Your website will never rank high in search engines without a proper SEO strategy, which includes a variety of techniques such as content optimization, keyword research, and, of course, link building. This essential part of search engine optimization helps you get more backlinks for your site and significantly boost your pages’ authority and trustworthiness, making them rank higher on the web.
Implementation of a proper strategy can also increase website traffic, ensuring your business will reach more potential customers. Nonetheless, creating your own link building team requires a lot of resources, which may be challenging for small businesses. Further, it may take a while before your new link building experts get enough experience to start growing your backlink profile.
Thus, as a business owner, you might find it more efficient to outsource backlink building efforts to experienced freelancers or a company with enough experience to solve your issues. Choosing the right partner is an extremely challenging and important task that requires proper preparation.
You should carefully weigh all the pros and cons to select the option that fits your needs and expectations. Read our article to find out how to outsource link building properly. We’ll analyze all the steps you need to take to deal with this challenge like a pro and avoid getting fooled by fraudsters posing as professional link builders.
Assessing When to Outsource Link Building and When to Keep It In-House
Not all website owners need to outsource SEO link building efforts. There are tasks, which you can surely handle by opting for your in-house team. On the other hand, your professionals may be unable to deal with challenging tasks that require specific knowledge. So, how can you know when it’s time to outsource your link building process? Simply pay attention to the following aspects:
- Your goals: If you simply want to obtain a couple of backlinks to reach higher positions in search rankings, you can surely do it on your own. However, if you need professional and efficient growth of your backlink profile to reach long-term goals, opting for outsourced experts is undoubtedly a smart decision.
- Your team: Do your in-house experts have the skills and resources to implement the required link building techniques? If not, outsourcing becomes a necessity.
- Your resources: Always compare the potential ROI (Return on investment) of in-house and outsourced link building. If you see that training your in-house specialists requires too many resources, opt for outsourced experts without any doubt.
Of course, your own team, outsourced agencies, and freelancers offer great ways to obtain high-quality backlinks. At the same time, the last option may be not suitable if you plan to implement a long-term link building campaign. Also, don’t forget that your in-house specialists may lack expertise and their training will require a lot of time and resources. Luckily, you can always opt for authoritative agencies, which are like a golden mean, when you have to decide whether to outsource your link building campaigns.
Signs You Need to Outsource Your Link Building
There are various scenarios that may lead you to think it’s time to outsource your link building efforts. Here, we’ll review the most common ones:
- In-house team capacity limits: Even with an in-house team, its capacity may not be enough to handle all the tasks. At the same time, the recruitment of new experts requires a lot of time and resources. Thus, opting for a third-party agency or freelancers may be a better idea.
- High complexity of tasks: Your in-house specialists might lack the experience to solve complex issues. Moreover, poor decisions may cost you your website’s rankings and reputation. You can avoid this risk and outsource link building services to experts that can showcase relevant skills.
- Unsatisfactory results of the current campaign: If your link building campaign is not delivering the expected results, it might be time to bring in outside experts to reassess and refine your approach.”
There are no universal approaches to building links. While something works for one company, it may be completely useless for another. For instance, if you want to successfully implement link building for SaaS, you should consider numerous factors, including the particularities of your niche and target audience. Fortunately, you can always opt for an agency with experience working in your niche. You won’t spend your resources playing guessing games but immediately start improving your backlink profile.
When Not to Outsource
In some cases, it may be too early for your company to start outsourcing link building. Here are the situations in which you should put this idea away for a while:
- Inner capabilities: There is no need to outsource your tasks if your in-house link builder has a good track record and can successfully handle the tasks to provide you with high-quality links.
- Cost-effectiveness concerns: In case you are not sure that link building will bring you the desired results, it’s better to analyze your website. If you discover technical issues or poorly written content, focus on fixing them first to gain higher rankings on search engine results pages.
- Specific industry needs: If your niche demands close control over processes, including link building, opting for third-party companies isn’t your option. You’ll need to create your own team to swiftly respond to possible problems and change your strategy accordingly.
In-house link builders allow you to maintain better control over the workflow. You can quickly analyze the results and manage your resources more efficiently. Further, you can align your link building efforts with other aspects of your SEO strategy effectively to maximize the investment returns.
Choosing the Right Link Building Partner
When you start cooperating with a reputable agency or freelancer, you can expect your backlink profile to be managed carefully. The experts will boost it with quality links from reputable sites with high domain authority. Meanwhile, you’ll be able to spend the resources of your in-house team to solve the most critical problems.
