Link building is a crucial part of every SEO campaign. But choosing the right link building service for your business can be difficult. There are so many to choose from, and what might seem like a good option for one company could be a disaster for another.
However, with this ultimate guide, you’ll be able to select the perfect link building service without having any doubts! This blog post will teach you how to compare different services based on your goals, why link building is so important, what you need to know about link exchanges, and how to avoid shady SEO practices.
Why Link Building Matters
Without link building, your website might get buried in search results, if it even indexes at all. It could take a long time to get noticed, or could even go unnoticed completely.
Link building services help in several ways:
- It helps in increasing the authority of your website, when trusted domains are pointing back to you.
- It helps in increasing the traffic to your website, when people are clicking on the backlinks pointing to your site.
- It helps you rank for your targeted keywords, and you’ll gain traffic from search queries over the long-term.
Overall, link building is one of the most important and effective content marketing and SEO strategies, but it needs to be done right. There are several mistakes you can make in a link building campaign, and there are shady techniques some services might offer that will end up hurting you, which we’ll talk more about in the next section.
The best link building strategy will combine these elements:
- Reaching out to high DR websites to publish your content.
- Making content that is relevant to those sites.
- Researching keywords to include in your content that relate to your targeted sites.
- Targeting specific keywords for backlinks.
- Making sure your links are contextual, rather than random.
Avoiding Shady SEO Services
There are a lot of SEO and link building services out there, but as with any industry, some are better than others. You need to understand some of the big “no-no” practices that some agencies might employ to deliver “results” which look good on paper, but don’t actually help your website, or even worse, end up harming it down the road.
One of these strategies is purchasing links on link exchange networks. For example, a shady SEO agency might own a network of blog sites and social media profiles, and you pay them to place your link on their sites.
This is one of many horrible SEO practices because your links are being published on low-quality sites that will reduce your authority and make your link less valuable to Google. You’ll most likely end up penalized and removed from Google’s search results altogether.
Link building takes time, effort, and several months to begin seeing peak ROI – so any SEO service that promises fast results is taking you for a ride.
How to Compare Different Services
You want to choose a link building service that has an established track record, customer testimonials, and is able to explain their link building process in a transparent way that you’re able to easily understand.
Do your diligent research on a link building service that you’re considering. Do they have a blog that explains SEO and link building strategies in an actionable way, or do they just use a lot of buzz words? Do they have a YouTube channel where they upload training videos?
Do they offer different services where you can choose what makes the best sense for your business, or do they just focus on “all-in-one” tier packages?
Finally, do they have experience working with clients in your industry? This is important to consider, because if an agency has experience building links in your niche, they’ll have existing relationships with websites in your industry, and be able to better form a comprehensive strategy for your business.
You want a reliable link building service that is dedicated to your success and their approach to your goals.
