Link building outsourcing: What to consider when choosing a contractor
Sooner or later every business owner is faced with the choice of an outsourced professional. If the setup and quality of advertising campaigns or written text for the site he can still check in person, in such a complex service as link building, not everyone understands. Despite this, do not delay such an important part of promoting your site.
Everyone who has decided on the link promotion of the site, interested in the question: "By what criteria to choose link builders and how to evaluate their professional skills?
In this article we will give you the basic criteria for choosing a team of contractors, and tell you how to protect yourself from unscrupulous performers.
Analyze the offers
A key factor in selecting a contractor is how deep you as the customer are willing to dive into controlling the task. For example, if you open a search for linkbuilder freelance exchange, be prepared for the fact that performers may not have access to services like Ahrefs because of their prices, and therefore will not be able to perform quality analysis and search donors for links. Then there is a choice – pay cheaper for the service, but to provide their access to services (not always convenient), or do the necessary downloads yourself or pass the task to companies whose links will cost more, while the price already includes costs for the necessary software.
The same applies to the terms of reference – a freelancer may need more time to explain the strategy and topics, while the agency has more opportunities to study the niches and choose the best strategy, taking into account the experience of other similar client sites.
Let's compare the prices of a freelancer and a link building agency:
Ask for cases
Every specialist (both agency and freelancer) should have successful cases to prove their professionalism. Even if the agency/freelancer cannot show you an example from your niche, study the ones they have to see the real result of their work.
You need to focus on two things here:
- The results of the site that the links were placed on (for this, you can ask any client site and find out in what period the links were placed on it)
- The quality of the links themselves and the content that was used for the guest posts
Get to know the workflows
Many customers try to ignore this factor, forgetting that the issue of comfort in the work is also very important. With a contractor, it should be simple and clear: here are the terms of reference, the money, and here is the promised result. To do this, ask the prospective contractor questions:
- Will I be able to track the stages of work?
- What services are used to check the donors?
- Do you check each site manually in addition?
- Do you manually place links?
- Will I have the opportunity to check and approve sites and content before I start posting?
- Can I expect to get my order on time? (Especially relevant to SEO-specialists who report to the site owner every period)
These are the most important questions that you should get specific answers to, and they will help you in choosing a performer.
Don't trust words
If they tell you that your site will reach the top in a month for specific keywords (especially if we are talking about HF queries in a competitive topic and a small budget for links) – you are being deceived. SEO-promotion depends on many factors and it is a gross mistake to guarantee a specific result based only on link promotion.
Agency/freelancer can give guarantees regarding the number and quality of links inserted, replacement of the link in the case of removal.
Reviews and ratings
Both agencies and freelancers should have real reviews from satisfied or dissatisfied clients. Type "company name reviews" into the search box and you will see sites where reviews of the performer/company are published. This can be either a form for leaving reviews on the site itself or a third-party reputable review site.
Link promotion is a long and time-consuming process that requires a good strategy and its quality execution. If you do not have the appropriate skills, time and resources to promote yourself, we recommend entrusting it to agencies rather than freelancers.
Our company employs link builders with years of experience, who will answer all your questions and provide a full report on the completion of the work.