Link building is generally acknowledged as one of the most difficult SEO tasks. Not only because it is very hard to accurately measure the quality of a link, but also it involves the complicated human relationships.
As often you work really hard on getting a link but walk away with nothing, it’s really important to improve the productivity of this process.
Here is the link building record sheet I designed, it’s suitable for low to medium level SEOers who sometimes struggle with the efficiency of link building process. For high-end SEOer, I am pretty sure they have their own secret spreadsheet to complete this job.
The image above is the spreadsheet that I created, it’s quite simple but very intuitive. You can find download links in the end of article for both Excel 2003 and 2007.
The metrics in this link building recording sheet including
Link URL
You have to record down link not just for keeping but also for checking in the future
Anchor Text
It’s very important to check the anchor text of a link, whether it’s missing, desired keyword or variations. Beware of too many links with desired anchor texts, Google can discount these links.
Type
It’s necessary to obtain different types of links, diversity is a key to link building. In this spreadsheet, it’s easy to check link types.
Followed
Matt Cutts claimed nofollowed is no longer working for the purpose of PageRank Sculpting, but I recommend checking it, as I haven’t seen any test that can completely deny the effect of nofollow tag.
Note: place “1″ you will get a tick, place “0″ you will get a cross, do not place any other numbers.
mR, mT, DmR, DmT
This is an algorithm created by SEOmoz for its tool “Linkscape” to determine the importance of a page and its domain. mR is moz Rank, mT is mozTrust, DmR is Domian moz Rank and DmT is Domain moz Trust. You can find full explanation of metrics here.
Note: Linkscape is only available to premium member of SEOmoz, so for those who haven’t subscribed a membership. I recommend changing these 4 metrics to Page Authority and Domain Authority, which can be determined by OpenSiteExplorer (Free).
Outlinks
This metrics means the number of external links a page links out, I am just saving spaces so I called it outlinks. The more outlinks a page has, the less link juice your website will receive. Especially if a “not-so-famous” page contains hundreds of outbound links to other domains, it’s pretty suspicious and Google will probably discount the value of these links.
Obtained
This keeps you working hard on chasing links 
Note: place “1″ you will get a tick, place “0″ you will get a cross, do not place any other numbers.
Method
This determines which method is working best, you will be able to know which strategy you should use for each type of link.
Time
I am sure you understand how important to write down the time you started a mission and when you finished it. Due to lack of space in the spreadsheet, I didn’t create two colomns for time, you can always write something like “03-Mar to 20-March 2010″.
I am appreciated if you leave your comments on how this spreadsheet can be improved furthermore.
Download Excel 2007 version of link building record sheet (xlsx)
Download Excel 2003 version of link building record sheet (xls)
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Really job and thanks for that nice article waiting for more
Frank, thanks a bunch for sharing your processes. I actually got to your blog by reading comments on seomoz. I’m pretty happy I did. Thanks again!
Awesome, hope you can learn alot
Hi, there your information in this site great example of learining the instant link building and you have made some valid points, and i followed your information and i got the page rank to my site within a week and, any more ideas like this please let me know, thanks for your valuable information..
@Bobby Bash,
Glad to hear you got your pagerank
I will definitely share more tips.