Outsourcing Link Building

[ianblair44]

I have searched through various freelance sites for link building services, and it looks like there are plenty of people who can get links on PR4+ sites at a pretty cheap rate. You know how they always say when it looks too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true? People are charging around $250 for 50 links on sites with good page rank, do follow, etc... Do you think it could help or hurt my SEO campaign, considering I have a good site with solid content and other good content posted on the web?

[Boodreaux]

I would like to know the answer to this as well. PR 4 sounds pretty good compared to what I just received over the last 30 days.

[SEO-Doctor]

Forget Pagerank... it means nothing.  Look at SEOmoz's domain authority (DA) instead.  If they can supply you 50 links on 50 different sites with a DA of over 50/100 each for $250.... then DM me their details!!

[Boodreaux]

Yea...email me the details too! Thanks for the info Gareth! Hey Gareth....so you are saying that Domain Authority is more important that Page Authority....right?  And you are saying Page Rank is worthless....eventhough I just had an SEO company say they would not work with me because my page rank is only a 1. ( 3 month old site)

[PatrickGriffith]

I've used freelancer.com for link building on two prior projects.  I was horrendously disappointed both times.  Not only were the links of garbage quality, but the content that was created to surround the links was borderline unreadable and flat out incorrect.

On this project I'm staying away from freelance link building (though I may use that site still for other things).  If I get the budget I might pay an SEO firm here in the states or somewhere in the UK, but I won't trust something so important to people who don't even take 30 seconds to research your business.  If not, I'll spend a few hours a week doing it myself.  It's not much but it's better than the alternative.

[denimblog]

*watches thread

[ianblair44]

Did the company you used have a good reputation on freelancer? Because some companies have a very solid reputation, so I am wondering what their link quality is really like.

[PatrickGriffith]

Yes, both freelancers had an average rating of 9.9/10 after 200+ reviews.

[ianblair44]

On freelancer, some of links they are offering are just absurd. Like 1,000 pr5+ for $250. There is no way that is even remotely realistic. I am going to look over on elance and see if anyone has any realistic results and pricing.

[Maximise]

The domain might be PR4 but what will the quality of the actual page containing your link be? Sounds too cheap to be honest. These could just be profile links, where the site is trusted and has a high PR but they will just create a profile page for you buried deep in the site with no value and no themed content around it.

I've done a lot of research in outsourcing link building and I've found that the quality links cost around $100 per link. obviously if it's a quality link it will take them time to find and negotiate the link acquisition

[Boodreaux]

Do you know any companies that do the quality links?

[Maximise]

This is the best company I have come across

http://www.webmarketinggroup.co.uk/

[Dr-Pete]

The reality is that they might very well be able to get you PR4 links, but as Gareth said - PR is one tiny piece of the puzzle (and can be completely unreliable). Rand has a good post on link valuation here, and how complex it is:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/10-illustrations-on-search-engines-valuation-of-links

These services also often use their own link networks, which have been hit hard by Google the last couple of weeks - expect that assault to continue. They won't get everyone, and some do it better than others, but the people charging $5/link are a lot more likely to get hit.

Keep in mind, too, that there's a lot of bait-and-switch in that industry. Someone might get you a bunch of links, wait a month, then sell those same links to someone else (and cut your links). That's the problem with a lot of these one-time deals. They also pull tricks to temporarily inflate the PR of the pages the links are on (like 301-redirecting other domains). By the time, you actually get the link, that PR4+ could be 3 months out of date (and may actually be a PR1).

I'm not saying this as a white-hat - some people buy links effectively, I'll admit. You do get what you pay for, though, and your risk isn't just wasting money - it's potential penalization and long-term problems. If you're going to buy links, make it part of a larger, more diverse strategy, and do it right.

[Carson-Ward]

Dr. Pete has covered this well. My advice is first not to buy links.

If you do insist on buying links or hiring a "guaranteed link-building" firm, however, I'd make sure to know their methods. Can they offer you a current client to look at? Will you be shown the links when they go live? If not, you'll probably find your "50 links" on terrible, irrelevant sites and on big lists of links.

[KLEANTreatmentCenter]

I had a freelancer in India contact me to do my link building.  I have him create an excel report that for all the links he creates and I have trained him how to handle my account.  He can do whatever he wants for his other clients but I am very specific about what I want and take the time to train him.  I have found this to be the best way to work with outsourcers.  No one is ever exactly what you want right out of the box.

[Aura99]

Thank you, Dr. Peter

You give some really sound advice. I was looking to outsource some of my link building to save some time, but now I think it’s more important that I focus on this area myself. Quality and credibility is key the project I am working on so I would not want to be penalised.