Link building is unfortunately a necessity for improving the search engine rankings (performance, results page positions) of your website. In and ideal World, quality websites would naturally rise up above all the chaff, and healthy competition would be driven by consumer demand for a particular brand. However, the Internet is less about word of mouth marketing, and more about search engine optimisation.
Many companies do some in-house link building, targeting a few general directories and niche websites. However, many SEO’s prefer to take the carpet bombing approach, that is build links in as many areas as possible, in the hope that some of them will eventually become valuable inbound links. It is worth reminding readers here that not all links are equal. Apart from the “nofollow” trend that means a link passes no link juice, links on irrelevant pages that are not well ranked well are also next to worthless. The days of link farms are gone (a good thing), Google Bombing is dead (partly due to rel=”nofollow”) and reciprocal links are also discounted. The search engines like “natural” one way links from relevant, high ranking websites.
However, saying that, employing a company to look after your link building, and do so in a professional and logical way that tries to mimic a more natural organic growth can work in your favour. The most important advantage for any business is the time saved. Link building is a time consuming process. You first need to identify websites, directories, forums and other Internet sites that you can benefit from. The most common approach is to first research your main competitors, to see where their links are coming from, and then match them. Then the actual job of submitting links to the sites, making the requests etc. needs to be done. Who has the time to do this? A full time employee skilled in SEO will cost you about £6000 ($10,000) per month, whereas a company in India or the Far East can cost in the region of $400 per month. It really is a no brainer!
Reasons Why People Do Not Outsource Link Building:
Generally people do not outsource these services because they fear that somehow is could damage their reputation if done badly. Fears include:
- Fear of automated systems – always check with your outsource provider that it is all manually performed
- Fear of black hat SEO – if the link builders employ techniques that are banned by the search engines, you may be removed from the listings
- Fear of spammers – if the link builders just spam forums and blogs, it could hard your reputation
IF you ask the right questions, speak with the company, and if they provide detailed reports on all work undertaking, hours worked, attempted links, failed links etc. then there is little to worry about. If you run more than one website, it is always wise to start with the least important, and if a good job is done, work up the list to the most important site.
Do not fear outsourcing SEO. In fact, do not fear outsourcing anything. A good business knows when to contract out tasks. You cannot do everything yourself.
