Ask an agency which of its link building partners is the best and you usually get a name within a second. Ask why, and the answer is an impression: quick to reply, pleasant to work with, never a complaint. Those things matter. They are not the same as delivering good links on time.
The partner who replies fastest is not always the partner whose links are still live and indexed half a year later. Without figures, you do not find out.
Five measures
We score partners on what they delivered, along five lines:
- Acceptance. The share of proposed placements that is approved. A partner whose proposals are often rejected costs the manager time on every round.
- Delivery. The share of approved placements that actually goes live.
- Indexation. The share of live links that is indexed. A link that is not indexed does nothing.
- Timeliness. Whether placements are delivered within the sprint they were planned in.
- Anchor compliance. Whether the anchors follow the anchor plan of the client.
The five are blended into one score per partner, with the separate measures next to it. The single score is for comparing; the measures are for the conversation about what to improve.
The score follows from the work
The important part is where the figures come from. Nobody fills in a review form. Every measure follows from the placements a partner handled: what was proposed, what was approved, what went live, what was indexed and when.
That makes the score hard to argue with and cheap to keep. It is up to date because the placements are, and it covers every partner in the same way.
Look at the direction
A score is a moment. A new partner starts without history, and a good partner can have a bad sprint. So next to the score we look at the trend: is this partner getting better or worse. A partner who is improving from a low start is a different case from one who is slowly sliding.
What you do with it
The scorecard is for decisions, not for ranking people:
- Who gets the next sprint. In a market with two partners, results decide the split.
- Where to step in. Low acceptance points at the brief or the choice of publishers. Low indexation points at the publishers themselves.
- What to discuss. A conversation with figures on the table is shorter and fairer than one about impressions.
Partners see only their own lane. They do not see how other partners score, and other partners do not see them.
How it looks in ECHION
The Partner Scorecard shows one row per partner: the score, then acceptance, live rate, index rate, on time and anchor compliance, the averages of the publishers they used and the trend.
The scorecard is one of the modules of the platform. Which pages the partners build for is covered in from target page to sprint.
More in the knowledge base, or see how the platform puts this into practice.