Monitoring tools ‘useful for link building purposes’

by Stephen Logan on 9th September 2010

Monitoring tools still have a part to play in online marketing campaigns, it has been suggested.

According to Search Engine Watch columnist Peter van der Graaf, Google Webmaster Central can now be used to analyse organic click-through rates and conversions.

But he said a drawback to the service is that it only shows data from the company's website, which leaves room for monitoring tools to be used when it comes to link building.

Mr van der Graaf added that it is important to keep track of the performance of inlinks, customers and rivals for SEO efforts.

"Big ranking changes for a single competitor could indicate two things: either they've been very active in SEO efforts recently, or the search engine is valuing some factor differently," he stated.

Earlier this week, his fellow Search Engine Watch columnist Kristi Hines explained that Google Advanced Search can improve link building efforts by allowing companies to narrow down their queries to find results within a particular domain name.