Link building isn’t easy.
In fact, it’s arguably one of the most difficult parts of the entire SEO process.
The DIY route is totally possible, and many small business owners prefer this, since they can stay in full control of the process.
But if getting creative and drafting up your own compelling guest posts at 2 AM, while ignoring bucketfuls of more important emails from your developers isn’t exactly your idea of a fun time… you should consider outsourcing your link building efforts.
But hold up a second. If you rush through the process and end up working with the wrong link-building agency, outsourcing can actually be counterproductive.
Thankfully, outsourcing effectively to the right agency is actually a pretty simple process—as long as you take it step-by-step.
You’d never start a road trip unless you had a destination in mind. The first step to outsourcing link building is to decide where you want to go—exactly where you want to go.
Don’t set goals like “increase SERP rankings,” or “enhance link profile.” These are obvious goals that literally everyone with a website wants to achieve.
Instead, get extremely specific.
If you want to improve search engine rankings, then your goals should be something like:
Achieve a top 10 ranking for five key industry keywords within one year, or
Increase organic search traffic by 20% in six months.
If you want to enhance your site’s authority in your niche, then some example goals are:
Increase domain authority by 5 points within one year, or
Obtain at least 10 backlinks from high-authority sites in your industry within six months.
If you want to expand your brand’s visibility and recognition in general, your goals could be along the lines of:
Within six months, establish backlinks from 20 new domains that have never linked to your site before, or
Get featured in at least two industry influencer publications by the end of the year.
The common thread between all of these different goals is measurability. The more specific you get with your goals, the easier it will be to measure your progress towards them and adjust accordingly.
Get on the ol’ Google and begin your epic quest for the perfect link-building agency. Bigger is not always better, and you shouldn’t just go with the ones that pop up first.
Here at Profit Engine, we like lists. For step number 2, we recommend creating a preliminary list of no less than 10 potential candidates. 10 may sound like a lot, but that’s the point: It’s usually a good idea to draw from a wide pool of candidates.
At a high level, here are the things you should focus on when creating your top 10 list:
Reputation and client reviews: This is like when you’re ordering a generic item from Amazon, and you decide to go with the brand that has 10,000 good reviews instead of the one that has only 10. Though it’s always nice to support newer, smaller businesses, you should only outsource link building to agencies that have lots of positive testimonials from past clients.
Case studies: These are like client testimonials, but more in-depth. Case studies will take you through the journey of how the link-building agency achieved demonstrable results for specific clients. Looking through case studies will allow you to get a feel for the strategies used by the agency and how effective they are.
Specialized experience: This can mean many different things. For us, only two are important: You’ll want to outsource link building to an agency that either has experience working with clients in your exact same industry and niche, or an agency that has helped clients achieve the exact same goals that you outlined in step 1. Bonus points if you can find an agency that’s done both!
Strategies used and ethics: This is sort of a final safety check. It may seem obvious, but you should only ever work with white-hat link-building agencies that build links organically and ethically, avoiding black-hat agencies and link farms.
Step 3 is where you take your preliminary list of 10 and put it through some much more rigorous criteria, narrowing it down to a shortlist of no more than three.
Here are some specifics you’ll want to focus on in this stage:
Technical expertise: You’re outsourcing to a link-building agency for many reasons—one of them is probably because you don’t have the technical know-how to handle everything on your own. So when it comes to the more technical aspects of link building, like anchor text optimization or full backlink profile analysis, ensure that the agencies you’re looking at know what they’re doing. Even feel free to request additional case studies or specific examples that demonstrate measurable improvements in these areas for past clients.
Content quality and strategy: Link building—especially via guest posting—often involves heavy content creation, usually in the form of written articles. Never go with an agency that phones it in with content. Besides reading through existing content pieces written for past clients, examine the diversity of content types they use and how they tailor content strategies to target specific audience segments.
Transparency and reporting specifics: Many businesses choose to outsource link building because they never want to have to think about it again. Even if that’s you, you should still choose an agency that makes a point to keep you updated on what they’re doing. Prioritize agencies that regularly provide clear, comprehensive reports that detail not only their activities and strategies, but also the direct impact of these activities on your SEO performance.
Pricing: Finally, you’ll have to cross off from your list any agencies whose services are beyond your current budget. The sad truth is that link building is expensive—that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. But if you’re smart about it, you should be able to narrow your list down to the ones that fit within your budget.
Though it may be pretty difficult, you should run your list of 10 agencies through these criteria, checking off the ones that don’t hold up, until you have no more than three left.
Let's tailor your roadmap to success.
With extensive expertise in enhancing SERP ranking performance, we understand what truly works. Let us save you from wasting resources on ineffective strategies. A quick call with us with the option of an AI-Driven Strategy Blueprint might be all you need to attain the edge over your competition.
BOOKÂ AÂ CALL
Now it’s time to get custom. You can only learn so much from case studies, and agencies are often willing to work with you on prices. Reach out directly to these agencies for detailed proposals tailored to your website.
In your emails, do two things:
Tell the link-building agencies all about your website and business. Put yourself in their shoes. What would you need to know about a website in order to get gritty and start discussing customized link-building approaches? Whatever that turns out to be, include it in your email to reduce back and forth correspondence.
