Carol over at BabyChaleco asked the question “I would love to know if businesses need to hire a separate Link expert (in addition to an SEO company), how to pick, and what the important factors are.” It’s a great question and I’ll do my best to answer it.
As with all things that are related to Link Development, your choices here depend on a lot of factors. I recently posted an article about how to evaluate a link development firm, but do you need to go the extra mile and hire a separate expert if you already have an SEO firm?
Let’s start with the SEO firm. You need to make sure a couple of important points are being addressed if your SEO firm is going to do you link development campaign. These include:
- Are they tying your link development efforts to your SEO efforts? Just “getting more links” isn’t enough. Are they targeting links with keyword-rich anchor text? Are they using your most important keywords?
- Are they giving you links to pages other than your home page? Deep links are extremely important because your link portfolio should be balanced. If all your links are going to your home page, you’re missing out on some valuable opportunities to hit keywords that are being optimized on deeper pages, not to mention traffic coming into these deep pages directly.
- Do they employ link development best practices? Things like varying your anchor text (if all your links have the same anchor text, you’re not going to get much in regards to keyword rankings. Not to mention it could send up red flags to Google about artificially inflating your links), varying the types of tactics used to generate links, evaluate current links for opportunities of improvement, and a slow but steady increase in incoming links.
- Do they tell you what they’re doing? If not, there could be a problem. Ask to see reports on what links they’ve built and check them out yourself. Are the links coming from quality sites? Are the sites that are linking to you relevant? Are they using a good spread of anchor text variations?
These are definitely the big factors. As a general rule, I recommend avoiding link development firms that promise “lots of directory submissions” but make no mention of the performance of how your top keywords will perform. Keep in mind that with link development, you get what you pay for. A bargain link development package or plan may not be all that it’s cracked up to be.
Now, let’s assume that the SEO firm you are using is not doing these great link development things and you decide to go with a link expert or link development firm to work on your site. Make sure the following items are in place before moving forward.
- Ensure that the SEO firm will “play nice” with your link expert. If the link expert recommends adding additional content your site and the SEO firm refuses to optimize it, you could have a problem. Of course, this extra work could cost you extra money, so be careful. Some SEO firms get a little ruffled when they’re told that their link development services aren’t cutting it, so tread lightly.
- Make sure that your SEO firm contact and your link expert have communication lines open. If your link expert is the “real deal” then they will want to know what’s happening on the SEO front, what recommendations have already been made, and what the long-term SEO strategy is.
- Be sure that the link development strategy and the SEO strategy are working together. This is vital to getting long-lasting, quality links to your site that complement your SEO and keyword optimization on your site.
When in doubt, do some research. Dig into your analytics a bit and the reporting from your SEO firm to see if you can figure out what’s happening. Ask your SEO firm to walk you through items that you are not fully comprehending. It’s your site. Make sure it’s going in the direction that you are comfortable with.
{ 1 comment }
Hey Angela,
This was a very helpful post. I plan to put your advice to use right away!
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