When it comes to off page SEO, quality link building services are a no-brainer.
If you’re looking to hire quality link building services or are thinking of establishing your own service, you’ve come to the right place.
Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about quality link building services.
The Many Hats of SEO Link Building
There are many types of SEO and they all have a “hat”. What do black, white, and gray hats mean and how will these techniques affect your business?
Black Hat SEO
Black hat is an unscrupulous service offered by the shadiest of the shady. Have you ever been to Fiverr or a similar site and seen the folks who offer hundreds of backlinks for $5?
These are not quality link building services.
These, my friends, are the black hatters. And they aren’t even good at what they do. Their link building strategy is designed for the fastest monetary gain in the shortest period of time.
Why is the time frame so small? They find themselves heavily penalized or outright banned by Google’s algorithm just as fast as they get their page ranked.
Back in 2011, JC Penney, the retail giant, was a victim of black hat link building. The firm that was working for them purchased a metric ton of low-quality links.
It didn’t take Google very long to figure out what was up and the store lost potentially millions of dollars in sales as it was forced to naturally climb its way back on top of the SERPs.
Just say “no” to black hat link building strategies.
Gray Hat SEO
Gray hat techniques aren’t necessarily bad.
What we’re talking about with gray hat are strategies that are borderline spank-worthy by search engines. They might be ok for the moment, but they could be the type of building that could get you punished in the future.
Other versions of gray hat are SEO gurus who jump back and forth between white hat and black hat. This is a huge no-no if you’re looking to hire a firm or start your own business.
Teetering on the edge is fine, depending on your risk tolerance, but crossing over to the dark side will ALWAYS come back to bite you square in your tail.
White Hat SEO
When in doubt, white hat it out for quality link building services.
White hat is the term used for firms and SEO experts who play exclusively by the rules that search engines want them to play by.
The downside is that these techniques take time and patience to build and to see results.
This is the thorn on the SEO rose if you will. It can’t be avoided. And you know what?
It shouldn’t be.
The purpose of search engines is to take the businesses that deserve to be at the top of the SERPs, get them there, and then keep them there.
Do you/your business want a spot at the table? You’re going to have to prove it.
What to Expect From Quality Link Building Services
We have (hopefully) established the fact that white hat link building is in your best interest.
These quality link building services usually offer much more than just link building, for the purpose of today’s message, we’ll stay on topic.
So how does this whole thing work? Well, search engine algorithms are not just complex, but also top secret. However, there are some things that we know as facts or at the very least, we’re about as sure as we can get.
When these search engines crawl through websites, they’re looking for multiple things when it comes to links, because simply having links is too easy.
If you’re looking to build or are researching quality link building services, this is what should be getting done. Take a look:
Trustworthy Sites
Quality link building services that are worth their salt will place links to your site on specific pages. They aren’t going to go to random blogs and throw up a link.
These companies typically have ongoing, symbiotic relationships with other businesses. Legitimate businesses that actually want your link on their site just as much as you want it on theirs.
As these links begin to pile up, search engines will say “Hey, this link is showing up more and more often on sites that matter. Let’s rank them higher.” Because that’s how search engines talk to themselves in our mind…
Relevant Sites
If you’re selling shoes, quality link building services should not and will not be placing links on to a site that is all about pet insurance.
It isn’t relevant. Not even close. The search engines will see this and they will think, “This is either a mistake or someone isn’t very smart,” and they’ll ignore it.
If this happens often, they’ll think “Black hatter alert! Let’s shut’er down, boys”. At this point, you can kiss the next several months of marketing goodbye.
You’re just done. Google and Bing will literally put your entire website in time out for several days and in extreme cases, months.
If you like reading horror stories, here are several infamous tales of Google not being afraid to go for the jugular.
It may not sound fair but it’s their right and even the Supreme Court agrees, saying that Google’s right to rank is protected under the first amendment.
Freshness
Over time, your links will begin to decay. Quality link building services, provided they’re are still employed by you or your business, will continually place fresher links into play.
Search engines only want the most relevant content to be at the top of the SERPs. Old content that is losing relevance will lose its place in the results.
This is why link building and SEO services are a growing industry. It will never stop being in demand and is constantly changing. The faster you and your business get with the hustle, the better off you’re going to be.
