Everyone in SEO knows that Google is largely about links and even more so now about the quality of links. You can’t get a site to the number one spots without a good backlink profile. But what does that mean to you as a potential SEO client and customer as well?
Firstly, you have to ensure you firstly get a bit of an understanding of SEO before embarking on a campaign and jumping into a contract. Yes, it’s largely about links, but you also need to understand that quality content is massively important these days, too. You can hundreds and thousands of good quality, on theme and natural links, but if your site isn’t talking expertly about your product area or service you won’t be number one. Links and content are both key.
Content is an easier thing to do as you have more control over it. You can write content all day long if you are good with words, but how do you get links to a site? That isn’t as easy because you need to assess the quality of them.
What are links?
Links are quite simply objects that are linked to something or somewhere else. It’s quite a broad term but a link in SEO is an external site that links to your site from anchor text or images etc. Having a good backlink profile is vital for SEO so you need to make sure that your company is building high quality links, not lots and lots of links, however, otherwise it will have the opposite effect and look completely unnatural.
If you are also thinking about buying lots of similar or keyword type domains, setting up wordpress on them and linking to your main site: don’t. These links won’t hold any credibility. Instead, source good quality or find an SEO company who will do it for you.
Paired with this, you also need to make sure that the links are not just pointing to your site but a wide range of pages within it, and each page you are linking to has some good quality unique content on it to get the best from the SEO. If you an SEO company tells you – we will build 1000 links a month, alarm bells should be ringing!
You should opt for slower link building with higher quality links. This will make sure your site gets credibility over time and naturally grows stronger.
Automated Software
Some SEO companies, not all, will adopt a technique of creating their own or using another system of adding links on a automatic basis. So when you sign up for this type of service you could end up with 1000 links in one big go as you get added to the network of this automated SEO software.
So if you sign up to an SEO company and they don’t appear to be doing a lot of work 6 months down the line they could have just added you to their link network and done nothing from that point onwards. So be wary of this technique.
There are other techniques using automate SEO software that companies also adopt. Some companies build databases and software that, each time a new client comes onboard, they get put into the pipeline of this software. Then once a month flick a switch and you’ll get your site submitted to lots of different directories and sites in the hope of gaining anchor text, keyword focused links. This could be all the SEO company is doing. If they are, they don’t quite understand the practice of SEO and are potentially putting your site at risk from various Google Algorithm changes. So I must stress – be wary of this, don’t just assume the links will be okay because the company you are signing up to appear credible and reliable.
Make Sure…
When the company says – we will build so many links a month for you, be a little wary. Your question to them should be – can you show me these first, and how credible are they? If they say they can’t show you the links and they can’t really explain the quality, personally, then my advice would be to find another SEO service. Unless the SEO company can show you the work that is going into the site at any time then how can you assess the quality and the benefits?
Maybe they’ll send you a weekly report detailing the positions your site is at, or sometimes a company will even send you the traffic from Google Analytics as an SEO report, but that is it. How can you assess how much traffic is coming to the site just by looking at the chart? What you should be supplied with is an in-depth reporting tool or software that shows you the position movements, returned URL’s, links built, backlink profile and more.
If you get all of this, then the proof will be in the pudding because it is much clearer to see. If the work done is not shown then how can you assess the impact of it? It could be that other techniques you are doing is actually impacting the SEO more than the link building being done. So you need to be able to clearly identify what is being done and the effect it is having on the site: positive or negative.
Where Are The Quality Backlinks You Are Building
The big question to ask any SEO company, and that include us, is where are the quality links you have been building for me? Now, if you ask us we show you straight away through our bespoke, in-house built reporting tool. On the other hand, if we, or someone else can’t and have been using some automated SEO software to get you links, then it might be time to up-sticks and find another SEO company.
