Reputable SEO companies

[nchachula]

I am looking for a reputable SEO company to assist in link building. I have done many searches and find that there are many sites that have a "top 10." However I am finding they are listed there due to paying large amounts of money. Any recommendations on companies that can show real results and are not charging extreme amounts of money while using minimum wage interns to do all the work with crappy results. I had a few people suggest "internet marketing ninjas" if anyone has used, chime in.

Thanks

[donford]

Hi Nicholas,

Moz maintains a list of the top companies they recommend. You know Moz used to be an SEO company all in its own, so those that manage to impress Moz would be well worth a look. Many people who post here, or contribute here are working for or even own some of those companies.

As always ask questions, link building is very merky area if you ask me. You want to find somebody or company that knows your industry and can deliver your content to the right places. That being said, if you're content isn't worth linking to, then no company or person is going to have good long term results.

Link building is an important ranking factor because it is at the core of how Search Engines operate. The more sites linking to a particular page or website the more value it appears to have. With that there are some strong changes to the way search engines treat the value of links, rolled out in the Panda and Penguin updates. Those updates targeted low quality links and sites themselves to eliminate the abuses link builders were using to manipulate sites to the top. And if you think about it that is the way it should be.

Link building is suppose to or should be occurring naturally, when webmaster A really likes what webmaster B has done they should be linking to them. This provides a benefit for both A and B's users. What has happened over the years is people abused the hell out of this mechanic and really pushed some crappy sites into the top rankings. Along with social media sharing the natural way for sites linking to each other has only been complicated. Still the value of link building is still there although much much harder to accomplish. In part because good sites don't want to risk getting penalties by linking to "less popular" sites. This only means if you really want to get those great links, you have to impress the existing sites who may provide them.

Hope this helps,

Don

[donford]

I should also add that when you look at a company that provides link building services you should have them evaluate your site for content. What I would do is show them a couple so so pages, and a couple real good ones. Allow them to pick which ones they are willing to promote, if they choose the good ones you know you have the right people... my thoughts,

Don