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
-
Internal Link Building and Link Juice Quality
Hi There! I manage the website for a law office that covers many geographical locations. For very specific niche content, we would prefer to create one piece of content and link to the various geographic locations where we would handle that topic instead of posting multiple variations of the same content for each specific geographical area. If we put a button on these pages that has links to each location, will that have the same "link juice" effect to the pages we're linking that linking directly in the text would? (example: the Where can we help you? button on this page : http://www.zdfirm.com/volkswagen-recall/) Thank you!
Link Building | | ZDAdmin0 -
Outbound Links as References - use nofollow or not?
Hey People 🙂 We run an ecommerce site and we research and wrote articles on health topics , and we post the references on the articles in posts ( Magento site / Wordpress for articles ) Should I be putting rel=nofollow in the outbound links or not? I have read a few different posts but none seem to definitively fit my situation. Kind Regards
Link Building | | s_EOgi_Bear
Martin0 -
Unnatural Linking Using Webdsite Themes
I am working on a website that last year received an email from Google via webmaster tools talking about the linking profile. The email suggested that the website had unnatural activity (links) and that the webmaster needed to investigate before filing for a reconsideration. After having looked at the link profile using OSE, it was easy to see the problem. Thousands of inbound links with the exact anchor text. Here is the BIG problem. The tactics used by the unamed SEO agency prior to me were to embed links in to the footer of web themes? At this stage it is unclear as to where you can downlaod or purchase the web themes but it's obvious that the problem is simply going to escalate. The domain in question is www.teamtactics.co.uk Any thoughts on the above would be much appreciated - at this point I am trying to find the place were the themes are available for download. Any ideas much appreciated. shivun
Link Building | | seohive-2227200 -
Help on Link Building
Hi, Recently I've dropped two points on my Root Domain Authority for smallhope.com. Not really sure why. I've done as much on page optimisation that I can think of, but what I would really like some help on is Link Building. If this was your domain what would you do specifically and start link building. I've read a ton of stuff but I just dont seem to know a way to begin. Can you offer me any advice? I've dropped 20% in traffic in the last 8 months. Hope you can help, Adam
Link Building | | NaescentAdam0 -
Is there a tool I can use to check backlink profiles against each other
Hi, Does anyone know of a tool where I can compare 2 (or more) backlink profiles to check common linking domains. It is one of those things that I know I have seen somewhere before but cant remember for the life of me where! Thanks
Link Building | | rickv1010 -
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.
Link Building | | Luia0 -
Clarification needed regarding link building
We are working on a SEO project for a client with a bilingual site. We have already started with the link building task for the English domain. However, for the Arabic domain the URLs for the inner pages are not yet finalized and it would take around 2 months to do so. I would like to know whether we could start with link building for the main Arabic domain although the inner pages URLs are not yet finalized?
Link Building | | Francis_GlobalMediaInsight0