Agency VS Freelancer: Industry rates for a GOOD link builder
-
Hello Moz Community,
I am looking to hire a link builder for SEO purposes. What are the normal rates and what I should expect for my money? Can you guys please share your knowledge with me so I am better prepared when hiring the right person!
Bonus point for tips on what to look for when hiring someone and also best places to look for an SEO specialist!
I look forward to all your replies!
-
Thank you Marcus !
-
Hey. I have followed and read Eric's advice for years. He is an old hand. I am also unfortunately. His Link Moses newsletter is well worth the subscription fee. So much of this comes down to strategy and I am sure a consultation with Eric would give you enough direction for 12 months.
Hope that helps.
-
I can completely relate. Do you have Skype please? I'd love to know your process as I feel I am exactly in the same boat!
-
Hey Marcus,
I couldn't have hoped for a better reply. You really have helped me out a ton here! I will 100% talk to Eric Ward - have you used his services?
L
-
Hey
I think there are only like a handful of really good, all round link builders out there. Sure, some folks may get good at building links in a specific niche or sector but it can be tough to know every potential avenue.
Another problem we tend to see at the agency I run in the UK is that folks want absolutes:
- we want 10 x links from DA 30 domains per month for £1000 (or whatever)
But, the best link building is often a form of digital PR. So it can be a bit lumpy. Certainly, you can go out and find 10 sites that accept guest posts and hit the proposed metric, but are you getting any real big wins like that? How valuable are those links that are just so easy to get?
Likewise, you really want to get your strategy dialled in first. That is, have something that really deserves to be linked to. If you can create that linkable asset then it makes the link building process so much easier. If you don't have linkable assets then it could be that is the first step here so make sure the agency or freelancer can help in that regard (or go back to the drawing board).
There is a good overview here of how to start with the value for your link building efforts (by me - as a disclaimer).
:http://searchengineland.com/organic-traffic-link-building-small-businesses-269353
If you want the best check out Eric Ward:
http://www.ericward.com/evaluation.html
He can put you a strategy together and give you the direction. With the strategic elements in place you can then better understand what component parts you need to run that strategy. Not cheap but if you want to win big then... start with a solid strategy and layer your link building tactics over that.
So much of this depends on the current situation and marketplace. So you need some form of situation analysis. Are you in a crazy competitive space? Is the competition low end? The price you pay will need to consider the difficulty of the task at hand.
So... lots of moving parts but I certainly hope that helps.
Marcus
-
Very useful. Thanks for your input!
-
A lot of the time it's all about what you can do for them too; writing an article for a website on a subject and linking back to your own site as a form of payment (though you may actually ask for $$ too), especially early on in your 'outreach' campaign. Building a reputation is important.
Over time you may be asked for articles etc, or be able to show off your work in order to gain more exposure.
-
Thanks for the reply, fascinating for to me to read as I'm new to SEO and not heard of these commissioned articles. Is there a marketplace for these deals or is it all about the right contacts?
-
Sure.
In a broad sense, you get what you pay for. If you buy 10,000 links from fiver then expect it to be picked up almost instantly by Google and watch your rankings fall.
I know of people who commission articles for $300-500 and ask for a link back to a certain product or page as part of the deal, usually around 800-1000 words and on a reputable website, rather than some MIT personal student blog.
When it comes to link quality, it is usually the case that less links from high quality sources, over many links from low quality sources is best practise. However, building links naturally is a true recognition of quality.
-
I would still like to know what to expect from the industry in regards to this question but thank you for the reply!
-
I'd suggest doing the work yourself with the assistance of programs such as BuzzSumo.
Doing the work yourself will help keep you in touch with how your brand/business is being talked about in both social platforms and blogs, as well as everything in between.
