Reasonable Cost for Link Building Service
-
We need about 5-10 high quality links to our website created every month. We need the link targets researched and outreach done to these sites.
The sites most be legitimate and high quality; decent domain authority, real sites, not phony low quality sites. Sites that would show traffic in similarweb.com with decent metrics. We absolutely want to avoid any link building schemes that could get us penalized. I have been told that such a project would take a qualified SEO about 8-10 hours per months (more during the additional month of research, less afterward).
As such, what is a reasonable cost for these 5-10 links per month? $300, $500, $700, more? I only want to work with a highly experienced SEO, native english speaker with extensive experience. What is fair? I don't want to overpay or to under pay.
Thanks,
Alan
-
You should contact SEOs and get as much info about backlinks criteria as you can and then you have 2 options: outreach by yourself or hire the SEO specialist that you can trust. Here are some tools for outreach that can help:
https://moz.com/blog/14-easy-ways-to-find-any-email-address-in-10-minutes-or-less
And there is not fixing price for a link building per time. Backlinks differ in metrics and the price depends on the relevancy (niche) and quality of a website (outbound links, content, permanent links or not etc). Compare prices from different sellers and make up your decision.
-
I'm guessing text embedded is another way to verbalize the usage anchor text? What is to my understanding with anchor is that you want a variety, but realistically given the fact you shouldn't have control of the domain, under Google's guidelines it shouldn't be a huge deal with these high authority backlinks. So it's not an absolute must take what you can get.
Plus if you get hooked up by somebody, say for instance a journalist, you don't really want to anger them. I actually got a link from "The Guardian" because I got super lucky, and was in the right place at the right time, helping out slander victims with some Reputation Management. Long story short when I got the back link, she had anchor texted with "Search Engine Optimisation".
Well like an idiot I wrote a super polite email treading as carefully as I could indicating that it was Z instead of an S... "That's The British Spelling!" That was a very terrifying moment, thank goodness she wasn't to mad and all was well haha! But yeah, taking what you can get is no big deal on a big 94 DA like that.
If I was you, I'd go about like this. NY Times would be a nice payload. I would go onto hunter.io and grab me every email address they have listed for all their columnists and editors etc. Hit all of them up individually, go at their twitters, socially engineer your foot in the door, whether it's implicating you have a story, or that you need someone good at writing articles and particularly loved their work.
Once you go from not communicating don't know them, to rapport, and back and forth conversation, you go from there.
-
Hi Sean:
Makes a lot of sense. So what objective measures of quality can request when I hire an SEO firm to create links. I know there are page authority and domain authority but understand these can be manipulated as well.
My concern is that I will order 4-5 links for $2,000 and will be provided with 4-5 links purchased on FIVRR for $20.00.
How as a consumer can I protect myself from this scenario? Now I guess I can research potential links targets myself, but how do I ensure they are of decent quality? Should I ask the SEO to run initial research and then I can say what links I feel are OK?
Also, there will text embedded in links back to our site that the SEO will create. This text may contain a keyword, company name or other info. Should I specify text this should contain or leave it to the SEO?
-
On the business side of things @Kingalan1, I can totally understand looking at SEO from a consumer perspective it should be only reasonable that if you're paying a doctors wage that you could get at least a time estimate. The problem we face is that there are so many factors beyond not only the consumer, but the SEO strategists control.
I think what Chris Menke said, "you should be very, very well educated on the topic of link building before investing your company's money in it." is very crucial in the fact that the more research you put into SEO the better results plus the more money you'll save. In your position what I would probably do if you want VERY HIGH authority links is actually research into each one you want individually.
News Websites seem to be rather heavy hitters for example. So every News website has journalists that write articles which have email addresses to contact them. With some time and money invested you can very much expedite the link building process. I wouldn't go into setting goals of link quantity, but rather target quality. Because as I'm sure you know sometimes 1 link could be worth what 1000 others would provide you.
So if you hire a professional SEO strategist to do these things for you, I would research into the quality of their work, and their results. But I wouldn't go into it with a certain expectation or time frame for any particular result.
-
Hi Sean:
Apparently I may have misunderstand.