However, when it comes to selecting the outsourced link building services, you’ll face two possible options: an agency or a freelancer. Both have their unique advantages and disadvantages. You must consider your goals while making your choice to ensure that your partner’s capabilities can help you reach them.
Deciding Between Agencies and Freelancers
You can find thousands of freelancers on sites such as Freelancer or UpWork. These platforms allow you to read other people’s reviews about a certain link builder, as you can see detailed feedback and better understand what to expect.
As a rule, hiring these experts is cheaper than working with an SEO agency that offers link building outsourcing services. Plus, if you work with freelancers on these websites, you can pay them only when you are satisfied with the delivered work.
Also, hiring a freelancer for link building outsource services may be ideal if you need more personalized attention. The bad news is that even after reading a few reviews, you may still not be sure that a chosen specialist will meet your expectations. Unfortunately, even despite high rates, some freelancers opt for black hat tactics, such as the usage of link farms, which may ruin all your SEO efforts. A freelancer may also be unable to handle a lot of tasks at once.
On the contrary, you can opt for a reputable link building agency, which offers a variety of professional services and scalability. The majority of reputable companies use only white-hat link building techniques. Due to this, you can be sure that all your high-quality backlinks will be obtained from reputable and relevant sites.
Mind that hiring a trustworthy link building provider can save your company a lot of resources and time. It’s way easier to check the tasks delivered by an outsourced agency than to do everything on your own. Further, there is a stronger chance that a team of experienced professionals will deliver more exciting results than just a single freelancer.
Criteria for Selecting a Link Building Partner
You definitely want to avoid spending your money on inefficient link building strategies. Thus, it’s important to ensure your outsourced experts meet the following criteria to safeguard your SEO strategy and achieve astonishing results:
- Reputation: First and foremost, it’s essential to work with experts who have a proven track record of delivering quality, ethical link-building services. Be sure to read reviews to assess their performance.
- Portfolio: Both freelancers and agencies should provide access to examples of their previous work. Carefully review the portfolio to ensure it includes high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites.
- Transparency: Inquire about the methods an agency or a freelancer uses to provide their clients with quality links. If you notice anything that hints at the implementation of black-hat techniques, opt for a different link building partner immediately.
- Reporting: It’s not enough to simply acquire more links; you also need to track their impact on your website’s performance to ensure they are delivering positive results. Ideally, you should receive detailed reports of your campaign performance and result reviews regularly.
- Communication: When you outsource any task, you should be able to closely communicate with an agency or a freelancer regardless of their location. It’s great if your partner offers several communication channels, including one for discussing urgent matters.
- Case studies: All reputable link building agencies offer site owners the possibility to get acquainted with the case studies that prove the effectiveness of their strategies.
Pros and Cons of Outsourcing Link Building
Outsourcing link building can surely provide your company with many benefits, such as time savings and access to professional expertise. At the same time, there are still some drawbacks to consider before delegating this important aspect of your SEO strategy to a third party.
Advantages of Outsourcing
Both freelancers and agencies offer compelling reasons to hire them. Nevertheless, the most significant benefits include:
- Specialized expertise: Building quality links isn’t something anyone can learn in 30 minutes. By opting for outsourced professionals, you avoid the time and financial costs of training in-house teams and researching the latest industry trends and effective strategies.
- Advanced tools: Your link building efforts will not succeed without proper software. When you hire specialists, you can stop worrying about the necessity to spend your money to provide them with the necessary tools. Also, agencies often have their own in-house software that allows them to handle the tasks more efficiently and accelerate the process of building links.
- Scalability: When you start outsourcing link building, you can forget about the scalability problem. As your website grows, you can simply scale your efforts without the necessity to look for additional in-house specialists.
- More internal resources: While your outsourced team will be focused on obtaining high-quality links from sites with high domain authority, your in-house specialists will focus on other tasks.
- Faster results: Getting valuable backlinks is way more difficult than simply posting guest articles on various websites. It’s essential to define the best link building opportunities in your specific niche. While your in-house team explores what works and what doesn’t, you can outsource link building to the experts, who use their experience to implement a customized strategy.
Disadvantages of Outsourcing
Of course, there are also some pitfalls you should consider when outsourcing link building strategy implementation. The following are some potential drawbacks to consider:
- Lack of control: Whether you work with a freelancer or an agency, you won’t have complete control over the process. As a result, there is a risk that your partner may add a couple of low-quality or spammy links to your backlink profile.
