Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Deciding On A Link Building Service

By Dan Duvano

Search engine marketing or SEO is a complex process, but a big part of it is link building. This is often referred to as off page optimization and includes a large number of different activities.

You can conduct all the different link building activities yourself, but this is generally too time consuming for most peoples tastes, so eventually you'll need to engage a link building service.

Here are several helpful tips that will help you out when hiring link building services.

Tip #1 - Make Sure they Provide Linking Diversity

A key element of effective link building is to make it very natural in appearance. This means you need to have links from a wide range of sources, not just a huge number of links all from one method. A good service will make use of a variety of tactics to provide link popularity.

Tip #2 - Are They Up On Recent Methods

Link building methods have changed over time and what worked well 5 years ago doesn't work so well today. You should read around on what are the most effective link building methods currently and check that your prospective service uses them.

Tip #3 - Links Should Be Ethical

Some link building services out there provide a less that moral service, and will happily spam other sites and directories. Technically you may get a large number of inbound links, but it wont do much for your site and will just be a waste of time and money.

Tip #4 - Find A Service Others Recommend

A good place to find out about link building services is to ask around on forums. Find out what services others have used, what they paid for them, what results they got, were they happy, are they still using them etc. This will give a very quick idea on the quality of a service.

Tip #5 - Get Testimonials

Take the time to get references from the company you are considering. Find out who they have worked for previously so you can get some references. Talk to the company about references and more than likely a good company will be able to supply them. Although they can't provide information about their clients, they can provide references.

Tip #6 - Who Links To The Linkers?

A credible link building service should obviously be well linked to itself. One of the biggest tests you can perform is to simply see how many people are linking to their site - if its a lot then they probably do a decent job.

Tip #7 - Compare Prices

Price isn't the be all and end all, as a cheap service may not be value for money if they links are poor, and a dear service may pay for itself in a month! Once you have other assessments of the service though, then you can compare pricing. Prices will vary widely, so the first question is probably, 'how much are you willing to pay?'

Locating a top link building service that you can work with is not easy, and is certainly worth doing thorough homework on as it involves your future prosperity. I hope these guides will aid you in this and make the whole process a little easier. - 16463

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