Whether you have a ton of experience outsourcing your link building already or this is your very first year in SEO, this short post will give you some killer tips that might just change the way you think about outsourced services.
Here they are, my friend.
1. Ignore the allure of paying for cheap links in quantity
I am still astonished at how active link sellers are on Fiverr. Some of the top link building gigs get 100+ orders a week and all for essentially the easiest (and worst) links you can build. While these do have a little bit of use beyond indexing, they are worth about what you pay – 5 bucks. Using them on a client’s site is a foolish move you will eventually regret. Avoid getting burned in outsourced link building by being smart about where you outsource.
2. Know what you’re outsourcing
Before I ever have someone else build a link for me, I make sure I have a solid understanding of the process behind it. This ties in directly with #4 below.
3. Know what you’re buying before you buy it
Be wary of links that are described as “secret sauce”. Without knowing what it is, how can you know for sure if it’s dangerous or beneficial? This is especially important when you’re considering sending links to your money site.
4. Always require a report
Demand transparency in everything you pay for. If a service provider is unwilling to provide a report, then that should raise a red flag. Are you really getting what you’re paying for? How do you know? Certainly, all good links are eventually discovered via backlink research tools, the excuse that they are protecting their sources is a poor (and short-sighted) one.
5. Diversify everything (link types, anchors, and the pages links are sent to)
Never rely exclusively on a single set of link types. I made this mistake years ago when blog networks were all the rage. Guess where my best sites are now? Toast.
The same can be said about diversifying where your links are sent. A diversified link profile is a natural one, even down to the page level. Make sure your links are pointing to all kinds of places on your site, not just the domain and a handful of your favorite URLs.
6. Forget about anchor text
So many people these days are hung up on anchor text. What is the distribution? Are we hitting the anchors too hard or too much? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could forget about anchor text for our campaigns?
I am going to go out on a limb here and leave a small but controversial tip regarding link building that most people don’t (and won’t) adhere to. If you want to be extra-safe with your link building, forget about anchor text completely.
Google is getting smarter and anchor text is slowly becoming obsolete. They can figure out the topic of a page based on its content and what text surrounds any incoming links (called co-citations). If you’re really concerned about penalization, forget about anchor text completely. Use generic terms, raw URLs, and/or descriptive long-tail phrases to link to your pages.