Let’s Start Putting it all Together
Ok. So far we’ve discussed white hat quality link building services, how they’re the best, and what kind of websites they should have your site’s links.
We have our links on trustworthy, relevant sites. That should be enough information to get us started, no?
Not really.
Let’s Talk About Your Content
All of the quality link building services in the world aren’t going to do much for your business if it’s all leading back to trash.
Your content must be quality. Possession with intent to distribute bad content is an SEO felony.
All of the link building services in the world can’t fix that. So if you’re guilty and think you won’t be caught, you’re:
- Wrong.
- Playing with fire.
- Need to remedy this immediately.
The purpose of a link building strategy is to promote the best content available on your website.
Once again, we need to refresh how search engines work. You do not rank for links. You want to rank for keywords.
So you want all of your links to point to the page that has the keywords that you would like to rank for.
An example: You sell pet insurance.
After doing some keyword search, you see that the keyword “horse insurance” gets nearly 10,000 searches per month AND is relatively easy to get ranked for.
What Do You Do with This Information?
You adjust your content accordingly. You create a page that’s all about horse insurance, making sure it has a proper amount of keywords, without overstuffing.
Then you place viable internal links into this page that go to other products, services, and general content that you think customers and prospects want to see.
Quality link building services will see this page, see the keyword research, and they will know what’s up.
They will build links that go to this page and over time (think tortoise, not hare), you will see your website climb the SERPs like Michael Biehn in K2.
See the everything starting to come together?
Other Types of Backlinks
The key to a great SEO campaign is layers of effort.
There’s are many ways to get backlinks. Quality link building services will usually have several options in the packages that they offer.
If they don’t it’s fine. The following link building strategies are popular DIY options that add an extra layer of link building to help your rankings improve.
Blog
Twenty and even fifteen years ago, it was perfectly acceptable to have a professional website without attaching a blog. Currently and in the future, not so much.
Blogging is the single best way to bring your personal content to the web and sharing this content for absolutely free on social sites is the easiest way to draw prospects to said content.
Though blogging in and of itself has SEO advantages, why are we bringing it up in a link building post?
Guest posting. Websites like Forbes, Entrapreneur, Inc., and other high-quality websites will give you a follow link. Sometimes it’s better to go with a guest post service to handle the writing and outreach for you.
This type of back link has more value than you realize. Not only does it look great with search engines, but your message, face, and website will become known as an authority.
This is the type of strategy that can take you from “Mike, the dude who runs that business around the corner” to “Mike soandso, features on x,y, and z websites”.
This is a big deal for your business and your SEO campaign.
Lists
This can be a round-up of great articles/writers/businesspersons or a list of great resources.
The downside is this option requires time and research by the truckload. This is also the upside and why it can be so beneficial.
If you create a list of the best “x resources for anyone doing y business”, other people who write this kind of content are going to link to it. Why?
Because there is no way they are going to do the same work just to rehash your content.
It’s way easier to just throw you a link. How beautiful is that? Never underestimate the laziness of other people.
Infographics
People on the internet share infographics like it’s going out of style. Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that this type of content is going to go out of style anytime soon.
How this process works is that you either create or pay someone to create an infographic, which is a piece of content in visual form. Think graphs, charts, etc…
You own this. Shop it around. Offer it up to anyone who wants it.
There’s a link attached to this shiny product. Guess where it goes when someone clicks on it?
Your website.
Broken Links
While this option is doable if you have plenty of time on your hands and spend that time searching the internet, it’s a complete hassle or most people.
Unfortunately, it’s also quite effective.
The broken link strategy is a crowd favorite for SEO nerds and this is how it works:
- Step one – Surf the web and find relevant websites that you would like to post on.
- Step two – Start clicking on all of their links.
- Step three – You found a broken link! Huzzah!
- Step four – Message the webmaster/use the contact page to mention the broken link. Luckily for them, you happen to have the perfect link to replace it. It is, of course, a link to your website.
Finishing Up
Quality link building services certainly have their work cut out for them.
In theory, the work is simple. In reality, it’s a tough job for those involved. However, it’s now mandatory for every website to take SEO and quality link building services seriously.
If you’re wondering why your site has been struggling, hopefully, this post can give you a better idea of why and what you can do about it.
If you know that you’re in desperate need of yanking your website out of the Googlegutter, check out our guild to SEO in 15 minutes.