Do SEO companies outsource link-building?

[I, Brian]

Our own SEO company is relatively new - after over a year doing "hobbyist SEO" we turned pro at the beginning of this year, and have a good starter set of private clients.

HOWEVER, one of the main services I'm trying to explore is general link-building services for other SEO companies.

Although we seem to be picking up companies here and there for our link-building campaigns, we can handle a much larger volume, and really want to look at the possibility of a couple of SEO firms outsourcing their link-building needs to us.

I'm curious as to what sort of criteria other SEO companies would judge our link-building services - and also as to whether SEO companies routinely outsource to other companies, or whether they try to keep everything "in-house".

Curious for feedback on the topic of out-sourcing - and this seemed like a relevant board for asking the question. :)

[seobook]

I can think of over a half dozen link brokers and "link building only" firms off the top of my head, so there is a market there.

There may even be submarkets that there is demand for.

directory registration, reciprocal link builders, bulk one way link builders, etc.

[Marcia]

To play devil's advocate, what safeguard is there if a link-building campaign is outsourced that the contracted company won't try to poach the clients?

And to further develop the thought with safety in mind, how can it be determined that an outsourced company won't use mass or bulk mailing techniques and end up getting the client's site either a bad reputation or the target of complaints?

The latter is assuming that the contracted company will be doing the requesting, not just the sleuthing. How is it generally done: just finding and passing the information on, or carrying on the actual correspondence with linking prospects?

[qwerty]

The trick is to find someone you trust and whose methods mesh well with your own. I've had a few small link building projects farmed out to me, and in all cases the SEO was someone who'd known me and my philosophy for more than a year. Even then, they asked for a written overview of my methods.

I get a lot of unsolicited email nowadays from SEO firms asking me to farm out work to them, but there's no way I'm going to bring someone in on a project if I don't know them. If it's my client and I'm responsible for their results I have to stick with the people I've grown to trust.

[wizardprincess]

i'm new to this forum,saw your topic on outsourcing link buliding campaign,....
so thought of writing my views..

as its all depends on how yu judge a person. as i'm working as SEO from past five years.. recently got some freelance project on link building campaign ... form the person i dont know , we know each other through some forums... and he approach me to work on that.. everything went well..

so it's sometime matter of how you decide to outsource your work what type of person you approach..and all...

[Incubator]

Since the internet and online marketing companies are expanding at a crazy rate right now, you must treat it as a business model regardless of how well you know the company. With the pace that SE's are changing now, non-disclosure agreements and service level agreements must be placed in to action. If the control is beyond the contractors process and SERP or link billing is not coming through for the client, it must be outlined with some time leverages put into place as well. We still have clients asking us "here is our 10 keyphrases..how long till them to be number 1 in google" Education or de-education, back to the client is part and parcel to the service level agreement

Managing and exceeding the clients expectations should be a given as long as the client is willing to listen and deal with terms of reality that faces us SEO companies.

Cheers WC

[I, Brian]

Comments about networking and trust are pretty fair considerations. Ultimately, I figure client referrals are going to be our main strength in attracting more business, but I'll still be turning to the local marketing model to drum up more business.

It's probably a good idea to ensure that we're comfortable with everything we're doing first, and ensure we have a good set of reliable clients. It should probably be a bad idea to suddenly be signed to a single SEO company with a lot of clients, as that would leave us with few options of varying income streams, and would leave us vulnerable to heavying market changes.

Overall, I'm actually enjoying the contact so far as the service builds up at a manageable rate - but as we get more and more busy, I would ideally prefer to deal with fewer clients, especailly via SEO's outsourcing to us. Something to work to, most probably. :)

[St0n3y]

We outsourced quite a number of link project but were dissappointed by the results. Quality was usually per set standard but the timeframe to achieve the links was poor at best. We then hired in-house to do the link building for our SEO clients and have since starting doing link-only projects as well. The cost per link achieved was higher by doing it in-house but the quality is superb and the time to complete a project was might better than any sub-contractor could provide.

