Is it time to pay for link building?

[koalatm]

I've been using the Moz tools for a while now and love them. Our SEO efforts are certainly paying off as we're ranking well for a lot of our desired keywords.

That being said, I'm finding link building to be a very frustrating process. As much as I like to be hands on and try to do everything, I'm wondering when it's time to "throw in the towel" and hire someone?

Is there anyone else who might have gone through a similar evolution? I'd love to hear some other stories about how or why you decided to hire out your link building. I'd like to think that whatever we spend on link building could likely reduce our reliance on AdWords, although I'm not sure how this would really play out over time.

[BlueprintMarketing]

you have a private message waiting just so you know

[BlueprintMarketing]

that is fantastic that you're doing so well  I am happy for you.

I can give you another lead as to where to get quality link building and maybe save a couple bucks.

Go to http://www.thehiredguns.com/gigs/find-talent/ it is a fantastic method to get top-quality people and save a couple bucks.

I can PM you and give you more information.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[ciznerguy]

Hello

I would like to share results of an merriment I am running in the Jewelry industry.

I am competing against huge companies in the site is only 10 months old.

in 3 weeks I ran a highly engaged social competition and I jumped to high positions in few competitive keywords.

I see growth in Organic traffic of about 5% per week.

it is not a killer growth but on a steady pace. I am very happy.

I would love to share more

[koalatm]

Good feedback so far, thanks everyone. I am certainly intrigued by continuing to improve our on-site experience. I like working on the types of things that we have more "direct control" over.

In my industry our domain authority is actually not that bad. We're only a few points behind the largest company in our industry here in Canada and their yearly advertising budget is 100 times as large as ours, so as much as I want to do more link building, I'm also fairly certain it's not the number one priority.

[AWCthreads]

I thought you might say you'll get back to us in 6-12/18 months.

If you can acquire quality backlinks via white hat methods that bounce my DA 20 points in a few weeks without a Google penalty, I'll hire you.

[ciznerguy]

I am entertaining a theory that was inspired by things I read here at Moz.

I would like to offer one more option which is part of  item # 2 at AWCthreads answer.

Conversion optimization before link building - I Say "Just  Conversion optimization". my claim is to create a unique an amazing experience to the traffic you have already. make sure that those visitors and engaged visitors feel the need to share what an amazing site you have. they will do the link building for you. just make sure you wow them and the links and more visits should come. I believe that those "foot prints" created by actual visits is what will have the most affect on your ranking.

I will test this in the next few weeks and share.

[AWCthreads]

Hi Dylan.

Love the question and unfortunately, my answer might be a bit premature since we haven't hired out the link building.

Having said that, we're in a similar position and we have accepted the fact that in order to turn the next "corner" in our evolution we must increase our domain authority and to do that are leaning strongly to hiring someone for our link building efforts.  So you might find some of our story reinforces your own plans or perhaps gives you some things to consider moving forward.

The Backstory:

1. We have grown to the point that we need to revamp our site structure. I can hardly find my way around our site and I built the thing!  So, I've made the decision to move to a new platform, implement a robust keyword suggest feature along with left navigation filtering.  We'll also build out a top navigation with a hover flyout display for categories, subcategories and products.

2. Conversion optimization before link building?  Yes.  Ideally, all of this is happening concurrently but depending on staffing levels, staff capabilities, finances, etc. this may not be feasible. Before we invest in link building efforts we want to make sure we are converting more people with what we've got. I feel there is quite a bit we can do as shown in item one that will improve our conversion rate prior to investing in link building.

3. Anything to reduce reliance on Adwords is a good thing in my book.  We've done PPC in house and hired it out with two different outfits. Right now, its just not a viable option for us and don't know if it ever will be.

4. Social. We don't engage it. There are various reasons for this and most if not all of them are out of my control. We're not dying on the vine because of it.  There are a lot of things outside of social we are doing and will be doing to continue our growth.

5. In short - our link profile sucks. So hiring a company to help in that regard and should prove to be a good move for us in terms of building our domain authority. Once we get our conversion rate optimization under control, I'm looking forward to hearing what strategies different SEO's have in mind for us.

I hope there are some helpful/thoughtful nuggets in there that are worthwhile for you.

Good luck!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Link building is something that is getting harder every day. I think only you will know the answer of rather not it is time to move to a professional search engine optimization service and request link building.

Mostly you can earn links with content things like schema and video help out quite a bit when I say video I mean wistia not YouTube.

I would look at evolvingSeo.com

distilled.net

Internet marketing ninjas

seer interactive

any recommend  companies shown in the link at the bottom of the page

link building obviously has any place but is done differently now. To simply asked somebody to build links is a gamble and you want to make sure that company is a extremely reliable company it is worth spending the money on the best if you are going to go down this path.

Sincerely,

Thomas