Dominating the Google search rankings for your most competitive keywords is a huge piece of the success puzzle when it comes to business today.
Figuring out how to recognize a good link building agency to help you capture – and hold – those top spots in the rankings can be more challenging than most expect. You have to look for professionals with skills that align with your goals, have a proven track record of success, and are open and transparent with their reporting and lines of communication.
Given this quick guide, we run through (almost) everything you need to know about finding the best link-building agency to help you shoot up the Google rankings without sacrificing your long-term success strategies along the way. Let’s get right to it!
Strategies and Tactics Aligned with Your Goals
Straight out of the gate, you need to be thinking about what you hope to achieve with the help of this link-building agency. It’s (usually) not enough to just say you want “better SEO results”.
There’s no way to track, measure, or optimize strategies or tactics designed to get you that kind of goal. It’s just too nebulous. Instead, you want to get concrete about what you hope to achieve with your link-building efforts.
What keywords do you want to rank highly for?
What kind of authority and influence do you want to get from these higher ranks?
What kind of traffic are you looking to attract?
Do you want that traffic to be for lead generation or do you want to make sales right then and there?
These are the kinds of things you need to be thinking about.
Past Content and Deliverables That You Can Verify
Next, you need to look for link-building agencies that have passed results you can independently verify all on your own.
Anyone (and we mean anyone) can say that they are the best link-building agency around, especially if they don’t even have to prove that they are able to pull off what they promise.
Seek out link-building agencies that eagerly link you to the content they’ve created to generate links as well as connect you with clients that can tell you exactly how well these services worked in the past.
Clear Red Lines with Black Hat SEO Tactics
Though you can enjoy some immediate success with a lot of black hats SEO tactics these days (especially if you know how to leverage opportunities as they come along), a lot of these approaches are more than dodgy – and can get you punished by Google later down the line.
Avoid SEO link builders that are going to even flirt with the black hat kind of approach.
The last thing you want to have to happen is to put in hard work to build your ranks, generate a flood of targeted traffic, and then see all of that disappear in an instant just because a less than ethical link builder pulled some shady stuff and got you crushed by a Google hammer.
Regular Reporting You Can Independently Confirm
Another thing to look for in a link-building agency worth working with is that they offer regular reporting (detailed analytics, really) that you have open and transparent access to.
Everything that these SEO professionals do for you should be quantified somehow.
You should be able to see the impact these efforts have on your traffic in your metrics and analytics, and you should be able to tell whether or not a course correction is necessary – or if you need to pour gasoline on a red-hot successful link-building campaign.
Without this kind of “link building GPS” you’ll never know for sure whether or not your link builders are helping, hurting, or just sort of soaking up time, energy, and resources from your business that could have been better invested elsewhere.
Open and Consistent Lines of Communication
Lastly, it’s always a good idea to work with link builders (or any professionals, for that matter) that have open and consistent lines of communication.
Good communication is a sign of good organization, but it’s also a sign of good leadership and a perspective on behalf of your link builders that they see themselves as partners in this journey and not just subcontractors.
Flaky or inconsistent communication is a major red flag.
Closing Thoughts
All in all, so long as you leverage the tips and tricks included above finding the right link-building agency shouldn’t be all that challenging.
You’ll want to do your due diligence. You’ll want to research your options. And you’ll want to interview multiple agencies before you sign on the dotted line.
But as long as the agency you choose checks all the boxes we highlighted above you should be good to go!
