How much is a fair amount to pay for link building services?
-
It would be useful to get some feedback from those paying for SME/SMB website link building services re how much is a fair amount to pay and what you are getting for this.
-
It's definitely a tricky question to answer, and there are a few ways of going about it.
I'm a big fan of Page One Power and they do charge by hour blocks, which you've mentioned. The reason Jon Ball says they do this is because every site is different and they can't charge by the link because of that. A link is not a link.
On the flip side:
- One of the most well known internet marketing firms that employees high profile SEO speakers charges $500 per link.
- A UK link building agency that is medium-well known was charging around $125 a link in 2012
- A large multi-media agency based in California I know of was charging $750 a link on old domains in deep pages for their clients
In my opinion the most transparent way all around is to do it in the hour-block method that Page One Power does it because all links are not created equal. In this method the link builder should report to the client at the end of the month how efficiently they spent the clients money in the 20 hours dedicated to link building that month. This method could cause initial strain in the client-consultant relationship however because the client might look at the consultant's rate (say it's $100 an hour) and compare them to other consultants.
Another method is to charge by the link. The problem with this is all links are not created equal. The consultant is not incentivized in the short term to spend 5 hours to earn one extremely valuable link if they're not going to be paid any more than if they spent one hour building that link.
A hybrid method could be to charge the client based on where the link was placed, but evaluating the price of each placed link every month is a lot of work and a lot of discussion.
In 2014, creating super high quality content should be talked about in the same sentence as building links since they go hand in hand. So that brings us to another method, where a block of say 20 hours a month for a small-medium business is set aside to spend on content and links. Some months 70% of that 20 hours is spent on building that content piece, but then for the next 2 months 70% of the time is spend promoting that content piece. This is how I would prefer to work, and it's a win-win both ways. The SEO consultant is both incentivized to create good content and promote it at the same time. The client is ensured that their money is being spent wisely and for the right reason.
I like talking about prices, it's something we need more guidance on in this industry.
-
I dont think there is a right or wrong answer, except don't do the spam
Some of the best links i ever had i got from a 1 man band and cost me $400 for around 100 links, there were some great gems in there, I have also paid a well established company 10X that fee and got not much more than spam.
- Personally I would go with a bit of a mixture, try some guest blogging, really don't have to be actual blogs but you could approach company's for a link in return for some great content
- You could hire a virtual assistant for $400 per month but do vet anything they will do for you before they do it
- You could submit some great articles or content to your own site and hope they will get linked to
Again all depends on your niche and is such a hard question to ask, if your in the insurance market then 4-5k per month if your a local business then no more than 1k even less
-
Hey there, best of luck in your search for a firm to help you with link building. I can't tell you who to pick, but for a small to medium sized business 2500 a month is MORE than fair, but you should be able to nab a pretty strong link builder.
A couple of tips for you as you seek out the right firm:
- Make sure they are truthful about who is building your links, check out profiles of their team on Linkedin (don't tell them you are going to do this).
- A TRUE link builder will ask you a lot of questions about what makes your business unique, what innovative things you have done, who is going to write your copy, etc. They should be asking you to build assets that will naturally attract links.
- They should try to build relationships with trade pubs, find out what kind of content those pubs and bloggers are seeking and have you create it
- Don't think that if you pay someone 2500/mo that they can get you the best type and highest quality links w/o your involvement. I think that is what gets a lot of linkbuilders into trouble in the first place, building links on any old site to just "get links"
-
No interest in spam and think $30k a month for link building is a little excessive for most SMB's.
Perhaps there are others with experience of more moderately priced white hat link building services. For example - anyone had any experience of Page One Power? they pop up fairly frequently on the SES speakers circuit and have 40 hour link building packages from $2500 per month - any feedback on these guys or anyone else would be good to hear.
-
With the new "trend" in guest post type of link building, link building companies are going with fees around 100-300 usd per post (with 1-2 links within). That depends a lot on the quality but this is what some of my accounts are paying for link building sessions.
However, go only with companies that have a very good reputation.
(although even iacquire.com had a good reputation and it didn't turn out that good). Just be really carful and have a valid, dilute link profile.
As Stephan said, $1000 a day is not unusual but again, no matter how much you pay just be carful.
-
Depends on what you need....
