2 Reasons Not to Outsource Link Building to SEO Companies - Moss Media
- Updated on: 2019-08-25
- Read original article here
Moss Media
Published by Enstine Muki on
April 15, 2019
April 15, 2019
Do you outsource link building to SEO agencies? Are you wondering whether to outsource link building or to do it yourself?
Link building is generally thought to be a challenging search marketing activity. I don’t want to say the contrary and sound like I’m coming from space. I have been online for over a decade, and I have seen people struggle with it day and night. It’s hard because a considerable part of it depends on others, not you.
I’m one who likes to make a difference between building and earning links. It’s more accurate to me if I think of link building as an effort of yours to get inbound links while winning connections go with others linking to your articles without your consent.
But we want to focus on Link building, you taking steps to engage an SEO company to help you in the seemingly tough task.
Link building is generally thought to be a challenging search marketing activity. However, it’s hard because a considerable part of it depends on others, not you. Click To Tweet
Who are SEO companies
These are the folks making you think SEO is complicated. They mystify search ranking in other to sell to their victims. An SEO firm is never going to tell you SEO is easy. If they do that, they would be placing their business on a string.
Yes, it isn’t just the click of the mouse button, writing or spinning and throwing some text around that takes your pages to the top of SERPs. You’ve got to get some real work done. That shouldn’t frighten you the least. See in this post why I think SEO is easy.
SEO agencies (too) are those companies that help busy marketers rank in search engine and boost their natural traffic. Most of these are capable of handling every phase of your SEO.
But it’s lame to completely throw your search marketing under the belt of SEO companies. That’s because most of these are a complete joke. Howbeit, some are authentic and can be relied upon if your wallet has the weight.
In any case, here are some reasons you may reconsider your decision to outsource your link building to an agency
Related Post: How To Find Linkable Assets + Types Of Linkable Assets
1: Link building is not rocket science
First, I want to debunk the false belief that link building is dogged. It’s merely a matter of misconception and method. Our minds are programmed to believe this is for the Matt Cutts, the Brian Deans, the Neil Patels, etc.
These guys have a working method, and that’s all there is. Link building is scientific. It’s not mystical. Follow the steps, and you’ll get there.
But how do I build them myself?
I hear you asked.
There are black hat, white hat, and grey hat methods. But I will emphasize on the white hat or ethical practices. Some experts, however, would argue that there is no white hat link building method.
According to them, every link you consciously create isn’t natural. The experts go forth to say that the only white hat, a natural backlinking method is linked earning. Let others do the link without you asking.
Either way, here are my recommendations:
Create content that provokes links from readers: A simple way to create these link-worthy content is to focus on Semantic SEO . It allows you to build irresistible in-depth articles.
Submit guest posts on relevant blogs: In today’s link building business, this is about the quickest way to built links
Link Insertion: This is an outreach marketing practice that has worked for many solo bloggers. You make contacts and try to get them to link out to your content because you feel it’s more relevant and resourceful.
Mention to hyperlinks: Just like link insertion, each time someone mentions your brand on a blog post, you may want to contact the webmaster and request the mention be linked.
Blog commenting: Though this is losing SEO weight, it’s still worth trying
Networking and linking out: This, in my opinion, a reliable link earning method. While you connect with like-minded content producers, giving them backlinks from your content, they are likely going to link back.
Etc.
Hire someone you pay based on performance. Think of working with a reputable consultant or freelancer so that you will be able to control and validate the links they built, and not risking your entire SEO campaign. Click To Tweet
What if you can’t do this yourself?
Hire someone you pay based on performance. Think of working with a reputable consultant or freelancer. As we are focusing on link building, you will be able to control and validate the links built following these tips:
Domain Authority of the linking domain.
Trust Score and Citation Score of the domain,
Age of the domain.
How active is content published on the site?
The overall toxic score of the domain.
Etc.
With this in mind, while you are achieving your link building goals, you are not risking your entire SEO campaign. But there is a cost involved in hiring an SEO expert. Well, that’s not even the point. However, Ahrefs has this SEO pricing post you may want to read.
Related Post: How to Make Google Index Your Backlinks Faster
2: Avoid toxic links
Toxic links are the backlinks from domains that are either penalized by Google or are involved in unethical, black hat SEO practices like buying and selling links, building massive links from unrelated sites, creating links to thin content, etc.
Some spam SEO companies have many black hat link building methods they will never disclose to their clients. The links they build from these dirty sources may have some momentary ranking boosting results. But the long term reaction from Google is bad news.
Many of my clients with terrible backlink audit results have confessed working with randomly picked link building agencies:
Some SEO link building services are just after your money. That’s crazy because they are killing the growth of their own business.
Here is how most of them function:
1 – Random xyz domains
They’ve registered random domains, installed WordPress, and when you submit your project to them, with some text and keywords, they get the copy spun and posting to these arbitrary domains.
This practice is a dangerous SEO game because these domains end up having:
Thin content
Zero engagements
Etc
Google is smart enough to know this is an SEO manipulating domain registered to create random links. Once this is figured out, you are a step closer to a penalty too.
Toxic links are the backlinks from domains that are either penalized by Google or are involved in unethical, black hat SEO practices like buying and selling links, building massive links from unrelated sites, etc. Click To Tweet
2 – They outsource to third-party
Here is one other thing most link building agencies are never going to release to their markets. And to completely kill it, they turn to micro job websites where SEO services and are a complete trap.
Still, don’t know what I’m talking about? Check out Fiverr, SEOclerks, etc. One of the most active categories on these platforms is SEO link building related:
You must have been living solely on wine for the past two weeks to buy this crap.
And to make things worse, we have this claim:
The question is; how could someone give you 60 high authority backlinks for $10 in one day? Come on, people! But here is the bad news: Some SEO link building companies collect money from you and turn to these low-quality services for low-quality dangerous backlinks.
But if you must outsource link building to an SEO Company
Consider the following criterions before outsourcing to SEO agencies.
There are some search engine optimization (SEO) firms out there run by reputable folks. They provide transparent link building services through guest posting:
They ask for complete text (1000 words) from you or charge you for it. In any case, you will have a copy of the article, read through and approve.
They don’t spin the copy you provide into many different articles.
They send you a list of domain names and their SEO matrices: DA, Trust Flow, Citation Flow, the frequency of publication, etc.
Each domain sent has a price based on their matrices
You make a choice, and once the article is published and indexed by Google (for the most part), you release the payment.
Now, this is a working method that could be checked by you to make sure you get value from your campaigns. Anything else that’s not transparent (like the Fiverr-type service), you’re better away from it.
Google is smart enough to know this is an SEO manipulating domain registered to create random links. Once this is figured out, you are a step closer to a penalty too. Click To Tweet
Wrapping Up
Link building companies that do guest posting is something you may want to try. But like my friend Sunil Gupta of Trafficora said, this should come with a lot of precautions. Don’t surrender your business in the hands of destroyers in the name of link builders. Therefore, make sure to outsource link building only to reputable and trusted SEO companies.
Let me know what you think about this in the comment box.
