Building a link building team

[SEOtrojan]

I just joined SEOmoz and I have enjoyed all the information.

I currently outsource link building to an agency that charges $50 per link. For this, they handle the anchor text creation, the surrounding text and solicitation, acquisition and monitoring.  I know they send the actual work to their independent contractors.

How do you find those independent contractors so that I can build my own network of contractors and save the client money?

[RyanPurkey]

You can use websites like oDesk, Rent-a-coder, Craigslist, or many similar other sites to bring on outsourced contractors.  With a careful plan you can probably attain a much higher rate of return.

[SEOtrojan]

Thank You Ryan. I appreciate your time in answering my question.

[SteveOllington]

I hope they're good links then. $50 is cheap for a great link, expensive for a worthless one... do they not provide anything so you can see the value of the links?

[SEOtrojan]

No they do not.  They have encouraged me to review links in yahoo explorer.  I've noticed through yahoo site explorer that we have more low quality blog sites that give us a link with 15 or so relevant words around the link. The link is a desired keyword as the anchor text.  I've also noticed an emergence of sites that give only a link with the anchor text in the blog-roll.

Organic traffic has increased more than 50% since we engaged them 6 months ago so I feel it's working.

[SteveOllington]

Hmm, iffy. I think you're probably doing the right thing looking elsewhere (in my opinion). If you have low traffic (not saying you have) then a 50% increase isn't a lot, plus, how much of an increase in conversions are you getting would be the more important question.

All I mean is, if you're in a field that's not competitive, you started off low with no rankings, and they got you a few low value links which bumped you up to having a couple of okay ranks, which are driving some "not-so qualified" traffic, then that's not worth $50 per link. You could have done that yourself pretty easily, or employed someone at $10 per link.

But...

If you've got some good rankings out of it which are driving good, targeted traffic due to those links then great

Edit Also, how many other links are there on these blogs going to other sites, are the blogs spammy? Care to share one?

[SEOtrojan]

Hi Steve. Thanks for the time.  Here is a link to a pretty typical result...http://www.hanoverstables.com/. We were doing about 1500 per month and now we are around 2250 or so. We are in the storage business with 2 of our top 10 keywords in the top 3, another 5 holding stable at 14 (up from say page 3/4) and another 2 or 3 well outside the top 50.

Our conversions are only up 10-15% during the same period. We have done on-site optimization, we add 10 relevant articles per week across our targeted keywords.  We do not have a big directory presence and are not in yahoo, dmoz, or many niche directories.

We have over 120 links going on any given month.

[RyanPurkey]

Great expansion on the line of thinking from Steve here. Thumbs up. @Drew T, questions like these are the things you'll want to consider and map out for someone(s) that you task with building links.  Ultimately some of the best relationships you'll cultivate online will come from more than just getting a link, but actually connecting with other people that are in your niche.

[SteveOllington]

Okay, based on that blog... before I say this, please get the opinions of others too as I'm aware I'm starting to sound too negative here... you're being taken for a bit of a ride.

That blog is spammy, irrelevant, full of links to random sites, contains dire content (probably dupe but haven't checked), looks like a domain purchased for it's old page rank as it doesn't fit the content, etc... etc...

That is far, far from a quality link and isn't worth 5 cents let alone $50.

Run a mile!! If that's what they've been doing, you could have achieved the same results for $50 one-off.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news

[SteveOllington]

Thank you Ryan

[RyanPurkey]

Concur.  Looks like a link farm and your link isn't surrounded by content so much as it's surrounded by a ton of other links.  Definitely look for another solution.

[SEOtrojan]

Your points are well taken. I have spent a great deal of time researching this today and really appreciate the feedback.  I had a feeling this might be the case but I'm thankful to have the affirmation.

[SteveOllington]

Sorry, reading it back it looks like I was a bit blunt when stating the issues. One thing I will say, judging by the number of other links on the blog they must have some pretty convincing sales people lol. But yeah honestly there's a tonne of other places out there that will get you some great links. I don't know how much it works out that you're paying them monthly, but there's some great SEO companies you could probably hire for a similar amount (maybe less?) who would do a good job with your link building. Half of the people on these boards probably run them lol. Check out the SEOmoz market place and get a few quotes... and don't forget, Distilled have just opened up a branch in the USA, and they're endorsed by SEOmoz so you can't go wrong there!

[SEOtrojan]

Hi Steve, I really appreciate the perspective.  I'm going to consider moving the account.  You and Ryan have given me the perspective I needed.  Thank You.

[LinkMoser]

Hi Drew. Did you ever find some good link building freelancers who do link building right?