When to Outsource Link Building?

Link building is necessary when it comes to a website search engine optimization, yet it can be a very time-consuming task.

Have you ever considered to outsource your link building? Well, if you didn’t, it is something you should consider.

Allow me to share my story of link building outsourcing.

When I had a typical 9-to-5 job as a marketing director at SEMrush, we made a decision to get more links from the top resources in our segment. We ended up hiring an agency to help us build these links. The agency was charging us an outrageous $13K a month, but, unfortunately, the high price didn’t equal quality. They weren’t capable of writing anything meaningful, not to mention publishing their content on trustworthy industry blogs. What made things worse was the fact that I brought them on board.

Needless to say, we stopped working with this agency. We decided to give another one a try, thinking that this time luck would be on our side.

Well, we were wrong. Although the second agency charged us nearly three times less and promised premium quality work with superb links and stellar results, the outcome was disappointing, to say the least. We ended up getting links from irrelevant content published on sites that wrote about everything, from the ten best sex positions to the ultimate guide on cleaning your toilet.

As ridiculous as it may sound right now, back then, I didn’t feel amused. These two failed attempts at outsourcing link building left me convinced in two things: getting high-quality links is a job to be done internally, and outsourcing is simply pouring money down the drain.

Fast forward to now, and I can honestly tell you that my opinion on outsourcing has changed. Since these two unfortunate scenarios with outsourcing, I went from working for SEMrush to be a freelancer, and, when the amount of work started to grow, I launched my own link building agency, Digital Olympus. As I gained more experience in this field, I started to realize why our attempts at outsourcing failed so miserably.

At that time, I didn’t know the ropes of link acquisition. We weren’t thinking ahead to establish strict requirements to prevent us from getting links from low-quality sites. Thus, as I went through trial and error, I gathered some unique insights about the pros and cons of link building outsourcing. Today, I’d like to share these insights with you so you can better understand which option is the right one for you — to hire an agency or an in-house link builder.

When is Outsourcing the Right Choice?

Here’s my perspective as the owner of a link building agency.

The majority of our clients come to us because they don’t have the time or resources to set up a decent link building process by themselves. Most of the time, their current focus is shifted towards some other business goals, but they still understand the value of links and have some pages that are trying to rank well on Google.

Usually, our ideal client knows what kinds of pages they want to boost via links, and they understand how SEO works. In most cases, they have an SEO team that has a lack of resources to step into link building, so they’re looking for someone who could help them get some juicy links.

So, at the end of the day, our clients pay for our knowledge and experience. But there are also other reasons why companies may choose to outsource link building to an agency as opposed to hiring an in-house specialist.

Why should You Link Building Consider Outsourcing?

1) If hiring an experienced link builder is too expensive

2) If you need to get links straight away

3) If you need help educating your team on how to build links the right way

4) If you want links that would take you ages to acquire by yourself

5) If you need to scale your current link building efforts

When is Outsourcing Not the Best Option?

1) You’re looking for digital PR and consider it link building.

2) You don’t have a solid SEO strategy and you just want to build some links.

3) You have very strict requirements and an agency can’t hit that mark.

4) You expect to receive referral traffic from links that an agency will be building for you.

5) You’re too busy to communicate your feedback to the agency.

6) You don’t have a sufficient budget.

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