Keeping in mind that I as a business person I am trying to spend the least possible for the highest quality, how much do you think is reasonable to budget on a monthly basis for 4-5 decent quality links?
Thanks,
Alan -
Hi NgEF:
So from what you say for about 4 for to 5 decent quality links around $800 to $1,000/month would be reasonable. But this would not include articles, infographics, content which I could either create or pay for. It would also not include featured blog posts which could run anywhere up to $1,000.
OK, so maybe $2,000/month is not that far off.
Do I understand this correctly?
Thanks, Alan -
5-10 links in 8-10 hours of work high authority domains? When I'm rich I'm hiring that guy because I've been trying to hustle a 2000 word blog with 2 custom infographics and a field study and I can't get any biters for a week now
-
Just wanted to chip in on this topic as it's pretty close to heart for me as I've dealt with several similar questions just recently.
@Kingalan1, One thing to keep in mind is that a good link building program can include several variables which might increase the overall cost of the engagement. For example, is content creation part of the link building program? If so, is the content creation handled by the SEO agency or by your in-house team? Content creation is typically the most expensive cost involved for the agency as it means paying writers, paying for images, paying for the creation of video content, paying for infographic tools etc.
Also keep in mind that while outreach is one of the ways to get good and well researched backlinks, there are many other ways that might also include a cost to the SEO agency. A great example here would be if it makes sense for your business or website to look for a guest post or a featured blog by a prominent blogger that is also in your niche. I've seen reputable bloggers charge upwards of USD$1,000 per featured post. That cost should also be taken into account.
Ideally, I typically arrange for a set monthly charge for a backlink research program, then also have a fixed monthly budget for any additional costs. Of course, there needs to be full transparency on the SEO agency's end to provide invoices for any usage of the fixed monthly budgets. Also, if there are any other opportunities spotted by the SEO agency, they should also bring it to you and request for additional budget if necessary.
Just to provide some context, for a small to medium ecommerce website, I would charge about USD$300 for the backlink research hours (typically 4 to 5 hours monthly), and request for a USD$500 monthly budget for content creation, with monthly deliverables such as articles, infographics as discussed with the client.
Hope this helps!
-
I simply want to understand what I am paying for. If a vendor takes 15 minutes a month and uses an automated systems to create links I would like to know. If the hourly rate the vendor is charging me is $4,000/hour I think I am entitled to know.
I am not fixated on $500, $1,000 or $2,000 per month. I am fixated on getting fair value. When one party (vendor) has more information than the customer, the customer is in a vulnerable position and apt to overpay. That is why I am asking.
It seems reasonable to pay an SEO what a CPA, a decent attorney or other professional earns on an hourly basis. But an hourly rate equivalent to a Fortune 500 executive or a neuro-surgeon seems excessive.
I am simply trying to determine what is fair and customary.
Thanks, Alan
-
Alan,
I have feeling that if you have to ask that question and your thinking starts off in the under $500 range, you may have a hard time understanding or recognizing why the actual cost for what you're looking for is going to be so much higher--and what you will actually be getting for your money. In any case, you should be prepared to sign a year agreement that binds you to pay a total yearly sum and that stipulates exactly what your contractor is going to achieve for you. Absent that, one or both parties is very likely back out early because of misunderstandings of what is being provided and/or what is required.
Linkbuilding is by no means a causal engagement--the future of your company/website is at stake. Just as you would educate yourself for any major investment by your company, you should be very, very well educated on the topic of linkbuilding before investing your company's money in it.
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
-
Links: Links come from bizzare pages
Hi all, My question is related to links that I saw in Google Search Console. While looking at who is linking to my site, I saw that GSC has some links that are coming from third party websites but these third party webpages are not indexed and not even put up by their owners. It looks like the owner never created these pages, these pages are not indexed (when you do a site: search in Google) but the URL of these pages loads content in the browser. Example - www.samplesite1.com/fakefolder/fakeurl what exactly is this thing? To mention more details, the third party website in question is a Wordpress website and I guess is probably hijacked. But how does one even get these types pages/URLs up and running on someone else's website and then link out to other websites. I am concerned as the content that I am getting link from is adult content and I will have to do some link cleansing soon.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Malika10 -
Internal links question
I've read that Google frowns upon large numbers of internal links. We're building a site that helps users browse a list of shows via dozens of genres. If the genres are expose, say, as a pulldown menu as opposed to a list of static links, and selecting the pulldown option filters the list of shows, would those genres count against our internal links count?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheaterMania0 -
How to build a linking architecture in the most effective way?
