You’re probably here because you’re thinking to outsource your link building.
- You’re either a digital marketing agency looking for a white label link building service OR
- You’re an in-house SEO looking for more resources for scaling-up your link building
When it comes to outsourcing link building there are always pros and cons.
Table of Contents
The Advantages of Outsourcing Link Building for Agencies
I want to start by clarifying the advantages of outsourcing your SEO & link building to a white label SEO company, because there are many to be had (assuming you’re avoiding the “deadly sins” I’ll be covering in the next section). These are some of the most powerful:
Outsourcing Link Building Is More Convenient
Link building is notoriously labor intensive.
When an external agency is handling and outsourcing link building services, you won’t need to hire someone internally to do the work.
That can spare you hours in your link building efforts, which you can then use to improve your client relationships in more productive ways.
Tap Deep SEO & Link Building Expertise
Link building agencies have spent years building their businesses to master the art of outsourcing link building. It’s only natural that they’d be better at navigating this terrain than most general marketing agencies. As a result, their links tend to be higher quality, with better results.
Outsourcing Link Building Services Typically Improves Accountability
If something ever goes wrong with the campaign, you’ll have someone external to hold accountable.
It will be on them to find the mistake, take corrective action, or suggest a new outsourcing link building strategy to make up the difference—and they might even lend you special services for free to make it up to you.
Outsourcing Link Building Can Be More Affordable
Though you might be reluctant to spend hundreds to thousands of dollars a month on outsourcing link building services, the reality is, an SEO agency will be far less expensive than trying to do the work yourself.
Hiring an in house link builder is almost always more expensive, and you might get inferior quality links from their link building activities as well.
This is particularly true if you offshore some of the outreach link building work (but we don’t suggest offshoring copywriting).
Improved Link Building Scale by Outsourcing
Outsourcing link building will add more resources, regardless of the existing size of your team. As such you will be able to scale more quickly by outsourcing link building.
The Risks of Outsource Link Building
If you want to see these link building benefits, you’re going to have to avoid these deadly—yet common outsourcing link building mistakes:
1. Picking a cheap (or offshore) link building service
Most marketing agencies looking for a new link building services provider want to save time and/or money. Accordingly, they act rationally by shopping around for the best price.
But in the outsourcing link building world, the lowest price isn’t always the best price. In fact, it tends to skew in the opposite direction: you get what you pay for.
By paying less for a link builder, you’ll probably get one or more of the following:
Cheaper labor by outsourcing backlinks
Writers and editors who get paid less for their work tend to have lower standards, or less experience overall.
That means your off-site articles and link building portfolio are going to suffer.
We covered this deadly sin in my article at VentureBeat titled Getting a good deal on SEO? Think again!
Fewer checks and balances
Reputable agencies tend to cost more because they have more internal positions to account for; they might have a team of writers, a team of editors, a team of reviewers who examine the work before publishing, and a team dedicated to managing publisher relations.
If you try to pin all this work on one or two separate teams, the end result will be more mistakes, lower quality work, and less consistent work.
Fewer guarantees and assurances
Cheaper SEO agencies aren’t as dependable because they may not have account managers who truly care about your brand.
They may also rely on quantity of clients rather than quality, and therefore may be willing to lose your business over a disagreement.
Lower-quality publishers when you outsource link building
The more authority a publisher has, the more valuable it is for link building.
Unfortunately, that authority comes with a cost; it takes more time and effort to establish and build that online reputation, and much more work to maintain it.
Low-cost agencies can’t possibly afford to maintain these systems, and may instead favor low-authority publishers, which can damage your campaign.
Does this mean you should seek out the most expensive outsourcing link building serviceyou can find?
No.
But you should consider far more than just the price of the agency you’re working with.
Get quotes from multiple providers, and figure out exactly what you’re getting for each price point.
Treat this as a link building investment, rather than a link building expense, and optimize your link building strategy accordingly.
Pro tip: check your backlinks now to see how you are doing compared to your competition.
2. Working with non-native speakers
Before I get too far in explaining this point, I want to note that it’s entirely possible for non-native English speakers to be competent, or even gifted writers.
Remember: outsourcing is not the same as offshoring!
However, speaking generally, non-native English speakers tend to write inferior content, when compared to native speakers.
They may mistranslate certain phrases, be unable to use slang or idioms in a natural way, or use clunky phrases that make the content seem less fluid.
