All You Need to Know Before Hiring the Right Link Building Company

More than half of the world is functioning online. 

Most people are shopping online and most businesses are selling online. 

That leaves you with no reason not to consider your business’s online presence. And you should start with your website. 

If you have decided to pursue link building as your first step to bolstering your digital presence, pat yourself on the back. Among the 200+ factors that Google considers while ranking sites in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) the number and quality of backlinks are in the top spot along with content.

But what exactly are backlinks?

How do link-building help websites rank higher in SERPs?

What are the ways for building backlinks for your website?

Should you go DIY or hire a link-building agency?

What are the signs of a good link-building company and what red flags should be avoided?

How to begin your hunt for the right link-building partner?

Find answers to all these questions and more in this article right here. 

Scroll on. 

What is Link-building?

Let’s take a step back and talk basics first. Google has a bunch of smart algorithms that study, analyze, and decide which sites should rank in what position for which search query. 

Now Google has 200+ parameters that its algorithms consider. But one of the most important parameters is the quantity and quality of relevant backlinks that a site/page has. 

What are Backlinks?

When a domain (other than your own) links to your site, it is called a backlink. 

It just means that the author of that piece wants the readers to visit your website. In a way, they are giving you a +1 or a vote of sorts. Now the more votes you have, the higher your chances of getting ranked higher. 

Google takes backlinks as a sign of your content being good. After all, why else would other authors want to send their audience your way? 

Now the process of getting other webmasters to link back to your domain is what is called link building. 

In a utopian world, you’d just have to churn out good content and people would automatically read and like it. And then backlinks would flow to you on their own. No effort is needed. 

But in the real world that’s not how things work. You need to work (sometimes very hard) to get the right backlinks for your website. In fact, 65% of digital marketers also feel link-building is the hardest part of SEO.

How to Build Links for Your Website? 

While there are hundreds of ways to get links for your website, here are the 5 most popularly used tactics:

1. Publishing unique research or data. People are more likely to quote the statistics and link back to your website.
2. Offer a free tool. Other webmasters would be more open to adding the tool on their site or using it and in return for permission for that, you can ask them to link back to the source (that’s you!)
3. Create cool, informative, or engaging media or graphics as they are loved more by the audience and can fetch you backlinks.
4. Publish guest posts on high authority sites that allow you to add 1 backlink in the content.
5. Reach out to bloggers and ask them to link back to some of your relevant content. 

All that sounds too much to do, right? And it is just the start. There’s a lot else that ought to be done for result-yielding link-building. 

That’s why it is best you hire link-building experts. But that’s not the only reason. There are many more reasons why hiring a link-building company is, in fact, the right choice.

Why Hire a Link-building Company?

Link-building might sound like a walk in the park, but it is a tough nut to crack. And expertise is required. 

Moreover, it is also time-taking and that’s why you’d need someone who can dedicatedly work to build your website’s backlink profile. 

That’s why 60% of businesses outsource their link-building activity.

Here are 3 other reasons why it is in your best interest to hire a link-building company – 

• Link builders have close ties and business relations with several business directories, PR sites, and bloggers. So they can help you get a lot of backlinks from sites in your niche within a short span of time.
• You, on your own, might get tempted to try some black hat link-building practices like buying backlinks. SEO experts who know the ins and outs of the process, know better than to fall prey to such lures. 
• Link-building alone won’t yield tangible results. To make sure that search engine rankings and digital brand awareness go up, you’ll have to leverage link-building in conjunction with other SEO and digital marketing practices like content marketing, on-page optimization, email marketing, pay-per-click ads, and social media optimization, and more. Link-building agencies have access to experts in all these fields as well and can offer package deals and bundled services.

And just FYI, here’s how much your peers spend on link-building so that you can estimate your budget. 

5 Signs of a Good Link-building Company

Deciding to hire a link-building company to get professional services is like winning half the battle. But the other half requires you to actually find the right company. 

Without that, you’d be worse off than trying to go DIY. To help you onboard the right link-building agencies, here are 5 signs that will let you know you are headed in the right direction. 

Go ahead with the link-building company, which:

If you hear infrequently from your team of hired link-builders, that’s a major red flag. Nothing can ever justify them not wanting to keep you updated about the progress of your website’s link-building activities.

On the flip side, if a company has proactive communication and they keep you updated about the project specifics and progress, it is a good sign. Bonus points if the agency takes the time to explain its working methodology to you. 

Link-building doesn’t yield immediate results. The process is slow to conduct. And it would take weeks, if not months to see any tangible results. If a link-building company promises you quick results or a sudden increase in rankings, know that they are either bluffing or will be using black-hat practices. You don’t want either of those things to happen. 

If a link-building partner tells you they’ll be building a thousand backlinks for you, ask them for the list of websites where the links will come from. If the company has a list and is willing to share a detailed report showing proof that they have built long-term backlinks for you on x, y, and z sites, only then should you trust them. You should ideally be getting such reports on a monthly basis. 

A service provider who is not violating any rules and is working only on best practices won’t hesitate in sharing their modus operandi. It is the bad guys who hide stuff. 

Whether it is the actual links you’ll be getting or the payment schedule or anything else, the organization that is transparent is worth your trust. 

When you hire link-builders, you are ultimately looking for results. And if an agency doesn’t take accountability for results, they shouldn’t be your pick. Find a link-building company that takes accountability and promises real results.

Looking for the Right Link-building Company

Now that you know everything about building links for your website, it is time to start looking for the right  link-building services company.

While looking for the right agency to partner with, other than their technical proficiency, also look for the following – 

• Reviews and ratings from former customers and testimonials
• Rankings on business listing sites like Clutch, GoodFirms, etc. 
• Past portfolio and the results of previously conducted link-building activities.
• Cultural match between the agency and your organization.
• Possibility of getting other related services like content writing, SEO, pay-per-click advertising, etc., for the time when you decide to go all out with digital marketing.

Once you have an organization that you can trust completely, sign the papers and get the work started. And in due course of time, you’ll start seeing the sweet fruits of your investment in the form of better domain and page authority and higher search engine rankings.