How do I find and can I trust link building companies
-
I'm finding it hard to build quality links. I don't want to employ a link building company as I can't find anyone I can trust. I also don't know what is a realistic rate of pay for link building work.
-
The industry i work in is a bit old fashioned and i find it hard to get links from quality well ranked and relevant sites as there is not many around. For a Small business with a growing site £500 per link is just insane!
I understand the value of quality links but finding a relevant site above PR3 (I realize PR is not the be all and end all these days) is very uncommon in our industry. Our competitors have massively more links than us but in my opinion there links are a tad spammy. If my link profile looked like my biggest competitors i would be disavowing them asap.
I feel a quality link is,
- From a site that relevant to the topic of your site/page.
- From a high ranking site.
- In a prominent position as near the top of the page as possible.
- Surrounded by quality content about the page you are linking to.
- Preferably as close to the index page as possible, not 8 clicks down.
- The anchor text should vary from your other existing links.
- The page should not have a high number of external links on it.
- the page title should be relevant to your page and not be a links, forum or directory page.
- Preferably not on the same C block as other links to your site.
- The link should be likely to drive direct traffic as well as produce an SEO gain.
I'm sure i missed some things as I'm a site owner not an SEO specialist.
I was not judging "Good link builders" more the companies who claim to get you to the top of google in a month guys. Unfortunately I'm yet to find a good link builder. I keep finding the conmen and black hat guys. I think the good guys must cost too much for most small to medium businesses. As a retailer with an ecommerce site the current google methods seem to be geared to kick small businesses to the kerb. Ebay and amazon and now google shopping are wiping out businesses that are already hurting due to the economy.
I agree with goggles lust for quality sites i just feel it is sending big multinational sites so far ahead that it is almost impossible to get any momentum if you are a smaller business.
The thing i don't understand is why google seems to want so much content on ecommerce sites. Surely if real world shops are anything to go by shop layout, cleanliness, good displays, stock volume, price and service are what matter not how many leaflets and books you have on the products. in googles eyes you don't need to have the product and you can be double the price so long as you have a lot of info on the product none of that matters it just seems odd to me as a retailer that they don't differentiate sites by type so each can be optimized for the particular purpose.
That being said its just the way of the world.
Rant over!
-
You need to define what a quality link is.
Just because you don't know enough to judge what is a high or low quality linkbuilder should not lead you to distrust linkbuilders, but to rightly distrust your own lack of knowledge in this area. Your first step should be to educate yourself on linkbuilding
What I would consider quality linkbuilding comes in at £500 a link
-
Unless the member of staff has a good understanding of up to date SEO techniques I'd be careful. I wouldn't look at it as building links, look at it as finding relevant websites that will help you drive traffic to your website. Industry specific websites that will help you drive the traffic you are looking for.
Some link building companies focus too much on the number of links being built rather than the quality and relevance of the links. I'd find a list of competitors and do a link audit on them and see if your links can go on the same sites.
-
Thanks for the feedback. You have all backed up my gut feeling of don't trust "link builders".
is it worth hiring a member of staff to do inhouse link planning and building?
-
Here's the link that Fracisco refers to (I guess): http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended
-
If it was me, I'd find a reputable marketing firm first, and then see if link building or offsite optimization is one of their marketing tactics of their overall marketing strategy. I wouldn't hire or use a company that solely build links. It might hurt you in the long run.
-
One thing you could do is find a company that you think has a good campaign going, do an audit on the links to find out where those links are coming from and maybe figure out who is doing the links for them. But like Jesse said I would focus on building content first then you could find niche blogs/websites to post them on as a guest blog poster or something like that.
-
I think you should first have your customized link building strategy drawn out for you 1st. If the companies you seek cannot meet those standards, pass on them. Get them to give you all their work so you know they aren't messing around.
I had a person contact me last week and wanted me to help them with link build for $400/mo. I told him I can't pay anyone that little. At $400/mo, I would be forced to SPAM.
You can find several link building companies here in SEOMOZ.
One of the tools I use for linkbuilding is Buzzstream. Take a look at that company. It'll help streamline your outreach.
-
I wouldn't. I just flat-out wouldn't. I'd hire a marketing/SEO person to build content first.
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
-
About link building strategies and article publishing
Hi friends. What could be the best strategies for article publishing with links and anchor text. I did the next. I published original article in my website blog section and then next day published the same article in few news portals with links and anchor text to product landing pages. But google indexed only article from my blog. News portal in my country is with highest DA. Is it ok to do this way or better is make uncial article for every news portal and do not publish in own blog so there is no duplicates? I am afraid that doing my way is waste of time and money. Thanks for help.
Link Building | | netcomsia0 -
We are moving to HTTPS and wanted to know if our link building efforts were in vain or will the link juice pass to HTTPS?
