Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Choosing A Link Building Service

By Dan Duvano

Search engine marketing or SEO is a complex process, but a big part of it is link building. This is often referred to as off page optimization and includes a large number of different activities.

You can conduct all the different link building activities yourself, but this is generally too time consuming for most peoples tastes, so eventually you'll need to engage a link building service.

Here is a guide to help you sort through the various services and decide which one meets your needs.

Tip #1 - Make Sure they Provide Linking Diversity

The first thing to look for when trying to find a top quality link building service is whether or not they provide linking diversity. You don't want a service that only specializes in one type of link building, such as blog posts. If you're going to pay for the service, look for companies that will provide a variety of different methods of building up quality links for the best results.

Tip #2 - Are They Up On Recent Methods

Your next question for the prospective link building service should be on how update they are with current methods. Ask what methods they use, what publications they read, how they know the methods are working etc

Tip #3 - Link Building Should Be Done Morally

Of course why you want the best possible link building from the company you hire, you want to make sure that the links are ethical. Make sure that the company has a good reputation and that they only use ethical links. You don't want links that are going to look like spam and actually harm the reputation of your website in the future. So ensure that the service you use only uses ethical link building tactics.

Tip #4 - Find What Has Worked For Others

A good place to find out about link building services is to ask around on forums. Find out what services others have used, what they paid for them, what results they got, were they happy, are they still using them etc. This will give a very quick idea on the quality of a service.

Tip #5 - Get A Curriculum Vitae

See if the company can give examples of successful link building projects in the past and then verify this. Google the site they talk about and if you can't find it, perhaps the link building didn't work all that well!

Tip #6 - Who Links To The Linkers?

If you are trying to judge a company and the link building services that they provide, one of the best ways to do so is to check out the links that are leading back to their site. If the work in the industry, they should definitely have great backlinks pointing to their own site. See if they have links from social media sites or authority sites. When you take a look at their own backlinks, it can help you see how useful their work will be for you.

Tip #7 - How Much Is A Link Worth?

Price isn't the be all and end all, as a cheap service may not be value for money if they links are poor, and a dear service may pay for itself in a month! Once you have other assessments of the service though, then you can compare pricing. Prices will vary widely, so the first question is probably, 'how much are you willing to pay?'

Locating a top link building service that you can work with is not easy, and is certainly worth doing thorough homework on as it involves your future prosperity. I hope these guides will aid you in this and make the whole process a little easier.

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