Link Building Services

Before we kick things off, I just want to say that link building is tough.

I know, because my agency launched a link service itself back in 2019, and some campaigns (depending on the type of link building you’re doing) just don’t get traction.

In fact, according to a Conductor SEO survey, 41% of large companies consider link building to be the most difficult part of SEO.

When we launched our service, we were doing Shotgun Skyscraper link building, and whilst some of our clients got great results, many didn’t.

The conversion rate is super-low and it’s also highly dependent on the quality of the content assets you’re promoting, as well as niche.

That’s one of the reasons we canceled this service because we didn’t feel it was going to provide enough of an ROI for the vast majority of our clients.

As mentioned, many people struggle with link building, so it’s also important to point out that I kicked this test off during the Christmas holidays, as to really test each vendor’s metal.

Please do keep this in mind when reviewing the results.

Test Details

I had a rough budget of around $500 for each link vendor, which each vendor then agreed to refund upon completion of the test. Which they now have.

Below is a list of actual costs per vendor, and how many links they delivered.

NOTE: Each vendor was tackling different pages, and in some cases completely different sites, during this test, so you can definitely expect different results for each when it comes to movements. It’s important to factor in competition, number of referring domains to each, niche etc. Just keep all of this in mind when analysing the results from each vendor. The reasoning behind this being, if we were to send links to the same page, or site, that we wouldn’t really know what affected what and which links/vendors moved the needle. So, sending each to different sites/pages was the best way for us to conduct this test, I think. Let me know if you can think of a better way we could have handled this.

Anyway, let’s dive in.

I won’t be ranking the vendors in any particular order, but I will be going into detail on the entire experience, particularly with respect to relevance and what links actually moved the needle.

I was originally going to rank vendors and assign points to each, but have completely reconsidered this approach for a couple of good reasons.

1. The vendors delivered drastically different services, particularly with respect to the amount of links delivered for the $500 link budget, meaning I would not be comparing apples with apples. Due to the discrepancy in amount of links delivered, this would weight any rating based on individual links toward the vendors that delivered more links. Which, again, is unfair.
2. Some vendors targeted a single page and keyword, whilst others targeted multiple.
3. Some vendors targeted completely different sites.
4. Competition between terms and vendors was very different in some cases.

So, I completely scrapped the rating system I had originally developed.

Overall Experience

I have to say, I was pretty impressed with Authority Builders and their ABC Plus package.

The ordering process was easy and I received an immediate confirmation upon placing my order online.

It’s great being able to login to a dashboard and follow the progress of my order, too.

On top of this, Daryl, who works as Business Development Manager, provided a pretty nifty initial analysis and report of the site for the target keywords I provided during the order process, as well as an analysis of the competition.

Not something I was expecting, to be fair. But a pleasant surprise nonetheless.

I really liked the way they broke this analysis down, advising on the anchors, how many links we would need to beat the competitors (link gap) and the overall power of my domain vs. competitor link profiles.

Authority Builders were the only vendor to supply something of this nature and in this sort of detail.

I didn’t need to chase the guys at Authority Builders either, as the dashboard provided oversight, and they delivered all 4 links within 30 days.

Overall, an exceptional service.

Finally, their month 1 report was among the best.

Rather than a simple Google Sheet showing the placements, Authority Builders go into detail, with charts and graphs, and an explanation of the campaign’s performance.

Again, very impressive for a $500 link service. Something all vendors should take note of, from a customer experience point of view.

That said, it’s important to point out that I personally didn’t have to pay the $200 set up fee, so in reality, this service will set you back $700 initially.

One thing I should mention is that links are just one factor in determining the ranking of a page, and site, overall.

Many factors come into play, including (but not limited to):

• On-Page (Content)
• Technical
• UX & Engagement

Plus lots of other things.

With that said, let’s dive into the SERPs.

Competitors

Most competitors in the top 10 for this keyword didn’t have a huge amount of referring domains to their pages, below is a breakdown:

Early Results

Early results show a positive movement up for the targeted keyword (2.2k search volume) by 1 spot to position 11 on desktop, with no movement on mobile (already at position 9).

March Results

The current position on desktop for our targeted keyword is position 7, and position 5 on mobile. Which is pretty sweet 🙂

Further Considerations to Note

It’s important to note that we’ve been actively working on this site and publishing new content, as well as building our own links. This has to be taken into consideration when looking at movements.

A Link Building Tip from Matt Diggity

Appearing “natural” is the key to any link building campaign. A natural link profile not only keeps you out of penalty’s reach, but its more effective for rankings.