We now have SEO companies contacting us to handle the link campaigns for their clients.

[Nacho]

I can think of over a half dozen link brokers and "link building only" firms off the top of my head, so there is a market there.

Please do name them, might as well be posted on the thread.

Thanks!

[seobook]

Please do name them, might as well be posted on the thread.

Thanks!

I do not have strong business associations or preferences with most of the people I am listing. I have had some email or phone contact with many of them though. Some of the people I will be listing already participate in threads here, and I tend to think they would all be worth hiring to do what they do...

Link Brokers:
http://www.textlinkbrokers.com
http://www.patrickgavin.com/
Lots0 from http://www.searchguild.com

Link Builders:
http://www.alliance-link.com/
http://www.linkingmatters.com/
http://www.ericward.com/

there are a ton more people I could mention if I were less tired, but it is 2:30 am and I am not even sure why I am still awake... :)

sorry for leaving people out and please nobody want to beat me up.

[seobook]

[quoted url snipped (from an auction site selling seo and other stuff - without explaining the type of snip the rest of the post doesnt make sense...)] ;)

I would generally stick away from auction sites for seo services...doing good seo is about being willing to spend money to make something that hopefully works and lasts (unless of course you are setting up temporary sites)...the auction models for SEO services usually squeeze out not only the profit margin but also the ability to provide low to mid risk quality services.

[lionel]

spend money? How would SEO service need to have money invested upfront?

[seobook]

spend money? How would SEO service need to have money invested upfront?
one way or another you need to get links.

if you are exclusively trading links then you are assuming much more risk than a person who could afford to buy a few links.

dir.yahoo.com = $299 / yr
business.com = $99 / yr
etc.

if you are not willing to spend enough to buy any quality links and you are not willing to invest enough to buy high quality seo services (which usually require buying a few links) odds are that either you are not that serious or the site is not that great and you wont be giving the seo much to work with either.

thus the seo will need to work for low wages and be limited in how effective they can be. it takes a ton of time and commitment to do good seo without spending any money at all. that time and commitment is not usually found by the lower bidders at an auction.

if you are at an auction for something other than price then why even limit yourself to an auction...why not hunt around the entire web until you find someone you think would fit you well?

[Adam C]

In answer to the original question, we've had bad experiences of out-sourced link building, and believe we're not alone.
Now we're preferring to do it ourselves whilst investigating individual opportunities for buying in.

[St0n3y]

You ARE NOT alone. We've gone to *almost* total in-house link building rather than ousourcing of links. its a bit more expensive per link but the quality is better and timeframe much faster!

[seojob]

"what sort of criteria other SEO companies would judge our link-building services "

Timeframe and quality of links are the two important things they look for. Also, the price. Since they are sub-contracting, they also burgain a lot. I had a client who dumped us for a $3 Per reciprocal link building offered by a freelancer and ultimately came back after few non-relevant, ffa links.

Some other interesting points that came-up:
"To play devil's advocate, what safeguard is there if a link-building campaign is outsourced that the contracted company won't try to poach the clients?"

I was involved with a SEOfirm who mainly gets sub-contracted assignments and they have an agreement that they will never contact the client / disclose the information anyway. Though evil-minded people can not be controlled thus, I think professionals would think twice before ruining their stream om business.

Trust is a big factor here, as Qwerty mentioned. Some of my clients gave me the ftp address to make the process speedy and we took care of their privacy, business etc.

IMO, you can get quality work by outsourcing but you need to find the right person.

[glengara]

FWIW, I was recently looking at a site that had obviously outsourced its linking, it was a Gift Basket site that only serviced North America, but the majority of the links were from India.

While probably being quality links, the whole thing looked so artificial, it was laughable.