Hi there, I'm creating a new website and I would like to start it in the best possible way. Content is the last of my problems, so is back links and social media. But I would appreciate your advice from an architectural point of view. In my current sites I've been struggling organizing menus, categories and internal links in an SEO friendly way. I just haven't got it yet 🙂 how to create an architecture that is both userfriendly and SEO optimized. Could someone please give me some tips or point me to a recent article to build a SEO optimized website architecture? How many menus in a page?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ltsmz
Keywords in the menu?
keywords in submenu?
Menu linking to categories or specific articles?
How many internal links?
permalinks with /category/ or /post-name/
menu in footer?
category including keyword?
categories in sidebar?
how many links is too many?
if in a page I have 101 links and nofollow 100 of them, does it count like if I have 1 link for SEO? Basically all things related to setting up a linking architecture in a website to optimize organic traffic. Thanks
Fabio0 -
Can you recover from "Unnatural links to your site—impacts links" if you remove them or have they already been discounted?
If Google has already discounted the value of the links and my rankings dropped because in the past these links passed value and now they don't. Is there any reason to remove them? If I do remove them, is there a chance of "recovery" or should I just move forward with my 8 month old blogging/content marketing campaign.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Beastrip0 -
Subdomain Metrics Links??
I have been analysing my companies website against our competitors and we beat them hands down on everything apart from the total links in the subdomain metrics. Our competitor jumped above us a couple of months ago to grab the number one spot for our industries most valuable keyword. They have had a new website designed and after looking at the source code and running it through SEO MOZ in comparison to our site I can't see how they have manged to do it. We beat them hands down on all factors apart from subdomain metrics > Total links where they have twice as many. When it comes to Page Specific Metrics and Root Domain Metrics we easily beat them on all factors. Does anyone have any ideas what I need to do to improve the subdomain metrics? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Detectamet0 -
Internal linking between categories
Is it necessary to do internal links between the same categories of a website ( Let's say Ihave a category about shoes and in the category I have a page about boots and one about sandals ( should the page boots be accessible from the page sandals and the other way round or is the back button going back to the section shoes enough ) ? If internal links between the same category ( sandals to boots ) are needed/recommended is it also a good practice to do site wide links between categories ( shoes and and bags for example ) Because by reading google recommendations "Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link" I am not sure if they are talking about breadcrumbs or text links i am kind of lost ... Thank you,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Link building maximum to different sub domains?
Hi All, I'm launching a new website with a number of country specific sub-domains and I wanted to know if Google will calculate the number of new links as a root domain or if it will treat each subdomain seperately? For instance if I built 50 links per month to each of my five proposed subdomains would google see it as 250 links built to one root domain(and penalise me as a result) or will they view these subdomains independantly and accept these 50 links per page as an acceptable amount per sub domain. Thanks in advance. Ross
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mulith0 -
Link Architecture - Xenu Link Sleuth Vs Manual Observation Confusion
Hi, I have been asked to complete some SEO contracting work for an e-commerce store. The Navigation looked a bit unclean so I decided to investigate it first. a) Manual Observation Within the catalogue view, I loaded up the page source and hit Ctrl-F and searched "href", turns out there's 750 odd links on this page, and most of the other sub catalogue and product pages also have about 750 links. Ouch! My SEO knowledge is telling me this is non-optimal. b) Link Sleuth I crawled the site with Xenu Link Sleuth and found 10,000+ pages. I exported into Open Calc and ran a pivot table to 'count' the number of pages per 'site level'. The results looked like this - Level Pages 0 1 1 42 2 860 3 3268 Now this looks more like a pyramid. I think is is because Link Sleuth can only read 1 'layer' of the Nav bar at a time - it doesnt 'hover' and read the rest of the nav bar (like what can be found by searching for "href" on the page source). Question: How are search spiders going to read the site? Like in (1) or in (2). Thankyou!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DigitalLeaf0