Link Building: What Can I Reasonably Expect from SEO Firm

[Kingalan1]

Dear Moz Community:

I am considering hiring the SEO firm that conducted a web site audit for my company. The audit was very serious and thorough. Out of 400 domains linking to my site, the audit identified 40% as toxic, 45% as suspicious and only 5% as good quality.

The SEO firm believes the poor link profile is very much holding back organic ranking and traffic. I am considering signing a six month contract to have them remove the toxic and suspicious links and also, build new quality links.

Basically I have the following questions:

-The SEO firm hopes to build 5-10 very high quality incoming links to my site per month. Is this a reasonable number? They claim that quantity is much more important than quality.

-In the six month campaign, I will be paying for one month of research by the SEO provider before the link building kicks in earnest. In fact I will only get five months of link building despite paying for six months of service. Is this fair?

-Is the removal of toxic links and the development of 25-50 new quality links and enough to improve ranking and traffic over six months? The site currently receives 4,000 visitors from organic search results per month.
Note that at the moment the site has only about 20 "quality" links. I would hate to exhaust my budget after six months with no tangible improvement!

I would very much like to hear of anyone's experience or input regarding reasonable expectations regarding hiring an SEO firm for link building campaigns.

Thanks!!!
Alan

[Charlessipe]

5-10 linking domains per month sounds reasonable if they are relevant editorial links. Building links can involve spending a lot of time to research opportunities to find websites that would want to link to you or should be linking to you. For example, a relevant link opportunity would be a local real estate association that lists local brokerages. Another example might be a local website that already lists your competitors. Other times, links are result of building a relationship over time like a connection you have with a friend or complimentary business. If the SEO firm is manufacturing links that you don't really deserve, then that can hurt you in the long run. Ultimately, a link building campaign is like any investment in marketing and carries some risk of failure.

[Carson-Ward]

Firstly, I'd wonder about how these "toxic" links were built in the first place. If you were running around generating articles for links and participating in link schemes you may very well have links that are holding you back. One can typically tell by looking at the anchor text pointing to your site; if it's full of unnatural anchor text like "best SEO firm" rather than "[site/brand name]", they could very well hurt you now or in the future.

Don't trust the links to be high quality just because they use the phrase. All the spam emails I get from low-quality spam link builders use words like "natural," "organic," and "high quality." I'm also skeptical that they're talking about "getting links" without content or some broader marketing strategy. How are they going to do it? What are they going to share?

Honestly I've seen people do more harm than good buying into link-building contracts. Quantity may or may not matter more than quality - it depends on the proportion of each - but legitimacy matters more than either. Do you expect these links to generate awareness for your brand and drive people to your site? Why not do both, and do actual marketing in the process of building links? It's smart business, and tends to focus on activities Google won't penalize a few years from now.

I don't know the company or the situation, but do be careful and keep a long-term vision in mind.

[Kingalan1]

Hi Thomas:

Thanks so much for your very informative response!!!

In fact the website is for my real estate brokerage business and the organic traffic is essential for new leads. Without that traffic my business is in trouble.

The SEO firm has assured me that removal the toxic and suspicious links will not cause a decline in traffic. They intend to request removal from each web master over about two months. Finally we will send a disavow request to Google for the remaining bad links. The process should be done in about 90 days. Simultaneously a new link building campaign will begin. First month to be mostly research but in the 2nd and 3rd month 5-10 quality links will be added per month. The SEO firm believes that this approach has little risk in reducing organic traffic. We will look at the link reports carefully before requesting removal so no good links are accidentally removed.

Only concern I have is how Google will evaluate the removal of bad links from 380 bad domains (out of 400 domains) and the simultaneous addition of 10-20 high quality domains over three months. So at the end of the process I will have maybe 35 quality domains linking to my site versus about 20 good domains now 380 bad domains (suspicious and toxic). The SEO firm has insisted that the site it self is very well implemented with lots of good content and that the bad domains are really holding it back. I hope they are correct.

Also, before link building they will spend the first month of link building on research. So nothing much will happen until the second month. I did pay for an extremely detailed (and well done) site audit which included a link analysis. So I hope I am not in a sense paying for this twice.

Also, I am being charged a considerable fee for the toxic and suspicious fee removal. A flat price plus a per domain fee for the removal. I feel since the audit identified the bad links a fair amount of the work towards getting this done is already complete.  I really wonder what is fair and customary under the circumstance. I do understand link removal is time consuming. I at times consider trying to to it myself, but for a task of this complexity using a pro is probably better.

