How are SEO Companies getting backlinks for their client's sites today?

[Harry P]

I have looked around some micro sites and they are offering backlinks with cheap price, therefore I am curious as to what search engine optimisation companies are doing to get backlinks for their client's sites. Is guest posting the main strategy now, or are many SEO companies still purchasing links cheaply through marketplaces?

Your comments would be appreciated.

 

[MrT]

Guest posting still works, but I consider it more of a traffic generation strategy than an SEO strategy, but it could work.

Lately, I haven't even attempted to do much link building except to parasite sites or buffers. For my blog, I make sure to take part in every "expert roundup" possible which helps a bit and definitely brings traffic. Also, networking with other bloggers has been helpful.

People are still purchasing links. Most people never get anywhere with them.

The most popular strategy right now, is just building your own PBN.

For local SEO, backlinks have never been as powerful as it is for regular organic. There's a different algorithm for local SEO, and it's really about relevance with both the industry and location. Backlinks for local really shouldn't be the focus unless you're in an extremely competitive niche and city.

 

[PTTed]

I have looked around some micro sites and they are offering backlinks with cheap price, therefore I am curious as to what search engine optimisation companies are doing to get backlinks for their client's sites.

Your question begs for a very broad an inaccurate answer. It depends on the SEO company or SEO freelancer.

Depending on the person and how much they know and how much they charge they might range from pure white hat ultra-expensive link acquisition all the way to super cheap and useless forum profile links. The really cheap guys generally get cheap and easy junk links like the ones you can buy at places like Fiverr.com or SEOClerks.com and places like that. The really expensive guys can get links from high profile places like legit newspapers, magazines and true authority sites. And there are plenty of SEO people that fall somewhere in the middle and get their links from PBN's or specific places they know they can purchase them from or acquire them from. It totally depends on the person/company and what tactics they choose to use and what type of clients they go after.

 

[denvercardonations]

For local SEO, if backlinks don't work then what does? I know you can use things like Yelp and other business listings, but I have seen in the case of charity websites here in the Denver Metro area, that really starts to stink of spam. I am going to attach something else for a local keyword I have been researching, but the real scams come in Google Maps.....one of them is a straight up scam, the other is a straight up scam and the profile has a random parking lot in the middle of nowhere as a profile. I can't believe Google doesn't crack down on the Map scams, they bury the organic results. I can see advertising, that is normal, though someone on Digital Point made mention that the really crappy thing about Google search and advertising, is when ads were no longer in sidebars, further burying organic results.

 

[elcidofaguy]

I have looked around some micro sites and they are offering backlinks with cheap price, therefore I am curious as to what search engine optimisation companies are doing to get backlinks for their client's sites. Is guest posting the main strategy now, or are many SEO companies still purchasing links cheaply through marketplaces?

Your comments would be appreciated.

The ones that know what they are doing and getting results are either building PBNs through aquiring expired domains on a massive scale as well as buying links through trusted channels...

All that cr** about x number of links from web 2.0s, social bookmarks etc are from fakesters or though methods that does nothing to increase your rankings due to the fact those pages will be newly created and have zero link juice... The ones that state get x No. of PR links tend to be con artists whom place links on pages which have zero link juice...

 

[denvercardonations]

The problem I have had in finding a PBN to do link building on in the past, is that with all of the money I spent for the websites I was building for my photography, carefully creating the writeups, keyword research, etc.....all of a sudden the networks just went bye-bye. Albiet, I don't have much if any skill in identifying a good PBN from a bad one, are there extremely reliable resources on getting into a good one? The thing with the major social networks is that you know in 1 or 2 years they will probably be around.

 

[PTTed]

PTTed

If you are looking publicly for PBN's that you can buy links from, what you are actually finding are public blog networks - not really PBN's. The whole idea behind a PBN is the "private" part. If it is too public (meaning you found someone advertising it somewhere) then it is much more likely to get identified and whacked by Google. It's not that Google is going to necessarily see it just because it is advertised publicly. The more likely reason is that (if a person is advertising their PBN) then that link network is going to link out to too many client pages from too few domains thereby creating an easily detected footprint that Google can find using an algorithm. That is how PBN's get whacked. It is all about the footprint and how detectable they are.

If the PBN is truly private, then you can take measures to really hide it. And Google won't find it. The only way they will discover it at that point is if someone (a jealous competitor) takes the time to do in-depth link analysis and discovers the suspect links and then takes the time to report them to Google. Maybe and only maybe then will Google do anything about it.

Those link networks that are selling links publicly end up selling links to both experienced and inexperienced people. And the inexperienced people are the ones who will do the things that will get the link network identified. For example, an inexperienced person might try building all the links from that network to one page on their site thinking that they need that many links to get that page to rank. That ends up producing a pretty identifiable footprint. Or they get their site penalized somehow and then go and disavow all the links that came from that link network. When you get a handful of people all disavowing the same domains, that sends a signal to Google that "hey this might be a network".

That is the problem with public networks. Public networks are often times ran by people who don't know how to properly hide their network and they sell links to people who don't know how to best disguise a purchased link. That is a recipe for getting your network whacked.

If you really want to use an effective PBN, build it yourself. Start by building just one website as part of a future larger PBN. Then build another. Then build another.

 

[HCFGrizzly]

I have looked around some micro sites and they are offering backlinks with cheap price, therefore I am curious as to what search engine optimisation companies are doing to get backlinks for their client's sites. Is guest posting the main strategy now, or are many SEO companies still purchasing links cheaply through marketplaces?

Your comments would be appreciated.

As people said above me, link building methods vary depending on the price the company / freelancer is asking.
But for "backlinks with cheap price" as you ask, it probably safe to say that the majority of backlinks are obtained through spam. (forum posting, blog posting and all that useless cr*p)

 

[ericplotz1]

"Real SEO" varies vastly. Do you consider a real SEO company someone who handles $20k monthly clients, $1-5k monthly clients, or under $1k clients?

If you're talking clients under $1k, I won't touch em'. Can you rank competitively with $1k? Yes, but its gonna be Web 2.0s, high quality PBNs, content marketing, etc.... The low end type of stuff. Even then, its gonna take a while to rank in a competitive niche.

It's taking me years to obtain the connections I have and costs me money still. Thing is, the normal person can't even purchase links like the ones I get from certain publications. Think huffpost. In fact I can have a contextual article w/link for about $1k in huffpost. Legitimately.

If a person has less than $1k a month, wtf do you expect. Top quality links? It's extremely laughable when these low budget clients want the in and outs for nothing.