Link Builders 101: The Crash Course for Link Builders

As we’ve mentioned countless times before, backlinks are highly valued by search engines. Now, as link builders, your job is to gather as many backlinks as you can for your clients. But this job isn’t that easy. It requires a lot of skills and patience for the link building campaign to succeed.

One thing about link building is that, with the right set of tools and skills, you can make the job easier. However, this will still not guarantee you the success you’re looking for. To get the links you desire, you have to trust the process and be patient with it.

Without further delay, let’s start the crash course for link builders!

In this article, you’ll find..

• What is Link Building?
• Why Is Link Building Important?
• Factors to Consider For Choosing a Link Building Agency
• The Roles and Responsibilities of a Link Builder
• Tools Necessary for Link Building
• Skills Needed from Link Builders
• Limitations of Link Builders
• How Much Should You Pay for Link Building?
• Bad Practices a Link Builder Must Avoid
• How to Find a Perfect Link Builder?
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Final Word

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of building hyperlinks from external sites that points towards your website. This is a division of SEO that helps you in building authority and increase the likelihood of your website ranking higher on SERP.

Why Is Link Building Important?

Link building is an integral part of SEO to build backlinks to your website. A backlink is a hyperlink from one webpage to another to increase the search engine rankings and get more traffic. Google views links as a vote of confidence when you earn links from other websites organically.

Link building strategies keep changing over the years, and the link builder needs to be updated with the best strategies and tools to rank the page and display it on the top of SERP results. Google does not encourage link farms or adding too many or irrelevant links for the sake of adding links.

You need to earn relevant backlinks from other websites and influencers in your niche. It is a daunting task if it is done manually and needs the assistance of tools. The link building tools can help you quickly find link building opportunities, assess each opportunity, and then reach out to the ones you want to pursue.

Backlinks pass on the link juice to the sites they are linking, and they are a major criterion for Google to determine the rank of the webpage.

Factors to Consider For Choosing a Link Building Agency

Link building agencies usually offers various services along with building backlinks. These additional services will help you in your backlink journey in finding the right links for your website. The following are some of the factors to consider before choosing a link building agency:

Risk Free Contracts

You should not feel forced to engage in the link building services with an agency. It should be in such a way that the clients have a complete understanding of the contracts to have a transparent relationship. The link building agency you choose must have a risk free contracts and need to give you the option to renew the contract only if you find them useful.

Tailor Made Strategy

When it comes to link building, you need to understand that there is no “one size that fits all”. There are no solid strategy that helps in boosting your traffic regardless of your business. You should get into business with a link building agency that understands this and offers a tailor-made strategy that completely suits your needs.

White Hat Link Building

Link building has always been a tricky business. Google penalizes any sites that indulges in link building strategy that comes under “black hat link building” strategies. If you link building agency indulges in any of these techniques, you need to stay away from them. Only work with agencies that makes use of white hat link building techniques for your backlinking efforts.

Result Oriented Plans

Most agencies typically work on building backlinks for your website and do not offer any other support. This will leave you clueless as to the results of your link building efforts. To have a good idea of your backlink profile and your results, you need to completely track and monitor your SEO metrics. A link building agency that aids you in this step is crucial for your success.

LinkDoctor is a white hat SEO link building agency with proven track record of building high-quality backlinks for business across various niches. Finding and leveraging a link building agency that adheres to all these factors can get quite challenging. Get on a call with us and get a free SEO audit for your website and boost your organic traffic through top-notch backlinks.

The Roles and Responsibilities of a Link Builder

Your primary role is to serve as a bridge between your client and the prospect. You’ll be the one to make the bridge, whether in the form of a guest post or niche edit. In short, you’ll be the one to build links for your client.

Along with this primary role comes the other roles you need to accomplish. These are:

• Creating a good link building strategy
• Tracking SEO metrics of target sites
• Tracking rankings of the client
• Organic Outreach

The roles you have to stand up for also come with responsibilities. Since you’re the one who’s building the links, you’re responsible for the backlink profile of your client. However, you are not solely responsible for the changes in the ranking of your client’s website. Many factors can affect that, and building links is just one of them.

READ MORE: Link Building Job Description

Tools Necessary for Link Building

We know how link building can be a tedious task. Some tools can be used by link builders to make the job easier. These tools will help your client find the best link that will make their sites rank higher on Google.

We’ll split the tools into two: SEO tools and outreach tools. This will make it easier for you to find the tools you need, depending on the situation.

