Building a link building team
-
I just joined SEOmoz and I have enjoyed all the information.
I currently outsource link building to an agency that charges $50 per link. For this, they handle the anchor text creation, the surrounding text and solicitation, acquisition and monitoring. I know they send the actual work to their independent contractors.
How do you find those independent contractors so that I can build my own network of contractors and save the client money?
-
Hi Drew. Did you ever find some good link building freelancers who do link building right?
-
Hi Steve, I really appreciate the perspective. I'm going to consider moving the account. You and Ryan have given me the perspective I needed. Thank You.
-
Sorry, reading it back it looks like I was a bit blunt when stating the issues. One thing I will say, judging by the number of other links on the blog they must have some pretty convincing sales people lol. But yeah honestly there's a tonne of other places out there that will get you some great links. I don't know how much it works out that you're paying them monthly, but there's some great SEO companies you could probably hire for a similar amount (maybe less?) who would do a good job with your link building. Half of the people on these boards probably run them lol. Check out the SEOmoz market place and get a few quotes... and don't forget, Distilled have just opened up a branch in the USA, and they're endorsed by SEOmoz so you can't go wrong there!
-
Your points are well taken. I have spent a great deal of time researching this today and really appreciate the feedback. I had a feeling this might be the case but I'm thankful to have the affirmation.
-
Concur. Looks like a link farm and your link isn't surrounded by content so much as it's surrounded by a ton of other links. Definitely look for another solution.
-
Thank you Ryan
-
Okay, based on that blog... before I say this, please get the opinions of others too as I'm aware I'm starting to sound too negative here... you're being taken for a bit of a ride.
That blog is spammy, irrelevant, full of links to random sites, contains dire content (probably dupe but haven't checked), looks like a domain purchased for it's old page rank as it doesn't fit the content, etc... etc...
That is far, far from a quality link and isn't worth 5 cents let alone $50.
Run a mile!! If that's what they've been doing, you could have achieved the same results for $50 one-off.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news
-
Great expansion on the line of thinking from Steve here. Thumbs up. @Drew T, questions like these are the things you'll want to consider and map out for someone(s) that you task with building links. Ultimately some of the best relationships you'll cultivate online will come from more than just getting a link, but actually connecting with other people that are in your niche.
-
Hi Steve. Thanks for the time. Here is a link to a pretty typical result...http://www.hanoverstables.com/. We were doing about 1500 per month and now we are around 2250 or so. We are in the storage business with 2 of our top 10 keywords in the top 3, another 5 holding stable at 14 (up from say page 3/4) and another 2 or 3 well outside the top 50.
Our conversions are only up 10-15% during the same period. We have done on-site optimization, we add 10 relevant articles per week across our targeted keywords. We do not have a big directory presence and are not in yahoo, dmoz, or many niche directories.
We have over 120 links going on any given month.
-
Hmm, iffy. I think you're probably doing the right thing looking elsewhere (in my opinion). If you have low traffic (not saying you have) then a 50% increase isn't a lot, plus, how much of an increase in conversions are you getting would be the more important question.
All I mean is, if you're in a field that's not competitive, you started off low with no rankings, and they got you a few low value links which bumped you up to having a couple of okay ranks, which are driving some "not-so qualified" traffic, then that's not worth $50 per link. You could have done that yourself pretty easily, or employed someone at $10 per link.
But...
If you've got some good rankings out of it which are driving good, targeted traffic due to those links then great
Edit Also, how many other links are there on these blogs going to other sites, are the blogs spammy? Care to share one?
-
No they do not. They have encouraged me to review links in yahoo explorer. I've noticed through yahoo site explorer that we have more low quality blog sites that give us a link with 15 or so relevant words around the link. The link is a desired keyword as the anchor text. I've also noticed an emergence of sites that give only a link with the anchor text in the blog-roll.
Organic traffic has increased more than 50% since we engaged them 6 months ago so I feel it's working.
-
I hope they're good links then. $50 is cheap for a great link, expensive for a worthless one... do they not provide anything so you can see the value of the links?
