out sourcing link building

[pagetta]

Our website is quite small compared to most of you guys here - if we get over 100 visitors per day that is a good day (that has risen from 70 this time last year!)

I have worked on building our IBLs where possible. I have submitted to local and national directories, specialist computer listings, as well as dmoz. We are limited as we cannot offer reciprocal links, and also I have been told I am not allowed to approach our partners or customers about linking to us.

For our main keyword, we were at number one in google, but are gradually slipping week by week back down, and are now at number 14! My boss would like to employ the services of a company who promise to get us links from thousands of websites, but I am a bit dubious from my memory of past posts in here:

1. a large number of backlinks at one time - bad or good?
2. will these thousands of links really hold much value?
3. basically should we go for it or not? can anyone recommend a reputable uk company? Or should I keep plodding away on my link building?

as people always say, easy come easy go, and a compnay offering thusands of backlinks sounds like a waste of money to me, but am I just being cynical?!

[dillon]

Hi Pagetta,
I'm sales manager for a UK company that provides the kind of service you seem to be looking for. Please forgive me for not giving more detail, but I'm not sure it's the right thing to 'tout services' here; so I'm not going to!

From the experience we have, better and more consistent results appear when we build links over a substantial amount of time - hope the pennie's worth helps. A large number of links at one time doesn't appear to be a bad thing; just that we have found more consistent placings by a steady flow over time. Have to say we aren't a fan of directories though, maybe it's just a personal thing, but we prefer the 'personal' approach.

Thousands of links? I have one client with 15,000 who beats their competitor with over 80,000!! Quality and other 'good SEO housekeeping' works well. Go for quality but don't be surprised with some advice that you may think is linking to competitors, worth listening to!

Wish I could be of more help, but I wouldn't mind betting your time is more prifitable for your company by outsourcing your link campaign.

Hope this helps,

Dillon

[Big LLC]

my two cents:
1.Alot of backlinks at a time: might be less powerful than building them up over time but it should still help quite a bit. I'd be more concerned about the quality of the links.

2. will they hold much value - depends on who they backlink from; backlinking from random sites, even if they have some pagerank, are not high quality links. Will you be able to control the anchor text used in the link? That will help.

3. it's a shot in the dark, quite honestly. Who's to say that these links will even be there a year or six months from now? I'd personally be a bit skeptical about it but it all depends on how much you have to pay these guys for the backlinks. Obviously there are probably good companies and bad ones out there but this smells a bit like "submit your site to 8,000 directories for $59.99!", which i'm sure just drives tons and tons of traffic to sites.

Might be worth checking out the competition and seeing where their backlinks come from and why they are getting ahead of you. It also might be worth updating your site's pages; google does (supposedly) degrade sites over time that have stale content. Of course, as you know... everyone's just guessing here... have you tried a sitemap? :)

[pagetta]

cheers guys, yeah I am a bit skeptical as I think it is the '80000 links for $59.99' type thing! I just don't see how they would have any value - google wouldn't value them, as I can't see them being 80,000 quality links. They wouldn't bring us any traffic either.

As for anchor text, the other week I changed my sig here so it contained our main keyword, and having over 200 links with the same anchor text bombed us out of google within a week, I changed the sig and am now back on page 2 (the jagger update is not being kind!) So I guess 80,000 links with the same anchor text would not be good for us either.

I will have to do some more research on the services offered by the company my boss has seen, but I personally believe that a link structure that develops organically as a result of successful business and web mastering is much more valuable than links in a load of backwater directories.