avoid, some clown puts in 100 million backlinks to track.
Could you put realistic limits according to the plan?

2) If it stops sending traffic, a "final" check to see if the link is live is done and daily tracking turns into weekly tracking instead. Would that make sense?
Yes I buy links from real live industry sites so traffic is always flowing.

3) In terms of Wikipedia/EDU link building - again the traffic scenario of 28/90 days should at least stop us from wasting time and resources on checking backlinks of useless pages.
Wikipedia links do send traffic. Not often. But it is a prestige link so I make a point of checking on my dashboards.

4) My question is how important is it for people to track PBN links that generate no traffic?
Not that important in comparison to tracking new links. Again, I am excited about NEW links to 1) show off and 2) get demonstrated data that I was winning. The tool would pickup a link the moment a link was clicked.

5) Allowing for an export makes sense, using the "disavow tool" angle works. I'm curious though if someone is negative SEOing your website with backlinks - there wouldn't really being any traffic coming in from those links though?
Well the way I used the tool was as an indicator. Not a 100% coverage tool. Most spam tools target blog comments and web 2.0 properties. I believe they cause trackback and pingbacks (if it is a common cms) that was detected by the tool? If not, there would be some token traffic sent (enough so to warrant an investigation if it was outside your niche). If the tool showed me a new link with an anchor "poker" or "coupons" or "porn" I would investigate. The tool was good enough to show what anchor was used to visit your site.

Here is another screenshot.

 

[mrodriguez27]

Do you have a website link for this? Googling "Backlink Monitor" doesn't really give a good answer.


THIS is an interesting idea. The problems I could see are from the server traffic side - analyzing server logs can get messy especially on different http server setups.

The javascript side might be the best option but it's more resource intensive since it will essentially be logging all traffic coming to that website like a tracking pixel. I think things can be cut down significantly by simply getting the current page URL and sending the referring data IF there is referring, otherwise "do nothing" - and bypass privacy laws by never sending IP address or personal data, nor load cookies.

It may not be server intensive on our side, but if some mega website starts using the tracking code... we'd have to have our servers beefed up enough so there is no lag created for all our clients like some of these hosted pixels have when users load up websites with hundreds of ADs on them and slow down the experience. But it's definitely do-able...

One thing we've been avoiding doing is querying Google Webmaster Tools or Google Analytics for anything within our tool since they'll probably have some hidden TOS against a service like ours and try to pull a "Raventools Kill" like they did before. Perhaps though... the user can import past backlinks... But I guess that defeats the purpose cause this is for "Fresh Links" and not necessarily needed to monitor ALL backlinks cause that can get messy for no real reason.

Can anyone think of a reason to monitor old backlinks? Perhaps see if a link dies? Is this really important?

Yeah - I forgot the most important part Here you go https://www.inspyder.com/products/BacklinkMonitor

 

[jstover77]

Not sure if I am on the right track here, but I use databox.com to monitor client's content. I integrate Google Analytics and then segment the specific blog post to see all kinds of KPIs (traffic, sources, bounce, conversions, etc..). It does integrate with SEMrush ($500 per month for their API) and I believe ahrefs, so I'm sure there is a way to monitor any incoming links to a particular page, but I haven't dug that deep into it. Also, they have their own task manager built into it for the client side and inhouse. Still fairly new to it. Super sexy and there is a ton more shit you can do that I need to learn.

Also @CCarter, if you ask them, they may integrate SerpWoo. I would love to have SerpWoo to use in some of my dashboards.

Here is a partial report for one of my clients:

 

[ddasilva]

I use Backlink Monitor from Inspyder to track backlinks.

It tracks backlink URLs, target URLs, anchor text used, date placed, etc... Instead of having to enter that information manually into an excel sheet, just paste it into Backlink Monitor and click a button, let the crawler do its thing. Another nice thing is that you can have it re-crawl all the links as often as you want, so you can spot websites that have dropped your link, 404'd, etc... and either fix them or delete them from your master list.

 

[CCarter]

Could you put realistic limits according to the plan?

Well I was more so thinking this would be a simple add-on for SERPWoo, and SW has the ability to track unlimited domains/urls within projects/clients, so limiting the backlink tracking could cause some confusion, but it's possible.

If the tool showed me a new link with an anchor "poker" or "coupons" or "porn" I would investigate. The tool was good enough to show what anchor was used to visit your site.

That's a smart feature and way to monitor problematic backlinks.

I use Backlink Monitor from Inspyder to track backlinks.

One thing I wonder about backlink monitoring is do agencies actually report the amount of backlinks created now-a-days to their clients. I never did such a thing back in the day and it seems trivial and information overload. But it might make sense in the grand scheme of things of quality links to show new links being created and corresponding rankings.

I just never considered doing that. What are you guys' thoughts on that?

 

[mrodriguez27]

Well I was more so thinking this would be a simple add-on for SERPWoo, and SW has the ability to track unlimited domains/urls within projects/clients, so limiting the backlink tracking could cause some confusion, but it's possible.

That's a smart feature and way to monitor problematic backlinks.



One thing I wonder about backlink monitoring is do agencies actually report the amount of backlinks created now-a-days to their clients. I never did such a thing back in the day and it seems trivial and information overload. But it might make sense in the grand scheme of things of quality links to show new links being created and corresponding rankings.

I just never considered doing that. What are you guys' thoughts on that?

I wouldn't report all the backlinks, only a sample. So in your PDF report, you would have rankings, KPIs and a small table with like "Best 10 links created out of 195". That's what I would do.

 

[CCarter]

Something worth looking into is Monday.com, they seem to have their act together for Task management.

 

[Rageix]

Link building or something repetitive like that: Google sheets or similar.

Project/client stuff: Asana or Pivotal Tracker I've used a lot in the past they're OK I guess. Like Pivotal Tracker for dev work. Big fan of Kanban boards like Trello or Taiga though as I think they give a better overall view of what is going on.

 

[ddasilva]

One thing I wonder about backlink monitoring is do agencies actually report the amount of backlinks created now-a-days to their clients. I never did such a thing back in the day and it seems trivial and information overload. But it might make sense in the grand scheme of things of quality links to show new links being created and corresponding rankings.

I just never considered doing that. What are you guys' thoughts on that?

I guess it depends on the client. If it were me, my KPIs would be focused around rankings, traffic, and leads/sales generated. I wouldn't send them a list of backlinks created, unless they were adamant about seeing the information for some reason. Most clients wouldn't know the true value of a backlink anyways, so what's the point. They probably would be just as excited to see a Buzzfeed.com link as they would a TechCrunch link.

As long as you're moving the needle for them in terms of traffic/leads, I think that's all that matters to them. On the other hand, if they've been paying you for 6 months and barely any results to show for it, THEN they might ask WTH you've been doing this whole time and request to see some of the work you've done.