People won’t want to read this content, and top-quality publishers won’t be willing to accept it, which means it’s practically impossible to build a successful campaign on it.
Why would a link building agency work with non-native speakers?
There are two main motivations here.
First, it’s because they’re cheap.
Agencies can get away with paying writers far less in developing countries, which means they can charge their clients lower prices (or, in some cases, pocket a bigger profit).
Second, they’re created and managed by people in developing countries, who want a shot at making higher profit margins by working with companies in the United States.
Some outsourcing link building companies make it a point to acknowledge that they work with non-native speakers, but for the most part, you’ll have to do some investigating to be sure.
Make sure you’re working with an agency that employs native speakers exclusively for the services you’re targeting.
And, be sure to check for AI content. If you use it, be careful not to be too aggressive with it.
3. Shooting for backlink outsource quantity over quality
Outsourcing links usually means studying packages that are primarily distinguished by the number of links they offer.
For example, you might be forced to decide between 12 links per month, 50 links per month, or 500 links per month.
It’s reasonable to consider this as a factor, but it strays into “deadly sin” territory when you start using the number of links as the sole determining factor for your decision, or as the most important factor for comparing two companies’ offers.
For example, if company A offers a link package with 12 links for $1,200 per month, and company B offers a link package with 50 links for $1,500 per month, you might lean toward company B. you might also go into the selection process with an idea for a minimum number of links you want to build.
But you have to remember that not all links are created equal.
If you put too much attention on the number of links a company can provide you, you’ll neglect factors like how those links are built, and what kind of return you can expect from those links.
After all, if a single link can net you 1,500 new monthly visitors, it’s inherently more valuable than 500 links that, together, can only net you 1,000 new monthly visitors.
What’s more, if a company is promising you a seemingly-too-good-to-be-true amount of links, then those links are probably of very low, spammy quality, thus subjecting you (or your clients) to the horrors of a manual or algorithmic Google penalty which can be hell to recover from.
Assuming all quality factors are equal, more links do have the potential to give you higher returns.
And realistically, quantity and quality should both enter your decision-making process. But if you favor quantity over quality when signing with a new agency, it’s bound to compromise your results.
Concerned about the quality of your backlinks? Use our backlink checker now to understand how you stack up!
4. Treating all link building publisher sites as equal
Along similar lines, you need to be thinking critically about the sites where your link building agency is going to acquire those inbound links.
If a link building provider doesn’t publicly disclose which publication sites they use to build links, it could be a sign that they treat sites indiscriminately.
Instead, look for a link building provider with multiple “tiers” of publishers, or at least a wide range of publishers that they let you choose from (***hint*** at SEO.co, we let our clients choose their publishers because we value 100% transparency!).
There are several qualities to keep in mind here:
Domain authority
Each site has its own domain authority (DA) value—a rough measure of how authoritative Google determines it to be. Though the methods of calculation here are complex, in general, you can rely on DA as an indicator of how much authority a link will pass to your client’s site. In other words, the higher the DA of the link, the more your client’s DA will rise, and the higher their site’s rankings will climb.
Website Traffic
DA shouldn’t be the only consideration for the discerning agency, however. You should also consider how much traffic the publication gets—after all, links are just as valuable for generating referral traffic as they are for improving rankings. The higher the traffic for a source, the more traffic your client will stand to receive from a high-quality link.
Online Reputation
Though not as objectively measurable, you should also consider each publisher’s overall reputation—especially if your client is getting a brand name mention. A publisher with high journalistic standards and universal acclaim will benefit your clients’ reputations more positively than a site that publishes any material that comes their way.
This doesn’t mean that you should only target sites with the highest possible value in each area; instead, you should have a diversity of different sources pointing to your clients’ sites. Instead, the mistake here comes into play when you fail to differentiate between sources. Spend some time talking to your prospective outsource link building services to learn which types of publishers they use, and strategizing to use those diverse sources to your advantage.
5. Allowing link exchanges (or other schemes)
This mistake can be tricky to avoid, since link schemes come in many forms, and no link building agency would make the mistake of publicizing that they utilize schemes.