Also, you had asked about the penalty. Apparently it is a Penguin penalty. At no point did Google ever send us a penalty notification via Webmaster Tools. And the penalty was partially lifted in October after the latest Penguin update. Traffic increased to 4,300 in October versus 2,800 in September. The SEO firm thinks this may be because a spammy footer was removed.

After these new details I would be very curious to hear if you think the SEO firms approach sounds reasonable and that I am going in the right direction.

Thanks so much.
Alan

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Adam,

Search engine optimization is not a practice in which you want to skimp. If the site is your way of making a living. Which I have no idea if it is or not?

Obviously if it's important you I would go ahead with a reputable firm. However

I would inquire to what method they hope to build these links to your site.

What else are they going to do to improve your sites page rank and traffic? If anything

you said the already conducted the audit on your site's this right?

Are you penalized now by Google I'm assuming that you are?

I agree there should be a set time period of a month at least to audit the entire site and then you start to figure out and which method you can earn links, that will benefit your website the most overall.

5 links a month seems like a good amount kind of a high amount of high quality links. I'm talking about extremely relevant in no way spam powerful links pointing towards your site not just your homepage.

There are methods in which people can get lucky for instance I have a client who received almost 1000 links from very relevant and extremely powerful sites GQ, Rolling Stone, Time magazine you get I'm going with this because this was a viral hit that was truly a godsend I do not expect this to be normal. A very unique product and the press loved it so it worked out and now we are going through all the possibly bad links that are not worth anything.

Think link velocity if you are consistently picking up 5 links a month you will want to stay around that rate obviously if good opportunities come your way take them. But never do anything to cause a spike unless it's completely white hat that should go without saying.

I wonder where your site will rank if you actually remove 90% of your links?

I would be very inquisitive to that. Because some are suspicious does not mean that there that having said that I have not looked at the data therefore I really have no way of knowing and if you trust this firm go for it.

I would make sure that they are reputable Google them are they a Moz recommended company?

I would start off by telling you this is going to cost X amount to do the audit. The I would move on from there because only after I do a very thorough time-consuming audit will I know where I stand with your website.

And only after that on it will you know where you stand with your website.

Every firm has different ways it seems like these guys have taken care of you by looking for the bad links and the only question I have is where's your primary traffic coming from? Your 4000 users are they going to kill that source? Or is it very spread out if it's a Google penalty I'm assuming it's a link from a very popular site or 20.

Companies like Distiled, SEER interactive, Evolving SEO, Internet marketing ninjas and Portent's come to mind for this type of work.

If things go the way most companies plan they should you will keep this company on for quite a long time as their ROI will surpass what you are paying them and it will make sense to continue using them for a long time.

I would not worry about the one-month it really is necessary. I just don't know how I would tell you very much about what's going to happen without the one-month audit. I could of course have a idea considering the link on it you told me about.

I think from what I'm reading they are reputable and I totally agree with quality over quantity.

Try to get them involved in every part of your site if you can get the most out of this as you can and enjoy being out from under googles thumb once it**'**s done.

Both parties should have an exit clause if the worst curse. Which I hate to bring up but most reputable firms have a exit clause for themselves as well as the customer. However this does not mean after 3 months if you don't see traffic pickup that they're doing something wrong SEO can be a slow process you must wait and be patient for it to work correctly.

Ask them if you will get more than a link audit as I would be checking your entire site including your hosting how many words you have on every page code structure the list goes on. Ask them to do all of that as well you want to get it right.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[GPainter]

Hi Adam,

They are correct that quality over quantity however I would be cautious over signing contracts for 6 months, I don't meant to toot my own horn but we don't lock you into contracts at Pixel by Pixel because they can be unfair.

It's pretty easy to look at links and call wolf on them even if they may not be "toxic" Unfortunately research is part and parcel of SEO however it shouldn't really take a month. I'd more look at it in terms of hours. Whilst they might be in terms of months how many hours are they going to be working on your site as it may be a month but if they are only putting in an hour a month is it worth it ?Ask to look at some of their previous work see if they can back up their claims

I would also expect good communication its very common that SEO firms get you to sign a contract then vanish with the odd print out report with no real human interaction as to whats going on.

Whilst it takes them a month to look at your SEO back links don't skimp out researching them.Don't forget you can shop around too!

Good luck