We are switching to HTTPS and want to make sure the links we've gotten in the past will still transfer since they are pointing to HTTP? I'd hate to go back through and ask people to please add an s to the link.
Link Building | | bryant25560 -
Link building external trusted help out there?
Hi there guys and Girls, I am a newbie to the seo world but learning quickly. Unhappy with seo services offered for startups I have taken on the role myself for my website. I think so much of what can be learnt online here I can implement myself with a few hours of work each week. So my dilemma! I have lots of ideas of for content which i know will be valuable and I was considering outsourcing just for link building (the long haul work) The trouble is I am wary of who to use and if such service is out there? I have tried searching on o'desk and freelancer etc but I guess i am too frightened of spammy links or postings on irrelevant sites. I guess initially I am looking for someone who can help my link building campaign whilst I build up my own blogging contacts etc. Does anyone know if these types of services exist? and if any are recommended for small companies? Thanks Michelle
Link Building | | nutjobshell0 -
Finding links online that already exist as link juice based on search results
I'm curious about this, I can't find anything on the net that talks about it. I wrote an article about it on squidoo and have had no responses so I am thinking this is very rare subject. The question is I have done some backlink research with my competitors with linkdetective.com and found many links (even follow ones) related to sites that provide search results. Here are a link about what I am talking about as an example, I have found many more besides this one. http://search.lphant.com/es/webResults.html?q=free%20scrabble%20dictionary&hl=en&page=1&src=hmp_es&ref=1 My site appears in those results. When looking at the source there is no "nofollow". I found this page because linkdetective.com had this link listed pointing to my competitor. Are these valid backlinks? What I have been doing is adding these links to http://www.google.com/addurl so that Google knows about them. Is there something I am missing or are these valid?
Link Building | | cbielich0 -
How can I convince my clients with smaller budgets to invest in Link Building?
Hi All, Basically over the last few months I have been working for a company that is mainly a dev house but are looking to expand their SEO clients further. At the moment because of the only recent focus on SEO we have a lot of clients who only pay for monthly reports, on page optimisation and some PPC. My question is, how can I show the clients that investing in Link Building is probably the next step and something they need to do if they wish to further progress their SEO campaign. I have written up a link building proposal to show them the advantages of Link Building, but any other ideas would be very much appreciated. Thanks,
Link Building | | SEOAndy0 -
Link-Building
Hello, I have been doing link-building for my website since 2 of January. However those links are not in the Open Site Explorer. For example I have the DMOZ website pointing to my website and I cant see it in open site explorer! Why?? Tks in advance!
Link Building | | PedroM0 -
Link building for rankings VS Link building for relationships
A Big Shout To Everyone -- Good Morning and What's Up 🙂 As I read today through seomoz professional guide to link building and the section why link building matters and in addition to this a newsletter I received today that changed my whole thinking towards link building for rankings vs for relationships. It is already happening on social networks if you are active there, but what about on your website. What are your thoughts on the following ? Google's job is provide the most relevant results to surfers online, and looking the link profile of a site & the page itself is the key to determining which page to serve on plate to the surfers link query ! Webmasters Site Objective:
Link Building | | helpwanted
I think that we as webmasters have to ask ourselves what do we want to achieve with link building. To get quick traffic or build slow authority links, high rankings, lead generation, sales & other things here I may be missing etcccc Other Objective Networking & Relationship Building Alliances : What I discovered today is that building links for 1st page rankings are great and will provide me with steady traffic, but not all of it is targeted traffic, but what else can I do to bring targeted traffic and at the same time try to build alliances with other related non competing business owners online. The idea... is to apply old school networking / relationship building alliances to get targeted traffic to my site that can actually benefit from my services. How Do We Achieve This I become a editor for approving resource links for me site, only the best will be placed on my site as a resource. Build a valuable tightly themed categorized resource section with related non competing resources that can help my sites visitors find what they are looking for, send visitors to non competing resources that may purchase their services which helps me build a relationship with them, and may can with rankings as well, provided I am selective with my qualification process. Questions & Concerns Below : What should I be thinking about when creating a resource categorized links page How many outgoing do follow links should I allow from this links partner page How will this links resource page affect my own SE 1st Page Rankings and is it worth it based on getting targeted traffic Any pros / cons I may be missing here0 -
Link building
I have two separate websites on different servers and was wondering that since reciprocal links effectively eliminate each other, I'm curious if this link strategy will keep the links counting. Here's the strategy: I will have someone link to my site A and if i link to their site from my site B in a three way link strategy, will the links count even though both my site A and B have me listed as the Whois so Google knows that both sites are owned by me? Or will the links be discounted as reciprocal? Thanks in advance for your feedback! Take care, Ron
Link Building | | Ron100