The disadvantage in using link schemes is clear; Google explicitly forbids the use of link schemes for the purposes of improving a site’s rankings. Link schemes include, but aren’t limited to:
Buying or selling links
Working with a link building agency that uses high-quality content and established relationships to build links on noteworthy sites is perfectly acceptable. In fact, leveraging relationships with the media to acquire coverage for clients is what PR agencies have been doing for over 100 years. Bribing publication sites to include links for the sole purposes of promotion, on the other hand, is not (according to Google, anyway).
Excessively exchanging links with a limited number of sources
Link exchanges are one of the most common types of schemes. If an agency seems to use the same few sources to build links pointing to each other, it’s a bad sign.
Any automated programs to build links
There aren’t many steps of the link building process that can be effectively automated link building without risking the integrity of the campaign. If an agency uses bots to publish links across the web, you should probably stay away from them.
Low-quality directories and bookmark sites
Link directories and bookmarking sites exist to host links and direct traffic, so Google doesn’t take them seriously. In fact, your clients might get penalized for being featured there.
Hidden links
Though not a common practice anymore, embedded links that have been hidden in widgets, comments, or websites are heavily frowned upon.
Spammy links from forum or blog comments
If employed cleverly, forum and blog comments can be used to build high-quality links. But for the most part, comment-based links have no place in a modern campaign.
Since you may not be able to discern whether or not a link building company uses link schemes as part of its services, the best way to evaluate a prospective vendor is to ask them about their practices. Ask them to walk them through their link building process, and judge it for yourself.
6. Offering no direction or campaign feedback
One of the biggest motivations for seeking the help of an outsource link building agency is to save you time.
So shouldn’t you be able to just hand off the reins and stop worrying about your clients’ campaigns?
I get this mentality, but if you pass off your clients’ link building campaigns without direction, it’s bound to cause chaos.
For starters, your outsource link building agency should know what other SEO strategies you’re currently using, and what your history with the client has been like.
Only with this information will they be able to work with you to create the right campaign.
Though most SEO agencies offer different packages with standard features, most expect at least some degree of customization before starting work.
At a minimum, you should be willing to provide the following information:
A description of the brand
A brief understanding of your client’s brand is important for building links properly. The industry, character, and target demographics of the brand should dictate which publishers are used, how links are placed, and a variety of other considerations.
The ultimate goals of the campaign
Is your client looking only for increased rankings? Or would they prefer improving referral traffic? What about reputation benefits? SEO agencies work better when they know what your clients’ goals are.
Past and present link building efforts
Link building is just one ingredient in a successful SEO campaign. Knowing what else has been going on—both past and present—is useful for tailoring the specifics of the campaign.
Anchor text preferences
Anchor text probably isn’t going to make or break your campaign, and relying on it too heavily can add spammy links to your backlink profile. However, targeted anchor text can probably push a keyword or two over the edge.
Publisher preferences
As I mentioned earlier, not all publishers are the same. Working with your outsource link building agency can help you ensure the right publishers are used for your clients’ campaigns.
Setting these expectations early can ensure your client gets what they need, and maximize the efficiency of the campaign.
7. Failing to capture your client’s outsourced link building needs
Providing direction to your outsource link building agency is good, but only if you have a good understanding of your clients’ goals—and use that understanding to inform your direction.
Too often, digital marketing agencies make the assumption that they know everything there is to know about their clients, or otherwise treat all their clients the same.
In reality, each of your clients will have different needs, goals, and expectations for how their link building campaign is handled.
For example, you might be perfectly comfortable allowing a brand mention of your client’s company in a given publisher, but your client may feel it’s a breach of their values (especially if the publisher is controversial in any way).
The most important thing to remember here is the need for transparency and understanding between you and your clients.
Without that, no marketing agency will be able to ensure you receive the most adequate link building service.
8. Making too many demands
I’ve already mentioned how important it is to provide your marketing agency with direction, but the other end of the spectrum can also be problematic.
If you make too many demands of your SEO agency during the process, things can go very wrong.
For starters, if you’ve chosen an agency with a strong reputation and lots of expertise, you should trust that they’ve had more experience than you have—and more authority on the matter.
If you set too many standards for how the work should be completed, you may prevent the company from providing you with their own direction and expertise.
Make yourself open enough to hear the agency’s recommendations; they’ve done this for many clients in the past, and may have insights or ideas that you haven’t considered.
Expecting perfection will set you up for disappointment, and may not allow your SEO agency to produce their best work.
9. Escalating your link building too quickly (poor link velocity)
Marketing agencies usually seek link building help under one of two circumstances.
