Link Building: What Can I Reasonably Expect from SEO Firm
-
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 -
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.
-
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.
-
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 -
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
-
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
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
-
What other SEO strategies and tactics can be accomplished at this point?
The client specializes in home, commercial and restoration cleaning services and offers carpet, upholstery, area rug, wood floor, drapery, tile and gout, stone and restoration services such as (water damage, fire damage, mold remediation). This company has over 40 franchises. Carpet cleaning service is their core service that gets them to the customer’s door, then technicians get to up sell on the secondary services (tile, upholstery, stone, wood…) One of the main strategies we have implemented successfully is to be more visible at the local level was a local SEO strategy with every locations having their own unique landing pages for each of the services they would offer ( for instance the san diego location would a customized page for carpet, upholstery and all services they would offer). We have done a great job optimizing each of these locations. Optimization includes on page optimization, unique NAP information, local citations (manual insertions + Yext). We also added local markups and for some of the franchises we added review snippet. Link building around carpet cleaning has been conducted as well through guest posting and in links content. Most of our locations have a google business updated and optimized as well. We are working to get as many reviews as possible but it is still very challenging. In summary basic SEO tactics have been implemented following google’s guideline. Traffic & rankings got us a positive progressive boost in mid 2013(April to August) but in april 2014 the site got hit by manual penalty affecting all carpet cleaning queries only. I was able to cleanup the mess within 2 months luckily but unfortunately we still saw a drop of %40 in traffic (vs 2013) on average in all carpet cleaning pages YoY (april to august). 2015 Q1 traffic has improved by 6% compared to Q1 2014 which is good but still not at the level we were. With the pigeon update and all the high authoritative directories (yelp, angieslist) taking over more and more of the organic real estate in the SERP and increase in competition we have had a hard time getting back to where we were (2013) and we may never get back unless another algorithmic change happens. Another frustrating thing is local competition which has the worst sites as far as UX and content and still outranks us ( such as http://www.carpetcleaninglosangeles.com/). My main goal is to figure out a plan to increase traffic within the carpet cleaning pages and therefore increase conversions. Like it or not rankings for carpet cleaning queries is affecting our CC traffic, so working towards improving them is one way to go even though I shouldn’t focus all my efforts on just rankings. 2015 SEO main activities has been:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art
-local link building= somewhat successful (Seeing some rankings improvements but not consistent across all franchises)
-content marketing projects= quiet successful as far as traffic, branding and link acquisition but not seeing enough ROI
-new web design (launched late 2014)
-google business reviews
-local citations duplicate removal
-weekly blogging ( successful as far as traffic and branding) Things I would like to work on:
-improve Bounce rate within site
-improve CTR by adding review snippets across all franchises
-add industry certification logos to build trust with users and improve conversion
-add before and after pictures of services performed
-site speed (has slowed down compared to the old site) I would love get feedback on what other crucial components(that I am missing) can be done to improve most of these franchises rankings. I am a bit out of ideas as far as what else can be done. Thanks!0 -
Back links Building and article/blog posting
Hi all, I have been researching the best way for back links building, and I would like to ask few questions before I start. Which one of these tools would you recommend for back link building diagnostics. www.linkrisk.com - www.linkdetox.com What would be the best procedure to begin creating healthy back links? Would looking at my competitors back links help me? What would be the recommended amount of back links created per week? Also how many blogs entries should we aim to create per week? The website i'm working on is manvanlondon.co.uk If you guys have any further suggestions please let me know. Many thanks for your time.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa0 -
Will an inbound follow link on a site be devalued by an inbound affiliate link on the same site?
Hey guys, quick question I didn't find an answer to online. Scenario: 1. Site A links to Site B. It's a natural, regular, follow-link 2. Site A joins Site B's affiliate program, and adds an affiliate link Question: Does the first, regular follow link get devalued by the second affiliate link? Cheers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ipancake0 -
Do 404 Pages from Broken Links Still Pass Link Equity?
Hi everyone, I've searched the Q&A section, and also Google, for about the past hour and couldn't find a clear answer on this. When inbound links point to a page that no longer exists, thus producing a 404 Error Page, is link equity/domain authority lost? We are migrating a large eCommerce website and have hundreds of pages with little to no traffic that have legacy 301 redirects pointing to their URLs. I'm trying to decide how necessary it is to keep these redirects. I'm not concerned about the page authority of the pages with little traffic...I'm concerned about overall domain authority of the site since that certainly plays a role in how the site ranks overall in Google (especially pages with no links pointing to them...perfect example is Amazon...thousands of pages with no external links that rank #1 in Google for their product name). Anyone have a clear answer? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak0 -
Link Building on a small budget
Hi Folks I'm looking for recommendations from the community that can help me tic the requirements below; Looking for link-building services for a small start up. Prefer to work directly with the person doing the work. Prefer that they speak English 🙂 Have a small monthly budget so not looking for big organisations, rather a expert who is working on his/her own, and can have a phone conversation with me before engagement. Any-hoots I may be looking for a needle in a haystack here but any recommendations on people would be highly appreciated 🙂 PS: I know SEOmoz recommends some folks, but wow they are expensive ... can't afford that
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OMDAustralia0 -
SEO & Magento Multistore - I have been asked if "duplicatiing" a magento stor using its "Multistore" functionality will cause both to be picked up as duplicate content, can anybody help?
Hello all. I have been asked what the consequences of using Magento's "multistore" functionality are if we were to duplicate our entire magento store and place it on a secondary domain... The simple answer which comes to my mind is that it will be a flagged as duplicate content. However, is this still the case if the site were placed in a different country? The original being the UK the copy being Ireland (both English speaking) How would Google.co.uk & Google.ie treat these stores? Hope this is clear... our site is http://www.tower-health.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TowerHealth0 -
Quality Content - Tick - So now comes the link building, who is on your checklist?
Hi We've spent a month putting together a really complete and awesome video guide, it really is a beautiful and useful thing and is hands down the best bit of content online on this subject. - Great... but Getting the eyeballs and getting the links? Related Bloggers and Influencers.... Egobait (anyone who is in the video) Customers (inform those who already use our site) But who am I missing, this is our first guide, and a months work deserves a really good push, how else can I push this content for a) links and b) views. Whats your checklist? All suggestions welcome, I will revert with success of this afterwards.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | xoffie0 -
1 hr of SEO vs Paid Link
Can me paying an SEO firm $250 for one hour of work benefit me more than buying a lifetime link on Best of the Web for $249? ( Firm said I had to buy a min of 8 hrs though) The firm strongly suggested that I not purchase a paid link. (All my major competitors have paid the $249) Boodreaux
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Boodreaux0