As a business owner in a highly competitive industry, your priority is to make sure your brand stands out from the rest of the competition. Without proper marketing, you can have the best product or idea for your industry and yet struggle to achieve expected sales volumes. Due to the rapid shift towards online sales and marketing, one of the most viable ways to reach your potential customers has proven to be through search engine optimization.
Link building and SEO services are integral to the success of any online business, regardless of industry. The idea is to deploy various techniques and strategies in line with your business goals to improve your SERP ranking, which will contribute to higher conversion rates and sales.
However, SEO is quite a complicated practice and requires certain skills and experience. There are two ways to incorporate search engine optimization for your website, i.e. create your own digital marketing team or outsource it to a professional SEO agency. Each has its pros and cons and which one you choose depends on your business goals and available resources.
What is link building as part of an SEO campaign?
Search engine optimization or SEO consists of several techniques and strategies, all of which aim to improve your website’s position on the SERPs. Link building is part of off-page SEO, which consists of practices performed outside of your website to influence your rankings.
Link building basically refers to the process of getting high authority backlinks from other websites in your industry to improve your search engine rankings. The share value of backlinks is one of the most important ranking factors, and high value links signal to Google and other search engines that your website content is credible and trustworthy.
At its beginnings, link buildingwas limited to creating a high volume of backlinks without much preference for the context. Now, Google prefers relevant and contextual backlinks and penalizes those that are not, which means backlinks from high authority domains are worth more than one from irrelevant websites.
Building backlinks is mostly done through guest posting and content marketing, which involves reaching out to other big names in your industry and posting authoritative content on their website with backlinks to the pages of destination of your brand. When done correctly, building backlinks can save you countless hours and reward you with lasting improvements in search engine rankings.
What to expect when hiring SEO services for link building?
As a general rule, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A reliable link building company won’t promise you results overnight, just because it’s not possible. SEO services take time and you will need to be patient and put in consistent effort to see results in your favor.
Instead, the link building company will tell you about their process and how they work to achieve the desired results. Some of the best SEO agencies let you pick the URLs and associated anchor texts to promote because no one knows your business like you do. Some of the best link building services provided by SEO companies include:
- Guest posting
- Outreach to bloggers
- Anchor text management
- Content Marketing
- Placement of competitive links
- Broken link rebuild
- Creation of organized links, etc.
Things to Look for When Hiring Link Building Services
- Miscellaneous links
Arguably one of the most important things to look out for in an SEO business is link diversity. Some SEO companies specialize in directory listings only, while others focus on blog posts or press releases. A reputable link building company can help you get high-quality backlinks from industry-relevant PageRank powerhouses. When hiring a link building company, be sure to choose an agency that offers a bit of everything, as it offers a higher chance of success.
Depending on your needs, link building and SEO services, in general, can be very expensive. SEO agencies offer a wide range of pricing plans, which may depend on the number of links, deductions, etc. The most commonly found plans are renting link ads on a monthly basis. Before hiring a link building agency, be sure to review their pricing plans and see if they work well for you in the long run.
Another important factor you need to consider is responsiveness and customer service. You need to make sure you can contact them when you need them before you sign on the dotted line. Make sure they provide at least a contact number, email address or IM username when negotiating the contract, otherwise you may run into problems later.
- Reputation and connections
With a complex task like SEO, a safe bet will be to go to experienced agencies with a good reputation. When hiring, look into their work history, profile names and forums, and other blogs they contribute to. Chances are that if they are thoughtful and develop useful content for their website, they will be just as diligent when working on your link building campaign. If they have no online history, you may want to look elsewhere.
Some link building agencies list client portfolios on their website, which can be used to guess their preferred industries and other information. Note that link building often comes with NDAs, so if you see them sharing too much information about their past customers, chances are they’ll do the same with your brand. Ask for their work history, but respect the privacy of their other clients.
Link building services are absolutely essential to any effective SEO strategy. This brings several benefits besides improving the credibility and trustworthiness of your brand. That said, link building is not a one-time thing and requires constant effort. You will need to create and update your content regularly and find brand mentions without links etc. A reputable company offering high-quality SEO services allows you to offload some of these tasks and focus on your core business.