Use balanced anchor text ratios.
Send links to your entire website (not just your money pages)
Send plenty of links from new content vs updating old pages
… the list goes on.

Overall Experience

Whilst Marketing Signals didn’t have a dashboard or provide any initial site analysis, the experience was a good one.

I was kept up-to-date on the progress of my campaign, receiving initial order emails and notifications as links were placed.

I also received a nice report at the end of the campaign that gave me details on all my placements, as well as estimates on potential coverage and referral traffic.

Also, Marketing Signals had the second-fastest delivery time at just 19 days.

One of the things I was most impressed with was their attention to detail when it came to both article and site relevancy.

Whilst power is great, and certainly moves the needle, I’m a HUGE advocate of relevancy when it comes to building links.

The guys at Marketing Signals got that on-point.

Competitors (Keyword 1)

As you can see, some pretty decent competition in the SERPs for this term, including many with a good amount of referring domains to their pages. Below is a breakdown:

Competitors (Keyword 2)

A lot less competition on this term, many with few or zero links, also very few powerful domains. Below is a breakdown:

Competitors (Keyword 3)

Some powerful domains in this SERP, including Amazon, MSN, and some big niche-specific sites. However, most of them have very few links. Below is a breakdown:

Early Results

Early results were pretty nice, to be honest, and I think a large part of that came down to relevancy, although, competition also has to factor in.

On 2 of the pages we sent links to, each one had pretty decent positive movements up.

Desktop

• Keyword 1: From Position 28 to 11
• Keyword 2: From Position 29 to 21

Mobile

• Keyword 1: From 100+ to 9
• Keyword 2: From Position 26 to 19

For the final page, we were ranking quite well at position 8 from 18/19, but since around Jan 7th we dropped to position 77 on desktop and position 81 on mobile, frustratingly.

However, there have been several updates and changes to the algorithm since these links were delivered.

Despite that, we’re still doing great and the overall experience with Marketing Signals has been superb.

March Results

Unfortunately, keyword 1 has now dropped to position 18, with keyword 3 dropping to position 88.

However, keyword 2 has moved to position 9.

A Link Building Tip from Gareth Hoyle

At Marketing Signals, we have been in the link building business since 2006 using various different domain names – When you practice what you preach, it sometimes goes wrong!

Having weathered many a storm, we now focus on a core link building methodology with all work we do –

Real links from
Real sites with
Real traffic.

Yes, we still track and report out on metrics and good sites with an audience generally do have good metrics (in most niches). Nothing makes me sadder than the $250 MOZ API payment every month as some SEO still obsess over DA!

There are many sites out there with excellent metrics but terrible traffic. That is where the skill and SOP of your supply chain matter.

Knowing that your link provider is taking a managed approach to risk when building your links should be one of the primary due diligence activities you conduct prior to working with link suppliers long term.

Overall Experience

Unlike Authority Builders, there was no initial reporting on competitors or analysis of the domain we wanted links to.

Also, there was no end of month reporting via email.

That said, I had a great overall experience with Love to Link.

There were a few minor bugs here and there in their system, but Dan was super-responsive and got them fixed very quickly.

One thing, for me at least, is that I’d much prefer to give a vendor my domain, anchor text, and payment, and let them go ahead and source and place the links. Whilst some may prefer to look through a database and pick the individual sites they want placements on, I’d much rather let the vendor handle this process.

One thing I will say, Love to Link delivered all 3 links they acquired for me in the fastest time, at just 13 days. That’s pretty impressive.

The reporting and notification features available on their platform are also cool, though certain aspects of this process can be a little confusing.

For example, after choosing my sites, some sites rejected the placement, meaning I had to go in and change the sites.

If you end up choosing a site with a lower placement price, Love to Link will refund you the difference, and similarly, if you choose a site with a higher price, you’ll be charged the difference. The confusing thing was how the prices were displayed and how you had to compare the sites, using site IDs.

I ended up ordering 2 links from the exact same site because of this confusion.

The good thing is, when I told Dan about these shortcomings, he had his development team fix these issues immediately, in turn, making any future experience much more pleasing for you guys. 🙂

I really like the Love to Link website and administrative interface.

Competitors (Keyword 1)

Competition wise, other than Amazon at position 3, there’s not a huge amount of competition in this SERP, with many of the results having very few links to their pages. Also, the domains themselves are not hugely powerful. Below is a breakdown:

Competitors (Keyword 2)

Keyword two (a variation of keyword 1) had very similar competitor metrics. Below is a breakdown:

Early Results

With this vendor, we were targeting a 300 search volume money term, as well as it’s variation (very similar SERPs).

