Any good link building companies out there

[GAZ09]

Hi Guys,

Does anyone know or can recommend any really good link building companies out there?

There are lots and lots of link building companies but which ones can really do the job!

Any recommendations much appreciated

Thanks
Gareth

[SimonCullum]

Hi Gaz

There probably are, though I find it difficult to make such a recommendation when it's my strong belief that Link Building should be a part of an integrated search & content campaign rather than outsourced as a standalone task.

The best links are almost always free (natural) links obtained as a part of producing some really valuable content and distributing it well. This can often be done in-house easily (resource dependent of course). Though it does take time to seed, distribute and promote content, which is where an agency can come in handy by assisting with this as a part of a bigger search & content campaign (an on-going campaign that is).

If you really are intent on outsourcing link building specifically though, or even as a part of a larger project, I'd suggest searching for an agency that is in fairly close proximity (within acceptable travelling distance that is), by searching initially to draw up a short-list of contenders, then evaluate them from checking out their clients' sites, rankings etc and asking for authentic testominials from the shortened short-list. That's in addition to all the usual evaluation criteria of course.

Regards

Simon

[gmk1567]

You need to see if the vendor has any innovative approach for link building. Make sure they are transparent on the process they are going to implement for your site.

Don't decide based on the existing clients. You might have read the story about JC Penny. The vendor that provided services to JC Penny is still doing business with fortune companies.

http://searchengineland.com/new-york-times-exposes-j-c-penney-link-scheme-that-causes-plummeting-rankings-in-google-64529

[GAZ09]

Hi Si,

Great response thanks mate!

When you talk about content do you mean producing unique content for each website you wish to obtain links from?

Thanks for the response..

Is there any linking tips you can help me with to aid SEO?

Thanks

Gareth

[Soultrader67]

I have a tip (as a newbie to this SEO dark magik) Blog, blog, blog. No matter how much I try and influence keywords through linking, the quickest way is blogging but its hard work. do it every day and the engines will love you for it providing the content is pertinent. The use social networks to post the headlines. Not really the answer you are looking for but if you can do it you should do it.

[GAZ09]

thanks paul - still very useful

G

[SimonCullum]

Hi Gareth,

You're welcome. Unique Content for each website; yes, absolutely. Unique, relevant, useful, interesting content can make for excellent link bait, makes the link building efforts much easier and more successful.

As for linking tips, use the SEOmoz link analysis tool and the competitor analysis tool to help identify existing links that can be improved (eg. find existing links with poor anchor text and try and get it changed to include keywords) plus to identify good quality sites that link to the competitors which would be ideally suited to have a link from. Online PR can also help to gain some valuable links, as can creating and distributing different types of content such as Infographics. Hope that helps

[philipbuuck]

If you're going to blog, focus on keywords!!  Pick some keyword that gets a tiny bit of traffic to focus your blog entries on!  That way you may end up ranking for long tails without doing any backlinking, but even if that doesn't happen, each page will be keyword targeted for your linkbuilding efforts down the road.

[Justin_Briggs]

Hi Gareth,

I've worked at Distilled working almost exclusively on link building for a year, have spoken multiple times on link building, and have had a chance to run into the link building work of several people and agencies.

There are a lot of good link building companies and it may depend on your needs.

I can throw out a few names.

SEER Interactive - A nice sized agency run by Wil Reynolds. He's really well know for his great and creative link building presentations as various conferences. They have a team that includes a number of really solid link builders which should be more famous than they are. I'll say that when I went in-house, Wil's team is one of the first I pinged to talk strategy.

Citation Labs - Garrett French runs Citation Labs. I've never worked with him personally, but I've chatted with him. I've heard good things about his work.

Distilled - This is where I use to work. I'm a little bias and would say 3 months ago, it had great link building.

My good friend Adria recently took a position there running the outreach. She's a great link builder and I recommend working with her. If you want to work with the UK office, I'd try to snag Paddy Moogan. If you're in the US, I'd try to snag Geoff, he's done some really solid infographic work. I made my first infographic with him.

Blue Glass - Bigger agency and I've heard good things about them from some close personal friends, but never seen their work.

Russ Hudgens - Good guy, really smart. I've never worked with him, but been on a panel with him, had drinks with him, and poked around some of his sites enough to see his work. He has some really creative and smart strategies.

Slingshot - I've work with them before with a client. They do some really interesting work and have a solid system for scalable link building. I've hung out with them at a few conferences, really fun team.

Outspoken Media - I've also worked with this team with a client. Rhea is amazing and I really like their entire team. They have a strong content based link building program and snag some really high quality links.

Kris Roadruck (Search Fanatics) - Previously at Click2Rank, Kris does some impressive scalable link building work. I've seen some of his work get solid results in highly competitive niches.

Virante - I haven't worked with them before, but I met some of their team in Boston. They sound like they do some really creative work, especially around linkbait type work. Some of the things I learned from them inspired some things I pushed for while at Distilled.

[duncan274]

I would go with justin just from his answer seems really passionate about linkbuilding stratedgy , another thing to think about though is what is your budget?