Do you consider it risky to hire outside firms to build links?
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
Most forums are knowledgeable of this tactic and have all of those signature links setup as nofollow.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
-
What happened to JC Penny??
-
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.
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
-
Need Help with Link Building Outreach Program
Hello Follks, We are a B2B company, and we are planning for a link building outreach program with Tier-2 and Tier-3 tech publication sites. Are there any SEO agencies who can help us only with the Link Building service? Please let me know. I can provide more details once we catch up. Thanks!
Link Building | | Rajesh.Nair0 -
Link Building
Hi Mozzers, I work for an IT company specialising in outsourcing Cisco Engineers worldwide. Due to being involved heavily in outsourcing, I'm finding it impossible to generate genuine and organic links to our website. My question is that is it essential to have back links back to our website to achieve high search engine rankings? I'm unable to get clients and other partners to provide links as we're the outsourced company,but I can get backlinks from unrelated c ompanies. For example we're running a CSR initiative with a National Gym relating to health & fitness, also links from our web designers etc... Do these links have any type of value? Any help and feedback would be greatly appreciated. Jason 🙂
Link Building | | 4Cornernetworks0 -
Drowning In a Sea of Link Building Advice
You can visit one SEO forum after the other and 50% of the folks will say 'do this' and the other half will say to do something else. It's always black hat vs white hat and then you still get the grey hat in between. So what does really work? Leon
Link Building | | leonfrancois0 -
Is it worth me considering a reciprocal linking request to my authority site ?
My web site is www.swimmer.co.uk it sells waterproof mp3 players & is the authority site in its niche I have no out going reciprocal links I don't have advertising or encourage reciprocal linking as I thought it may devalue the sites quality & link juice I have had a reciprocal link request from a swim wear based website called www.onlyswim.com that has a reciprocal linking sub-page with many varied links on it that are not just on the subject of swimming I don't think I will get any direct traffic from this website so I was wondering if ts worth me agreeing to a reciprocal link page I think we both have a PR of 2 **Any comments would be much appreciated ** In research to try & answer my own question I have just read this on wikipedia "Reciprocal linking between websites is no longer an important part of the search engine optimization process.Google and other search engines now do not give credit to reciprocal linking as it does not indicate genuine link popularity."
Link Building | | ChrisBIlly0 -
Primary link building for new clients, where do you go first?
When starting out with a new client, where do you look first to build links for that client? I have a lot of close friends who have small businesses with not a very huge budget for SEO and I'm trying to wrap my head around how to do a significant amount of quality link building without breaking the bank. Any suggestions? My list so far is: Friends / Family of the client.
Link Building | | adriandg
Free (good quality) directories - Yellow pages, etc.
Content creation / Article publishing
Paid directories (BBB, etc) What i am wondering though is if anyone out there has some suggestions as to how to do some quality link building for a small client with a limited budget (lets say, $500).0 -
Can anybody recommend a link building company for outsource?
I am about to land another fat client and it's in a highly competitive industry. While looking at the competition, it is clear to me that the competitors have an SEO link building team. Since Americans are too expensive for the budget allocated to this project, I need to outsource to India, Philippines, or some third world nation. CAN ANYONE RECOMMEND A GOOD LINK BUILDING COMPANY IN A DEVELOPING NATION (EDITED: 3RD WORLD) COUNTRY?
Link Building | | Francisco_Meza0 -
Link Building
I've been hearing about going after niche directories, and my question is most of them have a ton of links on any given page. Is it even worth taking the time to approach these sites knowing they won't pass a lot of link juice?
Link Building | | azguy0 -
Link-building / panda update!
Hi Mozers. WHat do you think, after panda-update, which is the best strategy to build links on Content, or blogspots, and it to website with a minimum PA40 and DA30 . . in which place is better to place, at the begining of article, or at the end of article, tell us some tips, if you are experiences on this section! Thanks,
Link Building | | leadsprofi0