On desktop, we’ve gone from position 7 to position 1 and captured the featured snippet for the variation. Which is pretty sweet.

As of 9th Feb, unfortunately, we’ve gone from position 6 on mobile, to greater than position 100. But, this may be a bit of a Google dance.

Unfortunately, Google recently released an algorithm update that removed listings from the results if they had the featured snippet. 🙁

March Results

March results are looking good for this keyword.

We’re now position 3 on desktop and position 2 on mobile. 🙂

All in all, a great result.

A Link Building Tip from Dan Parker

Guest posting is still the most popular form of link building in 2020. It’s stayed popular for so long because when done correctly it works extremely well. It’s also a safe way to build links because it’s virtually impossible for Google to tell if the link has been naturally earned or not. The emphasis on all of this is doing things the right way. Here are my tips for safe and successful guest posting in 2020:

1. Don’t guest post on sites with very little or no traffic.

2. Optimize the article for on-page signals for your main keyword. (The keyword used in the article URL, meta title, h1 and content).

3. Make sure the article has a relevant image.

4. Mix up the article word count. (500-1000 words).

5. Don’t be afraid to sometimes link to authority sites in your niche within the article.

6. Analyze the top 5-7 competitor target URL’s to see how many links they have and importantly, what sort of anchor text they use BEFORE you decide on things like what anchor text to use.

7. Don’t get aggressive with keyword anchor text especially early on, it’s best to be less aggressive and then build up from there.

8. Use exact match anchor text sparingly and instead use close variations of the keyword.

9. Link to your homepage with branded anchor text as well as linking to your money pages.

10. Finally, try to blend in with the winning competition.

Overall Experience

Get Me Links has a quite nice administrative and monitoring interface for their link orders, as well as a pretty cool support and messaging service in their backend.

I really liked the messaging service and thought it was something all vendors should implement. Very similar to a ticketing system.

The ordering process was fairly straightforward and they kept me up-to-date on my order as it progressed.

Overall, a great experience, as usual.

NOTE: Gary and his team were right in the middle of a major company acquisition of DFY Links (who were originally part of this test) whilst this test was in progress and had to manage a HUGE amount of customer support queries and order fulfilment. Despite this, they still delivered 2 links for this test in the 30 day period, and on top of that, they also delivered a further 2 links from the DFY side of things, even though they were no longer part of this test. Kudos to Gary and the team

Competitors

Here, we were targeting a medium-competitive money term with some strong competition in the SERPs, including the likes of Amazon. Below is a breakdown:

Early Results

When we kicked off this test we were position 14 on desktop and position 13 on mobile for our primary keyword, which was 800 search volume.

The good news is, as expected with Gary’s links, is that we are now position 7 on desktop and position 3 on mobile.

A sterling effort and quality result,  I’m sure you’ll agree.

March Results

Since working with Gary and his team, we’ve since added a further 2 links of our own and we’ve now hit position 2 on both desktop and mobile.

Also, we’ve dropped into the top 3 for some great variations.

A Link Building Tip from Gary Wilson

Relevance is one of the biggest areas that we like to focus on at Get Me Links.

Through my own testing, I’m a great believer in making the on-page of your links match the on-page of the page that you’re linking to. This is why on all guest post products, we even allow you to pick keywords that will go in the guest post title to achieve better results across all of your links that you buy from us.

Overall Experience

The overall ordering experience from QOQ Links was great. Fairly straightforward, plus, like most of the vendors, they also have a backend system to log into and keep track of your order.

One great thing that the guys at QOQ also do, is push social signals to your links. This is a nice little extra and value-add, because this should help to get those links indexed ASAP.

Competitors (Keyword 1)

This was a fairly medium-competition keyword, with some very strong competition in the SERPs. It was also an informational term. Below is a breakdown:

Competitors (Keyword 2)

This was a variation of keyword 1 with very similar SERP competition and some big niche players. Below is a breakdown:

Early Results

For this test, we were targeting a 6,200 and 700 volume keyword. At the start of the test, we were position 14 on desktop and position 17 on mobile for our first keyword, and position 17 on desktop and position 17 on mobile for our second.

After the test, we’d hit position 9 on both mobile and desktop for our first keyword, and position 7 and 9 respectively for our second. 🙂 Nice!

Pretty damn good results if you ask me.

Also, QOQs relevance was very good, too.