- either they’ve taken on a new client and want to delegate a portion of the work to an outside firm, or
- they’re looking for a way to boost a client’s results.
In either scenario, it’s tempting to escalate as quickly as possible.
These agencies want their clients to see results, or at least work, as soon as possible, and in their mind, that means publishing as many links as possible in the span of a few weeks to a few months.
The problem is, this excessive link building or poor link velocity can be counterproductive; if Google notices too many links being built too quickly, it may consider them to be unnatural, earning your client a penalty rather than increasing their rankings.
Most link building agencies know this, and set early expectations with their clients that links should be built gradually over time.
However, if you pressure them to churn out more work, they may give into your requests, and publish an excessive number of links at a faster pace than they’re used to.
And if you’re using multiple link building services, or are building links on your own, your agency may be unwittingly contributing to a good link building strategy that’s growing way too quickly.
Patience is a virtue here.
Instead of opting for the biggest or boldest campaign a link builder has to offer, consider starting with a smaller campaign, gradually scaling up as you start seeing more results.
While you’re at it, keep your link builder in the loop about any other link building strategies you’re utilizing; that way, you can work together to ensure that your link building campaign scales at an appropriate pace.
10. Treating all your link building clients the same
Too many marketing agencies treat link building as part of some massive, uniform assembly line.
They get a new client, onboard them, and sign up for the same link building package they’ve used for past clients, with no new instructions, goals, or modifications, expecting to see the same results.
In many cases, you will see similar results; the same number of links, from the same range of sources, across the same time period will almost certainly increase your new client’s DA at the same pace, and earn a similar amount of referral traffic.
However, you could be missing out on some serious advantages by making simple modifications to the core link building program.
Client expectations should also play a role in how you shop for link building packages. Though the experts (either you or your link building provider) should be shaping those expectations, a client who expects faster results will need different care than one who’s ready for a slow-burn campaign.
11. Making a transaction instead of building a relationship or partnership
Most link building agencies offer monthly package deals as well as a-la-carte link ordering. This makes it easy to view the link building process as a transactional one; you spend a fixed amount of money, get a fixed number of links, and move onto the rest of your campaign.
However, it’s much more effective to treat your relationship with your link building provider as an actual relationship, and not just a one-time exchange. That means working with the same account rep as long as possible, having occasional meetings, and establishing a precedent for a long-term partnership.
If you stay on good terms, your link building agency may extend special discounts or favors to you, in return for being such a loyal client. This is especially valuable since most link building companies offer peripheral and related services, such as conversion optimization or social media marketing.
Long-term business partnerships also give you more consistency, which is important if you want to set firm standards for what your clients can expect.
If you treat the relationship as too transactional, you’ll end up spending more time and more link building efforts for inferior results.
12. Not negotiating the contract with your outsourcing firm
Most link building agencies offer a standard contract when you sign up for their services, but you should consider negotiating certain elements of this contract. Consider these factors:
- The cost of link building outsourcing
- The length of time it will take (which in turn equates to money)
- Any SEO service stipulations
- Other terms, conditions and/or restrictions
You may not be able to get a strictly better deal, but you should be able to rebalance the contract to better suit your needs. For example, you might be able to secure yourself a lower per-link price in exchange for extending the terms of the contract. In any case, make sure to review the wording and sections of the contract carefully.
13. Treating link building as the ONLY solution to SEO
Naturally, I’m a major proponent of link building. It’s an invaluable source of referral traffic, higher website authority, improved organic traffic, and reputation benefits.
But at the same time, it isn’t a perfect or comprehensive solution for your client’s marketing needs.
Link building is best suited as one of several complementary strategies.
It works exceptionally well when paired up with content marketing, on-page SEO, social media marketing, and email marketing, and can take brands even further with a PR campaign or advertising campaign.
If your outsource link building agency can provide some of these services, consider providing them.
Ultimately, a multifaceted campaign with multiple different strategies working together will offer better results, a higher ROI, and greater risk mitigation should any of those independent strategies fail.
Obviously, utilizing more strategies means investing more time, more money, or both, but those are the costs of a well-orchestrated, interwoven marketing strategy.
Don’t put all your clients’ eggs in one basket.
14. Not checking live work of completed outsourcing tasks
Once you’ve found a link building agency you trust, it’s natural to assume that the work they produce will match the quality standards you’ve come to expect.
