What are the pros and cons of using a link builder? Can link building be outsourced?
-
Hi, I have great content on my website which I would like to build external links to from other websites. I am told this will increase my domain authority and ultimately help search engine ranking positions. I have very limited time in my hands and now thinking of outsourcing the link building component to a specialist. Is this a good way of doing it? Could you recommend professional link builders?
-
Hey Tony
Sure, fire me an email over to marcus@bowlerhat.co.uk or give me a shout on 0121 314 2001. Out of the office Fri Mon but in all day today.
Cheers
Marcus -
Thanks Marcus. Would it be possible to discuss this further with you?
-
I'm guessing from the way you phrase the question that you are fairly new to SEO. If that is the case I wouldn't outsource link building.
There are some some good outsource link builders out there, but link building on it's own probably isn't going to do what you hope. Link building is one element of search engine optimisation. It's a vital part, but it's also a risky part (because it is hard to "undo"). Done by itself it is also unlikely to achieve much.
I would look for an SEO consultant to work with. They can then work out how much link building you need, and the methods that will work for your project. Let the consultant then find and manage the link builder. Most will have people they work with anyway.
If you don't really know what you are doing then hiring a link builder would be like me hiring a bricklayer and expecting them to build be a house.
-
Hey Tony
That is very much a how-long-is-a-piece-of-string kind of question. You can, certainly outsource link building and have plenty of success with that, if that is indeed what needs to be done.
If you have some strong content and are continuing to add strong content then that very much helps the process and any link building can be built around the promotion of your content.
I have had a look at what I believe to be your site and certainly, you need some links. You have pretty much nothing in the way of external links and you could have a bit of a chicken and egg scenario here. You need links to rank your content, but you can't get links till your content ranks and people can see it.
In my advice you would need a six month program that looks at building up a fairly solid foundation for your site and would include links from a variety of sources.
- Content Development, Sharing & Promotion
- Premium Directories and Industry Specific Sites
- Blog Comments / Forums / Q&A etc for referal value as much as anything else
- Guest posts from high quality sites
- Competitor Research
- Link Bait / Shareable content / Soft Conversions
- Social Media
Ultimately, a lot of what is done depends on how competitive the industry and the keywords you are chasing are and in many cases see what the competitors are doing, identifying weaknesses in their strategies and building exposure so people can't fail to find you.
That's just a very simple overview but the idea here is to identify a range of different link types from high quality sources that will provide referral traffic, increased exposure and a portfolio of links.
We would be happy to take a look at this for you or can certainly point you in the right direction of several good, UK based agencies that will take a sensible, content driven approach to building you a solid set of links that will help get your content out there.
Hope this helps
Marcus -
_Yes, Outsourcing has attained some negative connotations but the thing is that it has its own benefits. All you need to do is to find a reliable outsourcing partner and there you go. And please for God’s sake, do not hire someone for the cheap because this is going to backfire sooner or later. Find an eligible candidate who really knows the difference between cheap, crappy link building and real online marketing. _
-
Personally I would suggest not to outsource Link Building. However, there is no harm in outsourcing linking provided they build links manually/naturally without using only ethical ways.
Do not allow them build links via exchanging links with other directories. 99% of the companies claim to build one way links but they're involved in three way link schemes, which search engines can now track easily.
The best way for acquiring natural one way links is develop links by :
- Quality Article Syndication (Do not spam by submitting just one low quality article into 100s of article directories)
- PR Syndication
- Guest Blogging
- Blog Commenting (Do not spam)
- Submitting website into global/local business web directories (choose directories carefully)
- Do not run behind the PageRank, look for only quality and relevant websites
- Use Social media to get your content voted
- Create content posts on squidoo, hubpages, tumblr, etc.
- Participate in forums/ top notch blogs
Hope this hellps
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
-
Thoughts on using the disavow tool for removed links?