My 2 C are, outsource to the ends of the world, but make sure the majority of links are parochial ;-)

[strategicrankings]

it takes a ton of time and commitment to do good seo without spending any money at all. that time and commitment is not usually found by the lower bidders at an auction.


I've been doin seo for the past 5 years now and its only this year that i've started to exploit the freelance opportunities, unfortunately the only place that i could find seo jobs are the auction sites.

I can tell you that i've optimised sites for highly competitive terms succesfully for clients obtained at auction sites unfortunately for very low price, like they've been given tenfold what they paid for.

I'm now starting to realise that the quality of my service is worth more than what i'm being paid at the auction sites, but i don't know of other source where i can get quality clients to offer quality service.

Any idea?

[seobook]

I've been doin seo for the past 5 years now and its only this year that i've started to exploit the freelance opportunities, unfortunately the only place that i could find seo jobs are the auction sites.

I can tell you that i've optimised sites for highly competitive terms succesfully for clients obtained at auction sites unfortunately for very low price, like they've been given tenfold what they paid for.

I'm now starting to realise that the quality of my service is worth more than what i'm being paid at the auction sites, but i don't know of other source where i can get quality clients to offer quality service.

Any idea?
can you get any word of mouth marketing or see if clients need any more work.

also the single best thing I did for acquiring customers is write articles and post them on other sites such as lilengine, searchguild, and webpronews. it gets you in front of a large audience without you needing to foot the bill of bringing all the people together.

whenever I posted articles in webpronews on average I noticed a significant increase in both email and phone inqueries the following day or two.

articles are probably about the single cheapest and fastest way for an SEO to drive targeted leads to their SEO service site

[ferret77]

umm have you considered optimizing your own site for SEO terms?

It would seem like they way for an seo to get clients would be to optimize his own site.

[strategicrankings]

My site is No 1 on MSN for "search engine optimization firm", yes i've optimized it myself.

[ferret77]

Strageticrankings

I started to learn seo to help me sell web design, then I started selling seo, so I made my site rank for a bunch of SEO terms ,which for awhile I thought was great. Then it got to be to much work so I hired my friend and girlfriend to help. Then when things got slow, I had pressure to get more clients, so I did what you did I tried the freelance job boards

Its freaking terrible, some of that stuff is out right fraud. I mean I know in countries out side the US people can work for cheaper, but there is a limit. Like people would post projects like optimizing pharmacy sites and people would post bids of $500.

There is some people with money on the boards but most of the ones I met were so picky and cheap it was infuriating talking to them.

To make a long story short , for awhile my friend took clients for the boards for super cheap using my site and a selling point. He did a bunch of odd jobs for cheap. Then decided he wanted a job with benefits so he took of.

What was the point of this... oh yeah, strategic @#$% clients

you don't need them, I mean cool people who are even little generous are great but they are hard to find.

Before my friend left , him, my girlfriend , and I spent most of 2 months creating affiliates sites. Of all different flavors

And now 6 months later we are reaping the benefits, some of my affiliate sites are making over $1000 a month (I know its not that much compared to some people, every one elses affilate sites make $10,000 a day , or so they say) and they aren't even ranking in google.

So forget the clients, let them buy their $99 optimization packages and see where it gets them

[strategicrankings]

Ferret

Thanks for the great advice. I totally agree with you, i've been experiencing similar situations for the past year and started to think of getting things done differently this year.For example i'm slowly moving away from the @$&^#" clients from the job boards (who want to rank in top 10 for "web hosting" in google in 10 days for 10 bucks.)

I'm also starting some affiliates and see how they will do.

again thanks

[Neko]

Ok this is really interesting reading this thread. I'm currently on the hunt for a couple of really reputable, knowledgeble and successful link builders to whom I can hire to do a substantial link building campaign for one of my web sites in the wireless telecom industry.

I'll need 100 PageRank 6 links from within the telecom sector. They have to be very relevant to the content of my web site.

If any of you are interested in taking this project on please contact me. You'll find my contact info in my profile.

