Inbound Linking Experiment, How to prove inbound linking works Options

[all_things_natur...]

I know why linking matters (a link to a site is seen as a vote for the site, the more votes/links a site acquires the higher you will rank in the engines, particularly Google)

Obviously there are other factors eg: the quality of the link etc however is this really the case?

Does an increase in inbound links have a direct impact on SERP’s?

How do I measure the success of my inbound link strategy, and prove to my boss it is worth investing time?

It is not simply a case of monitoring the increase of links; I need to be able tie this back to an increase in my rankings and subsequently traffic volumes or I are purely increasing links without understanding the benefit.

A scientific approach is therefore needed to measure the success of this activity so I can identify for every X fold increase in links, there is an X fold increase in site traffic rank.

PROPOSED TEST:

o Recruit x amount of links
o Monitor increase in inbound links via Google link:http://www.mydomain.co.uk
o Identify which of the X have been indexed by Google
o Monitor rankings
o Identify a connection between the date the inbound links were recognized by Google and the increase in our rankings the same period.

ISSUES

Google PageRank and backlink counts do not display all info – but all info is being taken into account by Google

Many backlinks are omitted from link:domain.co.uk in Google

Google Backlinks and PR are only exported (published in green bar etc) every 3 months

Given the issues, does anyone know of a 'scientific' approach in proving to your boss inbound links impact SERP's?

Thanks