March Results

Since working with QOQ, we’ve built a further 4 links to this page ourselves, and we’re now at position 7 on desktop and position 6 on mobile for our first keyword, and position 6 for both on our second. All thanks to that great combination of QOQ links and our own.

A Link Building Tip from Jason Morris

We have found from testing thousands of Backlinks that there are key ways to get the ultimate power sent to your target page, there is a definite co-occurrence factor. The co-occurrence is:

• Super relevance Backlinks
• Social signals
• Engagement and referring domains to your tier one links

And at QOQ LINKS we try our best to fulfill all those factors. After perfecting our processes and systems working on bespoke campaigns for large corporates and affiliates we are expanding to provide the same level of service to everyone.

Overall Experience

SEOButler’s ordering process and website are pretty slick.

I love the interface and backend.

The ordering process was fairly straightforward and hassle-free and I received an initial order email and full report upon completion.

Like some of the other vendors, it’s nice to have a backend admin interface to view the progress of orders and view previous ones.

NOTE: SEOButler don’t usually work in the niche we initially provided, but took on the job anyway, as part of this test. Despite this, they still managed to deliver within the 30 days, and in spite of the struggle to get placements, they did deliver. So, kudos to Jonathan and the team!

Competitors

Some strong competition in this SERP, with Amazon taking up positions 1 and 2. Other than the medium listing, most sites have very few links. Below is a breakdown:

Early Results

When we started with this test, we weren’t ranking for our target keyword (search volume 1,400) at all.

After the test, we were ranking in position 13 on desktop, and position 10 on mobile, which is pretty sweet. Clearly, these links have helped move the need.

March Results

Since our early results we’ve moved up again, this time to page 1 at position 10.

A Link Buying Tip from Jonathan Kiekbusch

When looking to outsource links, we always recommend either booking a call, or getting in touch via email.

The providers will have a really good idea of what they can and cannot fulfill, and may be able to point you in the right direction.

In some cases like with our brand, they may also be able to run custom campaigns and create custom packages for you. Since they have the full insight into both their database and their ability to do outreach, this may provide to be far more fruitful than “just” ordering blindly via the site.

Get in touch!!!

Overall Experience

I contacted Dan about the issues with the links and he made great efforts to rectify the situation for us. So kudos to Dan for sorting this out.

NOTE: This does happen occasionally, where websites take the placement, but later amend the article or remove the link. It’s unfortunate, but you should always expect some link loss over time. It’s just the nature of the beast.

Anyway, good on Dan for rectifying it, especially since I came to him about it long after the test had finished running.

The links Dan acquired, in the end, were in topically relevant posts, with good link positioning at the very top of the articles.

In the link report sheet Dan supplied, there are also a further 9 placements agreed, which we can acquire. It’s good that Dan provides these once a campaign is complete.

Dan initially delivered 3 links as part of this test, but ended on 2 at the time of publication.

We’re waiting on the 3rd placement.

Competitors

Some very strong competition in this SERP, with BIG niche players. Also, a decent amount of links between the top 2 positions.

Early Results

When we started with this test, we weren’t ranking for our target keyword (700 search volume) in the top 100.

After the test, we’d dropped into position 32 on mobile and position 36 on desktop.

March Results

Since the test, we’ve built an additional link ourselves and combined with the links Dan provided, have managed to move to position 12 on desktop and position 11 on mobile. 🙂

A Link Building Tip from Dan Ray

My link philosophy is quite simple, relevance first!

I’d rather take a link on a relevant site with shit metrics than an irrelevant one with good metrics. I would actually prefer to never look at metrics at all, but that’s just not the market that we work in.

The strategy is also fairly simple:

1. Have something useful, valuable, controversial, or unique, etc (this can include money if the client wants)
2. Create a list of targets whose audience will find your thing useful, valuable, controversial, or unique etc
3. Give it to them and ask them to share it with their audience if they think they’d like it
4. Follow up until they actually see it, within reason obviously

We do all of our link campaigns completely from scratch, no pre-built lists (although some sites will naturally come up in multiple campaigns), this ensures perfect relevance.

Then we approach the targets as actual humans, with a completely unique email (if required), written specifically for them, this takes a little longer than usual outreach campaigns, but I prefer to be efficient and get the most number of links from our list of targets rather than wasting them with a cookie-cutter template.

This is the same no matter how “good” a site is, this is how we get links on sites that most people can’t.

Bespoke, unique, campaigns for each client, smaller numbers of emails sent, a larger number of links placed, it might take a little longer but these are real links from real people on real sites.