Also please don't contact me if you are not sure you can handle this job. I use to do SEO for a living and for a long time too. I know what to expect and I know what type of links will be useless to me and vice versa.

If you do a decent job of this one though I do have several other web sites which will need the same treatment soon too.

Obviously paying you a really fair price for your hard work is not a problem but I will expect reasonable terms. Likely 50% upfront and 50% upon completion would be acceptable to me.

Cheers :)

[ferret77]

I use to do SEO for a living and for a long time too. I know what to expect and I know what type of links will be useless to me and vice versa.

So what types of links would be useless to you?

Why don't you just head over here and buy your 100 pr 6 links

http://www.text-link-ads-inventory.com/technology.html#

You should be able to purchase them for $5000 - $10000 a month

[I, Brian]

I use to do SEO for a living and for a long time too. I know what to expect and I know what type of links will be useless to me and vice versa.


That can come across as a warning sign that the client is a know-all, who will constantly be questioning your decisions and trying to countermand them. :)

Business relationships require some degree of trust - I don't see that here.

The fact that the focus is on buying PR rather than any specific keyword-focussed campaign, or general traffic targets based on your subject area, is an additional area of concern.

Luckily, ferret seems to have supplied you with the one link possibly most useful to yourself. :)

[MarZ]

what would you guys say is a reasonable salary for a link builder to be hired for in-house work? Its an option I may be considering in the future for our seo company, since i´ve had some seriously disappoing results from the company we've outsourced to. would love some feedback.

[St0n3y]

Salaries are very dependant on your geographic location. We start our link researchers a bit above minimum wage. Of course training is required and raises come quick depending on performance. Overall, we find that our link researchers are able to achieve high-quality links for our clients at a rate of about $6-10 per link.

[Honey418]

Ferret-
I've been a long time reader of these forums and your post is the first one that has compelled me to register and reply:


'Before my friend left , him, my girlfriend , and I spent most of 2 months creating affiliates sites. Of all different flavors"

I am interested in designing an affiliate program as well and was wondering if I could get your advice on the matter considering you are a seasoned professional. Did you use any tools to help you and what are you strategies behind this?

[ferret77]

honey

I don't design affialte programs, I just join them and create sites for them

if you are creating a program, what I look for in a program is seamless integration, like so that customers don't know they are leaving my site

and also datafeeds or databases, its nice to a ton of content to play with

[neuron]

I'm curious as to what sort of criteria other SEO companies would judge our link-building services - and also as to whether SEO companies routinely outsource to other companies, or whether they try to keep everything "in-house".

You'll need to be able to show examples of your work, without showing client sites without their permission. Preferably, you should show your own sites.

You'll need to be able to deal with conflict-of-interest issues, because if you wholesale links to the SEO industry it will not be long before you are getting links for more than one site in the same industry. Knowing how to deal with this before you encounter it is what separates the men from the boys.

Knowing how to price links. Not all links are the same. Direct reciprocals are pound for pound still the most powerful impact you can make on a site. They are the easiest to get, and the machinations involved are the simplest. 3-way linking, becoming more and more popular, seems to be what everyone wants, but they are much more difficult to get, yet people do not want to pay for the increased difficulty. Knowing your linking statistics, time involved per request, for classifying sites, for filling out forms, for sending emails, and the successful response rates will not only let you shine and show that you know what you are talking about, but will allow you to stick to your guns in pricing.

One problem you will encounter is "The SEO who knows everything already", and can do everything you can do better. Then why is he calling you?

There are other top-notch SEO clients out there that literally have hundreds of sites, and if you get in with the right ones and perform, they can buy every link you can produce from now to whenever.

Most SEO companies try to keep things in-house because of quality control issues. However, link-building, done right, is the most labor intensive aspect of ranking sites and because of that many SEO companies will outsource it, IF they are comfortable with you, your knowledge of the industry and specifically of linking, and your ability to adapt to their needs.