Hey there
I'm new to both SEO and Seomoz. I have this personal site I've been working on SEO wise (slowly since I started learning from 0) and I have reached a point where the only missing thing for me to do is build links. However, the competitors for my site have thousands of links.
From all I've read on the web regarding SEO&LinkBuilding, including articles in this site...the old method of spamming links wherever/whenever possible is now being penalized while the practice of manual/hand-built links of higher quality and lesser quantity is rewarded.
So I went ahead and approached several linkbuilding companies and one thing that struck me was the level of uncertainty regarding the chances of getting a site to get to the first page.
I understand there's factors you cannot predict or control, such as what your competitors are doing on the SEO front...but ultimately, I'm curious as to how do you effectively gauge the possibility of getting to the top page of any keyword combination?
Especially when dealing with clients... since apparently whoever 'guarantees' you anything is a fraud or uses blackhat techniques...how do you pitch the 'uncertainty' to the client?
Likewise...how do you know if you can make it to the top page or viceversa?
Cheers