-
Thank You Ryan. I appreciate your time in answering my question.
-
You can use websites like oDesk, Rent-a-coder, Craigslist, or many similar other sites to bring on outsourced contractors. With a careful plan you can probably attain a much higher rate of return.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Has your site ever been targeted by malicious link building executed by a competitor?
I'm pretty sure one of my client's sites has been targeted by malicious black hat link building tactics employed by a competitor site. Over the last few weeks we've gotten 100s of super low quality spammy backlinks. No one has been doing link building, so the only thing I can think of is that competitor entered our URL into some spammy backlink building sites. Has anyone else experienced this? It's the real estate industry, so I wouldn't be surprised considering how competitive it is, but I'd love to hear your experiences.
Link Building | | JBMediaGroup1 -
Link Building Cost
Can anyone share typically what a US Based SEO Agency should or would charge for creating good quality backlinks? All of the pages we are targeting have been optimized with quality content and are ranking half decent. The keywords we are targeting are med-high competition keywords. We've located a few offshore agencies with prices in the 100$ range for 10 keywords but are leery of moving forward, currently it's the cost we are paying for 1 Keyword here in the US. Thank You!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing1 -
Locksmith link building
Can anybody please give me any recommendation about a locksmith/security related websites that i can build strong/meaningful links with?
Link Building | | lockstarwi0 -
Contests For Link Building?
I have been seeing a trend that a lot of people are hosting contests with prices in the high end XXX $ or low end XXXX $ as the first price. Usually it's arranged via a number of sponsors and you'd have to link to all the sponsors using the keywords given. Some people provide a text file with everything pre formatted to make it easy. I have seen several sites paying 50$ to be part of a contest so that they can get some link juice from participating sites. Since the prize money is huge, many people will participate and will get lot of links. There was a person who built an entire business out of this (Not naming him. He's still doing the same thing but with a small twist). What's your take on such strategies? Don't you think it's high time Google caught these sort of "link schemes"?
Link Building | | ConversionChamp0 -
Which link building method is most effective?
I have been looking at different seo companies for link building. I found a ranked list on Topseos.com. Many of them offer the same services as offshore SEOs, namely: Article marketing blog comments forum comments/profiles bookmarking PR directories Link acquisition by contacting relevants sites and negotiating a fee for a link I know that custom link acquisition is the most effective, but it gets very expensive. And, you don't know what each link is going to cost you. Here are my questions: Of the other methods (other thank custom link acquisition), how would you rank their effectiveness? The other methods seem kinda gimmicky, is it worth the time/money? Have you seen sites rank well for competitve keywords using articles/bookmarking/blog comments/directories etc? How do you know i a company is going to them manually as they claim? as opposed to using some automated software. Thanks
Link Building | | inhouseseo0 -
Directories and Link Building
I was reading a post by Eric Enge, http://www.seomoz.org/blog/role-of-directories-in-link-building and nobody talked about in the comments, so I want to see what you think: Considering that get some bad links from punished directories is bad for your site, it's worth to use site submissions softwares, like SubmitEaze, that promisses a 1,000 submits?
Link Building | | seomasterbrasil
Do you use it, what you think about it? [title edited by staff for clarity]0 -
Learning link building
I want to learn from one of the best how to do real link building. I currently outsource this and just aren't sure if they're that good or not. Can you please let me know if Rand is doing any training or presentations on this in L.A or California this year? And if not him maybe someone else you can recommend who's good. Thanks much.
Link Building | | afranklin0 -
Any Tips for Link Building for Boring Topics/Businesses?
I have a number of clients that own businesses in 'boring' sectors, such as: Toxic Waste Removal Steel Erecting Household Plumbing (Boilers, etc...) Link building for these sites is quite difficult. Creating compelling content and 'link bait' is particularly tricky. I found a good post from Michael Gray on the subject, but I don't think food (or McDonalds in this case)is a particularly difficult subject to write about. Any more tips on how to approach this would be appreciated. Thanks
Link Building | | cmaddison0