Link building idea - Will it work?
-
The SEO agency I am working for are currently trying out a unique link building tactic that i was hoping for some feedback about.
Basically, we have launched a Free SEO package, and have posted it across various established social media profiles. So far we have had about 20 sign up.
We gain access to their site and provide them with 4 keywords that we will be working on, we do the necessary on page optimization to get them ranking. We will then perform some very basic link building tactics on their site.
In exchange for our services, we will get the following:
Firstly, we will place a link on their home page linking to our own site.
Secondly, we will personally write content related to their site, create a new page within their site that will contain this article. We will then have a link from this article leading to one of our own client's sites. (paying customers)
What do you guys think? The Free SEO client sites have minimum PR's of 2, and we are hoping to build a database of these free clients that will be responsible for boosting the ranking of our paying customers. Is there anything that could be improved with this technique?
-
Hi Claire,
So, in essence - i don't think this is a great idea, primarily because i think it carries enormous risks that will be difficult to manage if you take this approach at scale.
Firstly, what happens if your free clients don't rank following the on-page work and linkbuilding you do?
Assumedly, as they're a free client, there is no contract involved here - so if the work you do doesn't help, then they will likely refuse you access to their site to build links out on while presenting you with a large reputation risk if they decide to negatively "out" your practice. Moreover, the lack of contract again means that you will have no legitimate complaint if they decide, a few months after your work with them, that they want to remove the links and articles you have placed on their site.
Are you being upfront with the free clients about the sites you will link out to on their site? If it's not in their niche, or worse something highly spammy - i can imagine a lot of them getting upset about you using their site to advertise on.
Additionally, this seems like a very expensive and time consuming way to build links for your existing paying clients. if you have to do more SEO and linkbuilding work every time you need to get a new link from a site - you'll be putting in dozens of man hours for only a handful of links on PR2 blogs that you are at risk of losing at the whim of an unhappy webmaster. If however, the plan is to have basically free access to a site after you've done a little bit of SEO work - then you're basically just taking advantage of the free sites that sign up and again risk losing it all if a few of them become unhappy.
It seems to me that a better way to approach the concept would be to find these decent blogs/sites and then build a strong guest posting relationship with them, offering them quality content in exchange for links. This way, the content containing the links becomes the value you are exchanging, rather than the somewhat intangible SEO work and it's clear what both sides are getting out of the deal on an ongoing basis.
Alternatively, there's nothing wrong with brokering relationships between sites that you work with, allowing them to guest post for each other and strike up an ongoing relationship; I would just be wary of leaving yourself as the middleman, unprotected by any contract or basic trade agreement.
Hope that's helpful,
Phil
-
I've asked for people with more experience to comment, but I remember reading something similar in Q&A a few months back, though that company was using a more questionable way to execute things. You might want to check out the thread at http://www.seomoz.org/q/contacted-by-an-seo-company for opinions about that implementation and what you wouldn't want to do.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Internal Anchor Text Links
Hi How important are internal anchor text links & rankings? I'm researching competitors and am seeing a lot of internal anchor text links with keywords helping them rank - but they have these links in their menu which at the moment isn't possible for us. We can include our top level 1 categories, but nothing below this in the top navigation Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Google WMT/search console showing thousands of links in "Internal Links"
Hi, One of our blog-post has been interlinked with thousands of internal links as per search console; but lists only 2 links it got connected from. How come so many links it got connected internally? I don't see any. Thanks, Satish
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vtmoz0 -
- Truth ? ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates''
I need SEO. A SEO consultant said: ''link building isn't considered a suitable way of promotion as per recent search engine updates'' they mention: ''Therefore we would be undertaking a range of promotional exercises such as blog postings, social book marking, press release, etc that are more effective for ensuring best possible rankings for the website.'' Do you agree? Thank you
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BigBlaze2051 -
Is removing inorganic links a bad idea?
Hey there, We have recently been in touch with a SEO agency that recomended we remove all inorganic links from our backlink profile. Most of the links are pretty good but there are some news sites that have sitewide links to our site. The link is in the nav menu, as a useful link. We didn't ask for this link it was totally organic. Also some link building in the past was focused on anchor text so some of the keywords may have been over emphasised. Is it a good idea to go about removing all of the potentially inorganic looking links? My concern is that we wipe out links that google are actually valuing. I still know sites are ranking #1 with much more dubious backlink profiles, and then there's this guy who removed his sitewide backlinks and dropped in his ranking: http://www.seomoz.org/q/removed-site-wide-links If a competitor decided to add negative links to our site, it would take longer to find and remove negative links than it would for them to add them. It seems odd that google would allow negative SEO to be that easy.. What do you think?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timscullin0 -
Any good link buying companies ( http://www.text-link-ads.com )
Hi guys I have been passed this website: http://www.text-link-ads.com Has anyone ever used text-links ads before?? Can anyone please show me the way and suggest any really good lin buying companies? I am really fiding it hard to find good places to place inbound links into our website.. Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
How to handle link building to product pages that change regularly?
How do I handle building links to an eCommerce site where the product pages change regularly because product is only available for a certain time frame? Should I focus on building links to the category pages instead?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mj7750 -
Will links to a subdomain help it rank?
I have an affiliate subdomain on a larger company's domain. (For example I have: www.victor.company.com on www.company.com). Would working to attain backlinks to the subdomain help it rank or will I just be putting forth my effort and helping the domain rank?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VictorVC0 -
Outgoing affiliate links and link juice
I have some affiliate websites which have loads of outgoing affiliate links. I've discussed this with a SEO friend and talked about the effect of the link juice going out to the affiliate sites. To minimize this I've put "no follows" on the affiliate links but my friend says that even if you have no follow Google still then diminishes the amount of juice that goes to internal pages, for example if the page has 10 links, 9 are affiliate with no follow - Google will only give 10% of the juice to the 1 internal page. Does anyone know if this is the case? and whether there are any good techniques to keep as much link juice on the site as possible without transferring to affiliate links? Appreciate any thoughts on this! Cheers
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ventura0