What is the Best Way to Select a Company for Linkbuilding?
-
We need a few more links, who doesn't, and I've been looking at outsourcing it.
Having checked out Moz posts to get an idea of best practice it seems that most link builders that responded to my Elance advert would give me links that would get me penalised either now or in the next update or two by Google.
Leaving aside the frequent mentions of link wheels on potential SEOs sites, the main problem seems to be that I cannot believe that any content generated will be of any value to anyone other than as a pseudo contextual basis for the link
"Bats are a flying mammal. They use sound waves to navigate. Sound is used in hearing aids. blah blah. blah."
So how do you find decent link builders? How do you validate them? What are the key questions to ask? What are the red flags?
-
These are all great pieces of advice. You might also want to check out Moz's list of recommended companies. A lot of these companies offer link development services and should prove reliable.
-
Hi there
The most reliable way to select a company or individual for link building is to ask them for examples of their work. This might be complicated slightly by any existing NDA agreements that they might have, but more often than not a reputable company or individual is going to cite case studies on their website anyway.
You should ask them what they have done and who they have worked with. Whether or not they give you specific examples of links built at this stage is actually quite irrelevant. You should instead use tools like OSE, Majestic, Ahrefs etc. to see the links for yourself. Are they building the kind of links you would be happy to receive. If they have shared examples with you, does the evidence match up?
The key to all of this is transparency. You will have infinitely more confidence with a company or individual if they are transparent with their work. Pricing, reporting, expectations - all of these can, and should, be clearly defined. There's no excuse nowadays for a company/individual to be obscure with the work that they have done - particularly with the myriad of tools available for you to jump in and have a look for yourself.
I hope this helps.
-
Reach out to people you see writing about link building on a more advanced level. If they're talking about creating strategies which don't involve any outdated strategies then you're on the right path. I also think it's noteworthy that it should be somebody within the same country as they know the audience much better. I would be weird if I started as a Dutch person link building for the German market (they have a very different culture, especially on the web).
-
Hi,
I've been badly burnt by agencies in the past offering "quality" link building services and have done quite a lot of work on dealing with a conundrum similar to yours. Here is my advice:
- Links need to be earnt, not bought. You need to overcome your main problem ("I cannot believe that any content generated will be of any value to anyone other than as a pseudo contextual basis for the link"). If you're not producing something of value, the links aren't going to be relevant and you're increasing your chances of a future penalty.
- Assuming you're selling products or services, or even generating revenue by ad impressions you still have a customer base. The sooner you can understand their needs, the sooner you can produce some content of value to your business.
- Work on a project basis with an agency to test them out and stay well away from retainers and minimum term contracts. I started working with an agency to produce individual pieces of content and get them legitimately placed on relevant websites. Smaller/startup agencies are typically more flexible on this sort of model as they are looking to win longer term business and build their client base.
- Avoid any link-building that targets exact match keywords or any other cynical techniques. You are bound to get penalised for this.
- To find agencies - go to marketing / SEO conferences. e.g. BrightonSEO which has sponsors and attendees you can network with and get advice and potentially recommendations.
Good luck,
George
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
-
Best way to check/find lost links?
Hi all As everyone, we have seen a decrease of domain authority and external links during the last months. with open site Rand is explaining the reason in this in this post, but I still would like to have a look to the links that in theory I have lost during the last months. I thought Majestic was the best option but I have been trying to get the info and I see nothing clear. When I download the fresh or history links, I only see links that are live (in theory, because in history I get a lot not existing but I can not see it without a manual check). The option of lost links is just giving me 1000 links per day, but after downloading some and checking I see that this lost link report is showing me links that are working (but it looks that majestic couldn't access when they did the crawling and show them as lost). Also the numbers of lost links are totally different if you use fresh or historic... Anyone could recommend me a good way to find out links that I really lost? Thanks
Link Building | | AutoEurope1 -
Looking for a reliable SEO company at a reasonable budget
Good day I've tried to contact most the recommended seo companies MOZ has but loads of them are mostly for MID-LARGE business and are out of my budget I have a monthly budget of 750-1,500 USD The niche is related not competitive and should be easy to rank, stoped doing seo 11 months ago and still rank 4-8th for the keywords im interested in anybody knows any good company for my budget? thanks a lot
Link Building | | recreoviral1 -
Linkbuilding with Hootsuite
I wonder about a good way to distribute my content in social networks! I was using Hootsuite but never see my post or shared news in http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ or giving me any relevance, Could be the shrinking URL. Who get the link Juice with a shrinking URL company? like hootsuite or anyparticular website. I can mention another example http://inbound.org/ I past any url my any website that I want to promote and after 24 hours I can counting as a back link in http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/ Probably I don't know how to use those kind of tools!
Link Building | | seo-apprentice0 -
Linkbuilding strategy.......depends on the market?
Hi there, I own a multilingual website. The main market is Spain but I have clients frum UK and France. In the linkbuilding strategy....should the links I obtein come from Spain (main market)? What's the point here? Thanks.
Link Building | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Linkbuilding to http/https
Hello, Last year we changed our domain name from http to https. In the .htaccess we included a 301 redirect from http to https. Nevertheless, some pages do not let you link to https, so for linkbuilding we sometimes need to use http://www.domain.ext in stead of https://www.domain.ext. Would this be a problem? I should expect with the 301 redirect that we don't have an issue here, but I would like to be sure. Although, I can make the site accessible without https too, but I don't think this is a good idea regarding duplicate content, is it? Thanks. Tom
Link Building | | Onlinq0 -
Niche Web Design company - Links from all your clients - Good or Bad?
If you were a web development company that specializes in a specific niche & you were to have a link back to your website on all of the websites you have designed would this be seen as crappy links & would hurt you due to the Penguin Algo updates? Or since it's a niche web development company, having links from the same industry websites be seen as decent links? Thanks
Link Building | | DCochrane0 -
Best five links to get first for a new website
I wondered if people had a list of the top five or ten links you should build for a new website in order to add some sense of authority. For example should a new website start with key social media websites such as Twitter, Google+ and Linkedin ? Or top level directories such as BOTW and DMOZ? Should they local for niche website directories in their location or vertical? If you had to choose five links - free or paid which would they be?
Link Building | | highwayfive1 -
Pretty basic question on how best to start using open site Explorer
So I have spend around a month or so with on page optimization on 25 -30 or so pages and keywords/phrases, with some half decent results…still hoping there is more to come… I reckon now it’s time to look at getting more inbound links with Open site Explorer… Every time I look at it though I get a bit of a head ache…! Can anyone say or point me in the right direction how I should really start using Open site Explorer ? (I have the PRO tool) Thanks, sorry its such a simple question!
Link Building | | inhouseninja0