They might have glowing reviews, you might have seen some compelling examples of their recent work, and you might have a fantastic relationship with your account representative.
But even so, it’s foolish to assume that a link has been built without checking the live result.
Here’s why:
- Trust but verify. You might find that the link was finalized with the wrong publisher, or that the link you were sent was broken. Mistakes like these are usually honest, so catching them early can ensure they’re fixed with haste.
- Check for errors in the work. Give the finished article a thorough scan for spelling mistakes, inaccurate statements, and broken links. Even the best SEO agency may slip up from time to time, and it’s far better to catch a mistake on day 1 than day 100.
15. Compromising on data & analytics
Data is the only way to tell if your campaign is working, and the only objective source to tell you what needs to be improved. Your link building company is responsible for proving their results to you (and by proxy, your clients) with objective numbers, and this isn’t up for debate or compromise.
At a minimum, you should know:
- The total quantity of backlinks built
- The domain authority of each link source
- Your clients’ domain authority
- Incoming referral traffic from each source (or overall traffic to the source)
If your link builder can’t give you these numbers directly for any reason (such as not having access to your clients’ Google Analytics accounts), they should be able to provide you with the direction and resources necessary to get them.
Don’t assume that everything is working—let the numbers show you the way.
16. Failing to calculate the ROI of your link building campaigns
Most link building agencies provide raw data to their clients, but it’s on you to help your clients understand their ROI from those link building activities.
If you want to ensure you’re getting adequate results, you need to take things further by calculating your total SEO return on investment (ROI).
There are a few different ways to calculate this as a middleman.
You can start by calculating your link builder’s own ROI (which is simple).
Just take the amount of money your client is paying you (or the portion you’ve allocated for link building) and subtract what you’re paying the link builder.
A positive result means you’re making money on this deal.
The goal is to give your client more in value than they’re paying for services.
The only caveat here is that link building is a gradual, long-term process; you might start out with a low ROI that grows over time, so don’t get upset or give up if you aren’t positive in the first few months.
17. Accepting mediocre results from link building outsourcing
Even if you’ve had an amicable working relationship, or if you’ve been partners for many years, there’s no reason for your link builder to accept mediocre results.
You have the data.
You have the ROI stats.
Now it’s on you to take action if you (and your clients) aren’t seeing the results you want.
If your link builder agency is unwilling to make concessions or take extra steps for you and your clients, it may be time to find a new link building partner.
Otherwise, treat this as an ongoing experiment.
Work with your link building vendor to make a change, see how it affects your results, then keep the positive changes and reject the negative ones.
Once you’ve read and accepted the weaknesses of these critical mistakes, you’ll be ready to start outsourcing your clients’ link building needs.
Why Link Building is Important
Quick take—do you really need link building?
The short answer is yes, if you want to rank higher in search engines.
Remember, Google preferentially ranks websites and individual pages based on their level of qualitative trustworthiness—which we in the industry call “authority.”
Authority is calculated based on a bunch of things, but most notably, it relies on the number and quality of links pointed to your website (and individual pages).
In other words, no links = no authority.
You can cross your fingers and hope to get links naturally on your own, but it’s much better to be proactive and build links intentionally.
An outsource link building agency can help you do this—so let’s get to the real pros and cons, beyond the initial benefits of link building itself.
Outsource Link Building to SEO.co
When you feel confident you’re ready for the next step, make sure to contact us here at SEO.co.
We have some of the best marketers, writers, publishers, and analysts in the industry, and many of our biggest clients are agencies working with us on white label link building services to get better results for clients of their own.
Reach out today, and let’s start a conversation about how we can get you (and your clients) better results through better link building!
Tim holds expertise in building and scaling sales operations, helping companies increase revenue efficiency and drive growth from websites and sales teams.
When he's not working, Tim enjoys playing a few rounds of disc golf, running, and spending time with his wife and family on the beach...preferably in Hawaii.
Over the years he's written for publications like Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marketing Land, Search Engine Journal, ReadWrite and other highly respected online publications. Connect with Tim on Linkedin & Twitter.
- Content Marketing: Using Content & SEO to Grow Your Business [Complete Guide] - October 23, 2024
- SEO for Labor and Employment Lawyers: Top Tactics to Rank - October 4, 2024
- How to Find & Fix Duplicate Content on Your Website - September 24, 2024