- Communication problems: Issues can arise even if you opt for a reputable agency. Factors such as different time zones and language barriers may stand between you and some members of your outsourced team.
- Lack of expertise: Despite all the testimonials and positive reviews, there is still the risk of selecting a fraudster. They may provide you with low-quality links that can lead to lower rankings and even Google’s penalties.
- Dependency on the external team: Search engine algorithms like when backlink profiles grow steadily. It means that your success will directly depend on the time your outsourced team needs to build quality links. Any significant delays or the slightest mistakes can negatively affect your efforts.
Fortunately, there is a sure way to avoid the described disadvantages. The steps described below will help you to organize the ideal outsourced link building process and achieve your business goals.
Managing the Outsourced Link Building Process
We at Backlinkers know how it may be difficult to keep all the accomplishments of all the outsourced tasks under control. Thus, we’ve used our experience to come up with efficient instruction. Following the steps outlined below is essential to ensure a successful and satisfying collaboration. These tips will help you set efficient quality control to ensure your outsourced team will achieve the desired results.
Setting Clear Expectations and Objectives
Before you outsource link building, you should define how many backlinks your website needs to achieve your business goals. It’ll be a good idea to contact your link building services provider to discuss this issue. Ensure you’ve aligned your expectations with your partner’s capabilities to achieve the desired outcomes.
Monitoring Progress and Quality of Work
Whether you work with digital marketing agencies that provide a bundle of SEO services or only buy links, you should keep an eye on your site’s progress. Ideally, the implementation of your strategy should be accompanied by comprehensive reports from your partner.
They should provide detailed reviews of the upcoming plans related to building high-quality links. Plus, keep in mind that all your new backlinks should be obtained from online resources with high website’s authority and a stable flow of organic traffic.
Effective Communication Practices
The established relationships will never bring you the desired results without effective communication. It is one of the keys to quality link building and your website’s high search engine rankings.
The good news is that the majority of professional agencies offer excellent customer service that is available 24/7. You can establish a comprehensive quality control and discuss your link building tactics.
Opting for such companies is a great way to manage the issues related to time zones and language barriers. It’ll be a good idea to choose the English language for communication with the outsourced experts responsible for building links for your website.
Evaluating Outsourcing Success
As soon as the work is done, you should check each linking site to ensure its pages and content are truly relevant to your niche. Also, when outsourcing your link building activities, ensure that the online resources from which your site obtains backlinks are reputable and meet the metrics of high quality (if these websites haven’t been approved beforehand).
Remember that it’s better to have only one high-quality link than dozens of spammy ones. Search engines are very picky when it comes to evaluating a link profile. If they spot irrelevant or broken links they’re likely to suspect the implementation of black-hat tactics. It’ll immediately lead to lowering your search engine rankings, even if your site can boast perfect technical SEO or excellent content creation.
Key Performance Indicators to Monitor
There are three key performance indicators to pay attention to when you opt for outsourced services:
- Link quality: All the inbound links should come from authoritative sources that meet the quality requirements and feature relevant anchor text that aligns with your content.
- SEO rankings: Gaining valuable links should undoubtedly have a positive effect on the rankings of your pages (provided that they already have engaging content and no on-page SEO issues).
- Traffic growth: Ideally, the backlinks should provide your site with referral traffic, which may be converted into your customers.
Reviewing ROI and Adjusting Strategies
There is no reason to outsource link building if these efforts don’t drive long-term success, including return on investment and income growth. While backlinks often lead to blog posts, they can also direct traffic to product or service pages that generate revenue. Additionally, internal links to these key pages can further boost SEO and conversions.
To calculate ROI, subtract the total cost of building links from the revenue generated by the product pages bound to the blog posts, which have obtained the backlinks. After that, multiply the sum by 100. The ROI from 5 to 7% is considered to be good. It’s important to remain flexible and adjust your link-building strategy based on the performance data.
Conclusion
Outsourcing link building is a great idea, especially if you need to obtain a certain number of links and your in-house team lacks the capacity to handle all the tasks. Despite the possible drawbacks, such as communication problems and lack of control, you undoubtedly will be pleased with the results if you opt for a reputable partner.
Fortunately, you can minimize the risks if you opt for an experienced agency like Backlinkers. You are welcome to get in touch with our customer support team to discuss how many links you need so we come up with the most efficient ways to obtain them ASAP.
