If you are responsible for your company’s bottom line then you care about the marketing too, and in todays world that must include online marketing. If that is the case then YOU NEED TO CARE about whether your website is ranking high for important terms or keyword phrases and consider if you are going to hire an Internet Marketing company for Link Building services. If this term is new to you or your are trying to figure out this Internet marketing stuff then let me explain what it is and why is it important.
What are Link Building Services?
Link building services help you build links on other people's sites that point back to your website. They are like digital referrals or popularity votes for your website and they are often called external links or anchor links. These services are offered by all kinds of companies, some good and some very bad.
Why are External Links important to Your Marketing?
These External Links are important to your internet marketing success for three reasons.
- The most important reason is that Google uses these links to help decide how it will rank you in its search engine. This is so important to its scoring method that it is in the top 5 out of 200 item check list. The more high quality links you have the more popular you appear to Google.
- The second most important reason is that external links can help bring you traffic to your website. Other than search engines these are your best sources of traffic for new potential customers.
- The third reason is that they help spread the word about your company and can increase your brand image if you’re careful about which sites to get them from.
All Link Building Services Are Not Good for Your Website or Your Brand
Not all link building services are ethical. Actually some experts are using the term link earning instead of link building to separate themselves and talk about higher quality links. We agree, but for the sake of this blog we will continue to talk about link building. Here is a great video that talks about the difference.
Some types of link building can actually hurt your website's rankings. In this day and age there are a lot of companies with link building services announcing how they can help you get to #1 on Google tomorrow if you hire them. They have very seductive promises and it's easy to feel like you are missing out if you don’t choose them. One of my clients hired such a company before they hired us because it sounded so good and he couldn’t believe it was that hard to do. That company got our client a lot of links and for a while it seemed fine. However, the links were unethical or "black hat" links, and became very expensive. Why? Because, Google noticed and penalized my client's website by taking them out of the top 10 pages of rankings. It was awful and my client was furious. Understandably! Why did this happen? It was because the links that he paid for came from websites that had really bad authority. Basically they were bad links from disreputable websites.
What is Website/Domain Authority and Why Does it Matter for Links?
Let’s think again of external links from other websites as people talking about you. The website authority is like the popularity score in high school. The website/domain authority score is from 0 to 100. The lower the score the less popular the site. It’s kind of like the difference betwen the popular kids talking about you or the drug addicts that cut school all the time talking about you. When the popular people talk about you, ie, links from high domain authority, then your reputation goes up. When just the drug addicts are talking about you your rep goes down. If none of them will talk about you then that’s just really sad.
It’s that simple. You want external links from good authority sites and "good" is a score of 40 or better.
So Why do You Want To Hire a Company that offers Link Building Services?
You want to hire a company because link building is hard work. Even with a good company you will have to do some of the work, but you will have them to guide you through the process. Only you know the details about your industry, and whatever company you hire to help with your internet marketing and link building services needs that expertise. That’s why we see this as a partnership that is evolving as the rules set by Google change also.
Final Tips on Choosing a Company and Staying in Touch with the Process
Try these things when trying to make a good decision choosing an Internet Marketing Company.
- Find a company that will answer your questions honestly. You may not understand everything but you want to feel like they are sincere and honest.
- I think you need to like them since you will need to work with them at least a little.
- Check their Domain Authority at http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/. Make sure that their Domain or Page Authority is above 30 or 40 - either one is preferred.
- If it sounds to good to be true it probably is. Most companies will give you less than 5 to 10 good links a month. If they offer more look closely and buyer beware.
I will say it again. If you care about your brand and your marketing then you need to care about internet marketing and building good quality external links to your website. Either you spend the time finding them yourself or hire a company that offers link building services for you. Good luck and give us a call if we can help you in this area at all.