Need some low quality spam, $5 will do it. Need high quality links, start at $1000 a day and go way higher
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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 Link Building
For a large part of our SEO we have been focusing on inbound links (mainly from guest posts and blogger reviews). But our rankings have dropped (though I understand there is a natural fluctuation in rankings quite often) this week and it occurred to me that we should be focusing more on internal link building as well. We, of course, link often to our home page and have related products on every page but we lack a lot of direct key word links in in our description. Would it behoove us to be on a specific product page--take for example owls and friends wall decals--and somewhere in the description add something like "our nursery wall decals are safe for....and have "nursery wall decals" be the direct link since that is a key term for us? I just wanted to make sure that we are headed in the right direction before I spend a massive amount of time updating all these product pages. Any input would be really helpful. Thanks so much, Elizabeth
Link Building | | WNL0 -
Link building too quickly
Hi all, I have recently started trialing to outsource some SEO to a 3rd party, who obviously promissed white hat techniques and manual links etc.. All has gone well for the first month. But on speeking to another expert they point out that the search engines will spot inconcistencies in link building and penalise me. I know there will not be a know ammount but as we stand at the moment, what is the current feeling of too fast. Links built for me in one month were 100 directory submissions 80 bookmarks 16 search engine submissions 15 Article submissions 46 forum links 10 local classified searches Is this too fast? , If to do I stop and create more inconsistency or continue at a similar rate. Of course quality of link will be an issue, but how much. Many thanks from SEO jnr
Link Building | | smartcow0 -
Current best link building practise
Hi guys, Just an open discussion. I don't want to be told to use directories or just 'guest blog'.. What is the best method you are currently using? A lot of my competitors are using older techniques for quick wins but we're wary to do that due to the long term consequences... Thanks
Link Building | | tomcraig860 -
Link Building & Moz metrices
I am just starting up so no flaming please. Okay so i was given a project and i was amused to see a lot of backlinks to the website with viagra pills title. This is why i assume the domain authority is very low. I tried asking a few website owners to drop the links but they said its a lot of manual work they wont do it(that was shocking) So what next? Would building authority links in any domains help me in this case?
Link Building | | hardik_hrc0 -
Keyword strong domains`and Good Link Building Techniques
Is it still a vital tactic if you can get a keyword strong domain in your seo strategy. I have been using an outsourced link building company and we have been soing social bookmarks and directory listings and forum posts. What i sthe best way to check if a link is good ? Look forward to any help, I am a new member
Link Building | | simon.paul0 -
Link Building for a New Blog
We are setting up a new blog and I was wondering what is the best way to build good quality links for a new website? I have been researching this quite a bit on the forums and a lot of people talk about writing good content which I agree with however no one will find that content if we are not ranking in Google for our keywords. From what I have read the following is what I should be doing Directory's Creating Link-bait (Info-graphics) PR Releases or Getting News Sites to link to us I have heard a lot of mention of using Articles sites like ezinearticles but I have also read that Post Panda that they dont have as much link juice as they once had and also I don't think that for a Blog that we should be using it as well but maybe I am wrong? Would appreciate some peoples suggestions
Link Building | | The_Zero_Wolf0 -
Outsourcing link building
Is anyone aware of any high quality link building services, preferably that guarentee a set number of high quality links for a montly fee. I'm familar with webuildpages. I was wondering if there are any other companies who provide a similar service.
Link Building | | PeterM220 -
Our link building strategy - affiliates and trophies
Hey guys, I just wanted to follow up on Rand's excellent whiteboard Friday: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/preventing-linkbased-penalties-whiteboard-friday It got me worried I think, but I'm not sure. We have a site where we are building up links in 2 ways: We have an affiliate set-up. A search widget in an i-frame, and below the i-frame a followed link pointing to the relevant page.
Link Building | | sichristie
The anchor text varies for each affiliate depending which region the affiliate comes from. We have awarded about 500 of our partners with trophies - i.e. - this partner has best reviews or most sales etc. Our partners are absolutely loving it.
The trophy is an image link which they can embed on their website, with alt text only mentioning our brand - that was an oversight ( I think). I wish the alt had been dynamically generated for each partner.
The trophies link to our partner pages.
So we are getting many links to our deeper pages, which is great.
The links I believe are relevant as they are coming from our partners websites and pointing to their relevant partner page on our website. So burning question is. Would you consider these links dodgy given Rands recent whiteboard friday post, and the recent farmer algorithm change? Many thanks, Croozie0