Why Link Building Strategies Should Focus On High Quality Over Massive Quantity

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! For only $100 per month, we will build you 500 links! That’s 20 cents per link! Google will love your eCommerce business and you’ll make oodles of cash from the Internet while sipping a fruity cocktail on a beach.

Oh, boy.

I remember those days. I remember never, not once, touching a deal like that with a 1,000 yard stick.

And good thing. Just yesterday, Google shut down another link building network. That’s two so far this year (that we know about).

If you’ve ever considered buying links through Fiverr, or some other network, or wanted to follow some ‘guru’s’ strategies on link wheels, listen up! You’re putting your business at risk!

Businesses can thrive or die by the love of Google. If you are ever considering a strategy that intentionally misleads or goes against Google’s TOS, you are putting your business in danger. This is not some ‘run for the hills’ warning. This happens day in and day out.

What are High Quality Link Building Strategies

We receive about 4-5 inquiries per week to hire us for our link building services. Inevitably, one of them requests a proposal for how much 500 links per month will cost. We rarely hear from them again after explaining that we don’t price our link building packages based on number of links and that they should run for the hills from any SEO company that does.

As a boutique SEO consulting company, Brighter Vision’ offers customized strategies, tailored specifically to your business’ needs.

This, my friends, is hard work.

Acquiring one-way, high quality links from reputable bloggers & news outlets is no easy task. You gotta be creative. You gotta create highly sociable content that can go viral in a moment’s notice. You gotta appeal to people’s egos.

Here are two examples of high quality link building techniques that have resulted in a massive boost in traffic and revenue for our clients:

• Link Building with Badges
• Getting High PR Backlinks from Clubs & Organizations
  • Special note: Wanna guess what a top search query is to this page? ‘Buying High PR Backlinks’… Here’s another hint: If buying your way to the top of Google was a successful strategy, everyone would be doing it (well, I guess PPC does that, but it’s sorta different 😉 )

These are far from the only strategies we employ to acquire high quality links. But they are two we’ve shared with you so you can understand our methodology, and what sets Brighter Vision apart.

How Do I Know If My SEO Company Is Building Me Good Links?

OK. If you’ve made it this far, hopefully by now you understand that lots of links from directories, articles & other black holes of the Internet are bad… But what about GOOD links? What are those?

Here are 5 ways to ensure your SEO company is building you good links.

1. Look at your Analytics data. Links that send you traffic that converts and traffic that engages in your site generally means that the links are of high quality. — Warning Sign: If you don’t know what traffic is converting, that means that your SEO company isn’t sending you reports, or hasn’t set up Goals in your Analytics. Both of which are bad, bad signs.
2. Ask for a report of all links built each month. — Warning Sign: If your SEO company tells you that they cannot give you a report of links built each month, that’s a bad, bad sign (A business associate of mine hired a different SEO company as we weren’t taking any new clients… That company literally told him that they have proprietary software to build links for him and that it’s physically impossible to report on every link **sigh**).
3. Ask to see a list of who they are marketing content to. In order to acquire links, you need great content and you need to market it well. — Warning Sign: If your SEO company isn’t developing and/or marketing content, and you’re paying them to link build for you, then you’re being sold snake oil.
4. Ask for a list of directories they will be submitting your website to… Not all directories are bad. In fact, getting a few, high quality directory links can be very beneficial. — Warning Sign: If your SEO company is submitting your business to every directory website out there, you’re in trouble.
5. Use a site like ahrefs, RavenTools, or Moz to monitor your inbound links. Let’s face it: Sadly, there are unscrupulous SEO consultants. The stories are out there of businesses that have hired SEO companies to build links for them and those SEO companies go out and hire freelancers from India or the Philippines to generate a massive influx of links. Link building campaigns that acquire a massive quantity of low-quality links can be effective, but the results are short-term and you’re very exposed to an algorithmic or manual penalty. — Warning Sign: If you see a massive influx of low quality links pointing to your site, fire your SEO immediately.

What to Do If An SEO Company Built You Shitty Links

Don’t worry: All is not lost.

If you still have a budget for SEO, then hire a kick ass SEO company to clean up the last company’s mess and start acquiring high quality links for you.

If you don’t, use a tool like RavenTools to scrape in all your inbound links. Then use the Google Link Disavow tool to disavow the crappy ones your SEO company built. Finally, file a resubmission request and explain EVERYTHING.

If you’d like to learn more about how Brighter Vision can help your business attract qualified customers via the Internet, please contact us today.

About Perry Rosenbloom

Perry Rosenbloom is the Founder of Brighter Vision, the worldwide leader in custom therapist website design. His connection to therapy and therapists runs deep: His mother-in-law owns a private practice in Jacksonville, FL, his father-in-law is in recovery and just received his 30 year chip, his Uncle (who he never met) died at a very young age due to drug use, and the heroin epidemic has hit his hometown very hard. With so many connections to therapy and therapists, he is immensely proud to be able to help support them in their work and enable them to be successful business owners.