Be very clear about what information you’re looking for. In particular, request proposals that cover customized link-building strategies, tools used, estimated timelines, projected outcomes, pricing structure, and total cost.
Once you have these proposals, assess them each against the goals you set in step 1. Which agencies seem to be able to take you there most efficiently?
As a side note, certain link-building agencies offer free strategy calls. If the three agencies on your shortlist advertise this, you could potentially skip this step and move right on to step 5.
At this point in the process, you’ll already have gathered a lot of technical information from your top three agencies. Strategy meetings are when you let the agencies take the wheel.
They’ll probably want to discuss specific scenarios, such as recovering from a previous bad link-building practice, entering a new market, and the means they would use to take your actual business to the goals you outlined in step 1.
Strategy calls are a good time to gauge compatibility.
How clearly and promptly do the agency representatives communicate?
Do they hit all the points you mentioned in your proposal email, or do you need to be the one to bring them up?
Can you see yourself working with these people long-term?
Of course, these are questions for yourself. Keep them in mind as the call progresses, and compare your answers between the three different agencies.
Before the call finishes, make sure you’ve discussed your expectations regarding timelines, budget, communication frequency, and reporting. This ensures both parties are aligned from the start.
At this point, one agency should stand out above the others as your prime choice. It’s time to pull the trigger and finalize the deal.
At this point, you’ll want to go over your goals one more time, and agree with the agency on a series of KPIs—also known as link-building metrics—to measure your progress towards said goals.
Here are some common ones:
Domain authority and page authority: These KPIs are predictions of how well your website is expected to rank in SERPs (search engine results pages). Use these metrics if one of your goals is to benchmark and improve your site's credibility and search engine visibility.
Referring domains: The referring domain metric counts how many unique domains link back to your website. Use this metric if one of your goals is to increase the diversity and overall strength of your link profile.
Link relevance: Link relevance measures the relevance of your content compared to the content where your links are coming from. Use this metric if one of your goals is to ensure that your backlinks contribute to the contextual strength and relevance of your site.
You probably won’t be using these exact three, nor should you be using only three. The metrics you choose, and how many you monitor, all depend on your destination.
This final step is where all the research and evaluation in steps 2 through 5 start pulling their weight. If you haven’t put in the work to vet your agency properly, you’ll find this out the hard way.
You’ll want to schedule regular check-ins with your link-building agency to review performance against the KPIs you said in the last step. But if you’ve chosen the right agency, you shouldn’t have to schedule these check-ins—the agency should be proactively reaching out to update you, without you even needing to ask.
Finally, be prepared to adjust strategies if necessary. Even the best link-building agencies aren’t all-knowing genies. Mistakes will be made, things will need to be reassessed, and new paths will need to be taken. Again, though, the folks at the agency are the link-building experts—not you. They should be the ones to suggest strategy changes to drive your website closer and closer to your goals.
We could give you a fancy bulleted list of all the technical reasons why it’s sometimes beneficial to outsource link building. Instead, we’ll focus on just one reason—the most important one.
Outsourcing anything—in this case, link building—gives you access to expertise that would take many years and lots of money to build up in-house.
By outsourcing to a link-building agency, your website’s backlink profile will be built and managed by a full team of people who have been doing this professionally for decades. Unless you’re running a massive enterprise with a full-on SEO department (and a link-building sub-department), you simply won’t have access to this kind of know-how on your own—it doesn’t matter how much Googling you do or how many articles you read.
Though outsourcing link-building can be quite expensive, the results are usually always worth it—provided you follow the 7 easy steps laid out in this guide
To outsource link-building, begin by setting specific, measurable goals.
Research potential agencies based on reputation, case studies, and white-hat practices. Evaluate them and create a shortlist through a series of rigorous criteria, including technical know-how and content quality. Request detailed proposals, conduct strategy meetings to get a feel for compatibility, and finalize agreements with clear KPIs.
Once the deal is done, monitor performance and adjust strategies as necessary to achieve the goals outlined in step 1.
Finally, here’s an optional 8th step for you to consider: Forget all of the above, and book a free strategy meeting with our team at Profit Engine.
We wrote this guide, after all—so you can rest assured we’ll meet all the criteria we laid out.
How do I choose a good link-building agency?
Look for link-building agencies that are committed to ethical, white-hat link-building, prioritize clear communication, have excellent reputations and testimonials from past clients, and can provide detailed case studies demonstrating how they achieved positive results for said clients.
How much does link building cost?
Link building cost varies tremendously depending on the number of links you need and the quality of each one. In 2024, you should expect to pay around $150-$350 per link, with prices going all the way up to $1,500 or more per link.
What is a good link-building strategy?
A “good” link-building strategy for one website may be a “bad” link-building strategy for another. It all depends on your specific SEO goals. However, ethical, white-hat link building through organic means like guest posts and niche edits are common themes that can usually be found in all good link-building strategies.
An industry-leading AI link building strategy.
After years of experience growing brands just like yours, we know what gets results and what doesn’t. We’ll stop you from spending too much time, resources and money on backlinks that don’t help. We’ll stop you from building links on harmful or useless websites. We’ll use our AI Link Strategy to analyze your competition and give you a personalized action plan.
Find out more