Our website has been penalized by Google for the past few months due to unnatural links. We have spent the past 2 months submitting link removal requests to the domain owners with success. However, the Google Webmaster Tools "links to site" has not updated the list. I understand that they update the list of links as they crawl the website, but it has been 6-8 weeks on a lot of them (mostly our biggest offenders). We attempted to send a reconsideration request anyways, hoping Google would see that even though it is still listed, the link isn't actually there. We received a response that it is still in violation, but I believe it is because the webmaster tools links have not updated and perhaps this is what they go off of. Would you recommend submitting these domains to the disavow tool even though our link has already been removed for the past 6-8 weeks? Or even just listing them with the "#" comment tag so they can see they had been removed? Or would you continue waiting for it to update? Of course, we would like the penalty removed as soon as possible and were concerned that the list hadn't removed these websites the past 6-8 weeks our link had been removed. Example: This domain shows we have 3,397 within this website. It was an affiliate that had this URL forwarding to our pages: http://www.binet.lv/go.pl?PID=49276714O2422 . This no longer forwards to our webpage and the affiliate has been expired, but the GWT still shows them at the top of the links list. I also noticed a lot of sites left the links up, but added the nofollow attribute. These are still coming up in the Links list and does not decipher between which do and do not have nofollow. Could the spammy sites with our links as nofollow still be hurting us? Thanks for any help and recommendations!
Link Building | | shopbloc0 -
Build Links with Bloggers
Hi! A few days ago, someone asked about how to ask links from bloggers and we got good answers, specially from Egol. But, I do want to add to that question: after conducting research on each blogger and make sure they have good quality content, how would you factor in their page rank, visitors, page view and social media info? if they don't have much traffic, with PR3 (we are PR4), which means we can't count on too much traffic from them, but, will backlink from such places deemed as quality link by Google? I do understand the higher number in PR and traffic is better, but, in our case, they don't come by often. Is it still worthwhile to do the lower sites?
Link Building | | ypl0 -
Link Building Methods
Hi, If i hire a SEO company, what kind of links they will build for me. If anyone own a seo company can you let me know.My question is if i create a new website, what kind of link building techniques should i use other than, articles, press releases, social bookmarking, directories. As i am competiting with very tough competition. I have analyzed my competitors and they bought sitewides which are paid ones. Without paid ones i think it is is very hard for me to get into the competition. Can someone discuss more link building methods also. Awaiting for your responce. Regards.
Link Building | | Dex32320 -
Can anybody recommend a link building company for outsource?
I am about to land another fat client and it's in a highly competitive industry. While looking at the competition, it is clear to me that the competitors have an SEO link building team. Since Americans are too expensive for the budget allocated to this project, I need to outsource to India, Philippines, or some third world nation. CAN ANYONE RECOMMEND A GOOD LINK BUILDING COMPANY IN A DEVELOPING NATION (EDITED: 3RD WORLD) COUNTRY?
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza0 -
Demand Media & Link Building - OMG?
When the last linkscape update happened, I saw a new incoming link from USA Today Travel. SeoMoz rates the link as a 9.5 for DA and PA is 24. The article was written by someone from Demand Media. I tried contacting the author to work out a deal. Since I did not receive a response, I investigated Demand Media myself. They are a large group of content writers. I have finished building the site and now I'm in the link building process for highly competitive keywords. My 2 Questions: I can write articles all freakin day about what I do. I NEED to build links. Should I become a freelancer for Demand Media? I don't care about the pay because I am well paid. Is there anything to be concerned about with the Panda Update? All responses are appreciated. Please give me a thumbs up if you found this question interesting (because apparently some other post says nobody gives thumbs up)
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza1 -
Link Building Features/Tutorials
I am previewing this software and am getting a little lost in its features. I am really looking for something that will help me identify link prospects, filter out the low-authority domains, and organize this information into an actionable list. Can anyone point me to resources (tutorials, etc.) on how to do that with this software? Which tools should I be using and how can I use them to reach these goals?
Link Building | | Falconberg0 -
Nolo.com or bbb.org for link building?
Has anyone used nolo.com's directory and do you think it is worth it for link building? How about bbb.org I run www.musillawfirm.com thanks in advance
Link Building | | musillawfirm0 -
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