Link building pricing model

[tommy123]

Lets say your doing link building in India or thailand for example. What do u think is a fair pricing model for a link building expert to charge for his services, that is reasonable for his foreign clients and fair to himself also?
thanks

[PuneetJvw]

You can charge depending upon the number of links you provide and the pagerank.


Regards/Puneet M.

[tommy123]

Puneet, but how much can i charge for different pagerank links?

[PuneetJvw]

I don't know the market rate but you can check ebay.com for that.


Regards/Puneet M.

[sherwood]

Text Link Ads provides a link calculator which I find to be a bit optimistic, but they provide a dollars-per-month value you can hang your hat on.

[evilgreenmonkey]

Puneet, but how much can i charge for different pagerank links?

I'd personally look at it from the point-of-view of "How much direct clickthrough traffic will I get from the links acquired?"

:cool:

Rob

[Robert_Charlton]

You can charge depending upon the number of links you provide and the pagerank.

I'd say that this pricing model is at best oversimplified and is likely to lead to lower quality links.

PageRank by itself doesn't take into account a great many other quality factors... and rewarding for the number of links provides another wrong incentive.

There are link builders out there who charge for their time, and/or consultants who provide link builders under their direction, also charged by time. In my opinion, it's the only model that's likely to get you what you need.

The trick, of course, is to find people who know what they're talking about, don't rely on closed, easily detected networks (that are of questionable value anyway), and who aren't themselves likely to be competing with you via their own affiliate or client sites. It's helpful to know enough about linking yourself to know what you're buying.

And yes, click-through traffic is a very important aspect of link quality.

[tommy123]

<snip> ... pagerank doesnt carry the same weight it used to. You know that we have all recently seen many sites in the top ten of google with a lower than 4 pagerank. ... <snip>

[Robert_Charlton]

...and pagerank doesnt carry the same weight it used to.

tommy - I'm not dismissing PageRank as a factor by any means. But Toolbar PageRank of a linking page isn't the same as PageRank conferred, and there are many dimensions to link love these days. I happen to like PageRank, but there are lots of other things I look at when evaluating a link besides Toolbar PR.

You know that we have all recently seen many sites in the top ten of google with a lower than 4 pagerank.

Completely depends on what the competition is, and how relevant your page is to the query. Relevance is something that people seem to forget about when they talk about rankings. There are some 100 or 200 factors in the ranking algo. PR is one of them, and in my opinion it is an important factor... just not understood too well in the context of all the other important factors.

evilgreenmonkey made an important point. Ask yourself "How much direct clickthrough traffic will I get from the links acquired?" That cuts through a lot of other factors... and I find that there usually is some correlation with the PageRank of the linking page, at least on pages where it's been acquired naturally. But it's not a one-to-one thing.

The appropriateness of the linking page to your market area, and the importance of the page in that area, the quality of that page, and the likelihood that your link will be noticed on that page, all have a lot to do with click-through traffic. They also have a direct bearing on how well that link will help you in search.

I don't think that the engines have linking context fully nailed, btw, but it's not a bad rough guide to use when you're evaluating a link source.

[Malaga]

I agree with Robert that the time spend on a link building campaign is properly one of the best indicators of the real value if the link builder knows what he is doing.

The only problem with this is that you need to have a lot of confidence in the link builder to just pay on a time basis and it is difficult to sell to people who do not know how long time it takes to build quality links.

Most link builders focus their price model strictly on PR which does not give you the real value of the link.

What I will suggest is to do a combination of page rank, relevancy of links, number of out going links on the site and maybe also include the age of the site when calculating the value of a link.
With Aarons Back Link Analizer it is pretty easy to get the above facts and thereafter put it into a system where you can calculate an approx. value of a link.

[tommy123]

<snip> ... when he starts explaining about why that pr zero link is important im totally lost but he has this proprietary way of link building ... <snip>

[Robert_Charlton]

...and when he starts explaining about why that pr zero link is important im totally lost but he has this proprietary way of link building...

tommy - First, note that Toolbar PR is only updated every few months or so, so Toolbar PR0 is often a temporary condition and may not reflect the actual PR of a page.

You can look at the quality of a page and its domain, the inbound links the domain has, and also to determine whether a page is indexed, and from this decide that its Toolbar PR will move up.

If a linking page has been found by a search that's also relevant to you, it's likely that it will be helpful.

You can also make a judgement call, ie, look at the quality of a new site and its inbound links and decide that it's a site with potential and that you'd like to have a link from it. Sites with a lot of traffic can be a good bet, depending on whether the linking page also is likely to be getting traffic and is small enough that your link is likely to be found.

If the site has solicited you, and the linking page is hard to find when you navigate the site, that's not a good sign. Ditto, if the site or page has been around a six months or a year and is PR0, and a word string from the linking page doesn't show up in a Google search, you might conclude that a link from that page isn't going to help you.

[tommy123]

Exactly Robert, but there are also other factors that he talks about that are beyond me and most people. <snip>

[Robert_Charlton]

Exactly Robert, but there are also other factors that he talks about that are beyond me and most people.

tommy - I've been trying to explain some of the more obvious factors to you and to others who might be reading this thread. It doesn't sound like you want to be bothered by the details. All I can say, in that case, is buyer beware.

[evilgreenmonkey]

Please note that this thread has been edited to keep it on-topic.

I will however monitor it closely and take action against any posts which break SEW Rules and Regulations.

Other users are more then welcome to join in on this topic.

Thanks,

Rob

[Marcia]

Please note that this thread has been edited to keep it on-topic.

I will however monitor it closely and take action against any posts which break SEW Rules and Regulations.

Other users are more then welcome to join in on this topic.

Thanks,

RobI have also done some edits and will also be keeping an eye on it so that the thread stays within the posting guidelines per the FAQ.

Let's carry on, and others please join in; it's an interesting topic. :)

[Marcia]

Puneet, but how much can i charge for different pagerank links?Pagerank aside Tommy, wiill you be offering services as part of a full SEO package, or as a separate service? And will you be doing the link building yourself, or outsourcing it offshore and providing the services as a reseller?

Those both can make a difference, depending on your business model and what services the contract with the particular client are for.

[SEMBasics]

Basically, it seems to me that you can determine price based on one of three factors (or a combination thereof):

1) The amount of time that you put into the project

2) The amount of value that you provide your customer.

3) The amount of difficulty/expertise required to provide the link.

Some links are more valuable than others, some take more time to come around than others, and some links require more skill to obtain than others.

Perhaps you could have a base hourly rate and then add onto that rate if a link is of particular value (for instance, it attracts a lot of relevant, targeted customers) or is particularly difficult to attract or requires a lot of skill to attract. For instance, you may have a special price for press releases (particuarly if you are extremely good are writing press releases) since writing a good price release is a skill. On the other hand, directory submission is not particularly difficult and therefore for that you could charge by hourly rate. At the same time, there could be a higher cost for a link from DMOZ which is more difficult to come by.

Hope that is helpful,

Moshe

[sriseshan]

Hi friends,
Being an Indian I think I can be of hlepful to you guys.

Like IT sector, SEO outsourcing is catching up fast in India now. Some companies who are into SEO get SEO done in house and getting the link campaing i.e. directory submission, link exchange etc outsourced.

Some companies get both seo and link campaing outsourced from here. As far as the seo is concerned they pay some XX per page. They provide keywords, and other info. list of directories for submission etc. Thru chat thy will send instructions, finding out the progress etc.

If they want only get done linking, they pay for submitting per link.

Hope this is good enough guys.

cheers