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
-
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links?which one is better to rank a website? i am looking for the help for one of my website
Can anyone please explain the real difference between backlinks, 301 links, and redirect links? which one is better to rank a website? I am looking for help for one of my website vacuum cleaners
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hshajjajsjsj3880 -
Disavowing 100k Affiliate Links
Hi all, hope you're all good. I am updating our disavow file, we've noticed a couple more spammy links which are pointing at or site. While I was at it, affiliate links came to my mind. At the moment we have over 100k+ affiliate links pointing to the root of our site and other categories/products, most of them are do-follow. However, taking a look at WMT, it's one of our 'Who links the most' and the affiliate network is pointing a total of 115,065 links to us. My question; bearing it mind this site generates over 2million hits a month, is it really worth disavowing the entire affiliate link network. This would result is all of those 100,000 links being disavowed over time. Do you think this would result in a positive? Let me know your thoughts.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brett-S0 -
Link building… how to get high rewarding links?
Hi Guys, I have a few people whom I have built relationships up in my industry with that would like to link to my site. Is there any particular things I need to be mindful of before having them link to me? I'm just mindful of the unknown. Also, which links to use etc? Thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Technical Question on Image Links - Part of Addressing High Number of Outbound Links
Hi - I've read through the forum, and have been reading online for hours, and can't quite find an answer to what I'm searching for. Hopefully someone can chime in with some information. 🙂 For some background - I am looking closely at four websites, trying to bring them up to speed with current guidelines, and recoup some lost traffic and revenue. One of the things we are zeroing in on is the high amount of outbound links in general, as well as inter-site linking, and a nearly total lack of rel=nofollow on any links. Our current CMS doesn't allow an editor to add them, and it will require programming changes to modify any past links, which means I'm trying to ask for the right things, once, in order to streamline the process. One thing that is nagging at me is that the way we link to our images could be getting misconstrued by a more sensitive Penguin algorithm. Our article images are all hosted on one separate domain. This was done for website performance reasons. My concern is that we don't just embed the image via , which would make this concern moot. We also have an href tag on each to a 'larger view' of the image that precedes the img src in the code, for example - We are still running the numbers, but as some articles have several images, and we currently have about 85,000 articles on those four sites... well, that's a lot of href links to another domain. I'm suggesting that one of the steps we take is to rel=nofollow the image hrefs. Our image traffic from Google search, or any image search for that matter, is negligible. On one site it represented just .008% of our visits in July. I'm getting a little pushback on that idea as having a separate image server is standard for many websites, so I thought I'd seek additional information and opinions. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MediaCF0 -
Links on My website
I am looking to create some more trust on my website by subscribing to BBB. I have heard that my site is penalized and loses "link juice" if I place the BBB logo link in my page footer on every page of my website. Does anyone know how much I am penalized? Should I only put it on my conversion pages and maybe my main 10 sub pages? My main goal is to assist in getting conversions but I don't want to do it at the expense of getting a penalty. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, Boo
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0 -
Does Google WMT download links button give me all the links they count
Hi Different people are telling me different things I think if I download "all links" using the button in WMT to excel, I am seeing all the links Google is 'counting' when evaluating my site. is that right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | usedcarexpert0 -
Are breadcrumbs any good and Should I insert links on the Item descriptions and specs?
Hi All, In my e-commerce site in each product page I have the breadcrumbs on top which show the root categories that lead to this product. However, I saw once that Google even if you use several anchors from page A to page B Google treats only/mainly the first anchor. This means that inserting contextual links on the product text, the product description, that leads to the category page (which is an important landing page) is irrelevant/ambiguous since the link is already in the breadcrumb on top. What do you think? Should I insert contextual links on the item description or is it worthless? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeytzNet0 -
Google is not Indicating any Links to my site
We built a new store on another ccTLD and linked to it from some of our other domains in a few locations. I am noticing that with the Google operator command "links:" we are seeing nothing linking to our site anywhere. Some things to clarify: These are not no-follow links These pages linking to our new domain are indexed The pages being linked to on our new domain are indexed This is not a flash site or heavy in JavaScript The links existed the day the site was launched so when the new pages were crawled they existed. "Site:" command in Google shows me that my new site is indexed. What could potentially be causing this? I am trying to get these newer ccTLD's to begin ranking and I understand that I need to get links going to these pages since they are fairly new (2.5 months) so I can outrank the .com in the SE's in those locales. (Like Google.co.uk)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt0