Do you consider it risky to hire outside firms to build links?
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Based on what happened to JC Penny do you think there is a significant risk of penalties if you have an outside firm build links for your site? For example they could buy some links and get caught or engage in black hat tactics without our knowledge.
Is there anything that can be done to minimize any such risk?
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You'd be surprised. Quite a few forums where I contribute allow followed links, however you cannot set the anchor text. The text of the link is your website address. Google+ allows you to have followed links from your profile to other sites, which is cool, I think it uses rel="contributor" or something.
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As wordy as I usually am, I think Brent's short-but-sweet answer is dead on. It's like hiring any contractor - there's always risk, and you have to do your homework. That means:
(1) Get referrals, properly vet them, and make sure they pass the "smell" test. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
(2) Outline what you expect in detail. I can't stress this enough. People hire outside firms, say "get me some links" and then are angry when those links are crap. You didn't say what kind of links to build, or how many, or what you're opposed to, or what your risk tolerance is. Make that all crystal clear.
(3) Monitor them, like any employee or contractor. If someone comes to work on my kitchen, I check in on them. I'm not trying to insult them, but it's my kitchen, and if they screw it up it's my problem. Insist on reports, get logins to sites (where applicable), get lists of the links they're building, etc. If you're uncomfortable with what they're doing, tell them to stop.
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Most forums are knowledgeable of this tactic and have all of those signature links setup as nofollow.
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If you hire me to build links for you. I could see where all of those links come from and then as soon as my contract is done with you I go straight to your competitor and ask if he needs links... then get paid by him.... by then you will need more links.
Or, I could toss up my own crappy site, immediately get all of the links that I got for you and that puts me into the money.
So, where the links come from could be considered the most valuable of competitive intelligence.
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I'm not saying forum sigs are in and of themselves bad, I'm referring to blitzing every forum under the sun related or not with them by third party link builders. If it's relevant and you're building it up in-house, sure. I've even done that in the past.
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Surely if you're actively contributing to a community forum offering good advice to others then its not a bad idea to have a link back to your site as part of your signature?
I'm not saying that every post or comment you submit would contain a link back to your site because that would be overkill but where its appropriate, surely that's acceptable.
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While I realize that it's probably possible for third party back linkers to be useful I think both the pricing model and market are against it. When payment is 'per link' there's no real incentive for the provider to do anything other than quantity over quality. I know I've seen link profiles for both competition and projects I've taken over from other SEOs that are plainly silly, and obviously reek of badly done link building. This includes forum profile pages, signatures, Yahoo Answer spam, blog spams, markov-chain generated splogs, sponsored blogs barely in english, thousands of pages based on scraping, and so on, and so on. It's possible that there are good ones out there (after all, if they were good I wouldn't even notice their activity) but I've yet to see any.
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Personally I'd say its better to research forum websites that discuss topics relating to your industry and then useopen site explorer to see what their domain authority is like. Most forums will allow you to have a signature, which could include your website URL, and when answering / contributing to the forum (where applicable) you could link people off to one of your blog posts to help build backlinks to your website.
I'd also recommend submitting your website to a few directory websites relating to your industry. You might have to pay yearly for it, but you will have a link from a reputable / trustworthy domain.
If you have social media profiles like Google+ then you can add links (and your own link text) into your profiles associated links sections. These links are followed by Google, so your site will benefit from the links being there, unlike most backlink exchange sites where they add rel="nofollow" to the links.
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Link building companies irrespective of the cost and location say as "won't use mommy blogs" and will acquire links only from the subject related sites.
But didn't come across any major link building companies accepting penalty clause in their SLA if they breach their promises.
Since hiring link specialists and content writers are difficult for big companies for their immediate need, don't see any option other than going with link builders. Search engines also think twice before penalizing the big sites. Paid search budget will help. Whereas small site owners have high risk.
Own link building team is always recommended.
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If you are going to work with an outside company to help you build links, then you should thoroughly investigate the company and make sure they are on the up and up. And when they start, really review their reports and watch very closely all metrics with your site.
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What happened to JC Penny??
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If you think about it, anybody could hire a company and start buying bad links for competition. If it would be that easy to penalize a site, won't everybody be doing that ? But to answer your question directly, in order to get links that help you, you got to have a good understanding on the kind of links you are actually going to get. Will they be permanent links that are being built or are they rented links ? Depending upon your current link profile and the competition, I would suggest you evaluate what exactly needs to get done before reaching out to a Link Building Company per se.
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