How to choose a third party agency to help with linking building / SEO strategy?

[jasef]

Hi all,

we've not been link building for some time now as we are a small team and been concentrating on other things, such as getting our new look site built and implementing Magento etc. We've historically used external companies to help with link building & SEO... some experience has been good, some bad.

Does any one have any suggestions on how a small company can try to choose a decent external company that can help with SEO strategies? There are a lot of options, a LOT of rubbish and a lot of very expensive large agencies that are well out side of our budget (or for a "small" fee simply produce a standardised report on "how to improve your SEO" that can basically be read on the net). We've tried local, smaller companies in order to limit our options .... but that didn't go well either.

Any suggestions welcomed.

Next is where / how to weight our expenditure and / or our SEO time. Should it be 50% gaining external links (be it by what ever means such as social, checking out where competitiors have links and chasing those possibilities etc) and then 50% internal page SEO, blog content creation, internal linking etc?

Thanks again.

[Stellar_SEO]

Since your primary purpose is to make sales through online shopping, you should look for a firm that specializes in that area for starters.

After you find some firms within your budget, ask questions, ask for references, and ask for previous experience and results in your niche.

Next you should ask details about how they build links, what types of sites related to your business they have gotten links from and so on.

In terms of devising a strategy you should focus on quality. Let's say you can afford $500/mo for SEO. If it was me, I would devote $300 to content creation for sharing on guest posts, social, and so on. I would spend $100 on fresh content for a blog attached to your site to generate interest and attract links. I would spend the last $100 just doing good old fashioned outreach to other authority sites in related fields.

The content you created has the ability to build an infinite amount of links at no additional cost to you. The blog will make your site easier to link to since it is not a direct sales page, and the outreach will give you editorial links that rock.

So to answer your percentage it will be 80% off page SEO and 20% on page. This is after you complete the initial on page SEO.

Good luck on your search.

-Travis

[Houses]

I would also run their site or their client's site through Moz tools to see for yourself how well they do things.