SEO Tools

As we’ve mentioned in our previous article about the best link building software, the three major uses of these tools for link building are:

• For email outreach
• Finding new opportunities
• For competitor analysis

For the SEO tools, we’ll focus on the competitor analysis tools. These tools will help you craft a link building campaign that will work for your client. Here are the SEO tools that we think might help SEO enthusiasts and link builders alike:

1. Moz Link Explorer Tool
2. SEMRush Competitive Research Tool
3. Ahrefs Site Explorer Tool
4. CognitiveSEO
5. MajesticSEO

These 5 tools can help you analyze the competitors of your client and understand how they’re doing their link building campaigns. From there, you can draft your client’s campaign that will deliver more traffic and backlink to their site.

Outreach Tools

Now, we’ll look at the tools you can use to reach out to your prospect websites and talk to webmasters. In some tools, you can also see specific metrics for the website you’re reaching out to. This will help you produce more high-quality links for your client’s site.

1. PitchBox
2. BuzzStream
3. MailShake
4. Hunter.io

NOTE: Although Hunter.io is technically not an outreach tool, you can use this tool to find new opportunities online. You can find professional email addresses of new opportunities so you can talk to them personally.

Establishing direct contact with the webmaster is a smart step for link builders. This lets them know that they’re talking to a real person and not some kind of bot. It starts a professional relationship that can be beneficial for you, your client, and the webmaster.

Skills Needed from Link Builders

The following are some of the necessary skills that are expected from link builders to perform their tasks efficiently:

1. Familiarity with the Algorithms Used by Search Engines

Google Search has a set algorithm that determines whether a website will rank or not. This algorithm is ever-changing, and link builders have been trying to adapt every time a new update is released. That’s why, as link builders, we should be familiar with the algorithms that are currently in play.

Deep knowledge of SEO can aid in making an effective link building strategy. Once you know how the algorithms work, you can pattern your campaign and contact the right people for the right links.

2. Organic Outreach Capabilities

Outreach is not easy. It requires you to be creative in every email that you send. Site owners receive hundreds – even thousands – of emails every day containing the same dull templates from different companies.

This is where your creativity will come into play. You can use a template, but you have to spice it up and elevate it to make it work. You have to catch the attention of the receiver of the email for them to grant your link request.

Organic outreach involves contacting niche-related bloggers and offering them guest posts in exchange for a backlink. This usually works, but your articles should bring additional SEO value to their site. You have to produce interesting content for them to approve your submission and keep the backlink on their site.

3. Content Writing Skills

Content is king – that’s what (almost) everyone in the community thinks. Content marketing and guest post submissions are white hat link building techniques that bring high-quality and relevant links to a website. That’s why link builders should also be content marketers at the same time.

If you write high-quality content in exchange for a guest post, these are the benefits you can reap from your efforts:

• The webmaster will be inclined to accept your submission because it’s a relevant and engaging piece.
• If you use relevant keywords, the article will get engagement and organic traffic. This brings more value to the link you’ve added to an anchor text.
• If your submission brings organic traffic to the host’s website, it can also bring referral traffic to your client’s site.

However, it’s important to note that you have to write the content according to the webmaster’s requirements. You have to follow specific guidelines and write your piece like how they write their articles on their blog. This way, your article won’t appear promotional for the visitors when they publish it.

4. Link Prospecting

The last (but definitely not the least) skill that you need to acquire is the skill for link prospecting. This is a special skill that allows link builders to find new sites to link to. Link builders should be able to use link prospecting tools to find niche websites with good Domain Authority (DA) for their clients.

Relevance is one of the factors that Google considers when it comes to rankings. When prospecting for new sites to build links to, they have to be niche-related to your client’s site. You have to track these sites and check their link profile first if they are qualified before doing any outreach to them.

Limitations of a Link Builder

As link builders, we also have a limit to our capacity. Building links is only a part of the reason why, let’s say, your client’s website reached the top of the SERP. There are other factors in play, like SEO, web design, etc.

For example, a link builder is only responsible for the quality of the backlink they produce. You are not responsible if their link gets taken down due to an error or the personal choice of the webmaster. You have to explain your limitations to your clients so they won’t expect you to solve all their problems.

How Much Should You Pay for Link Building?

Link building pricing can vary from $100 to $1500 per link based on your industry.  You can ask for a valid answer to know why you are charged for the services. Generally, hourly-based pricing is followed by link building agencies. Hourly-based pricing is influenced by value. Using hour-based pricing doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be charged based on hours; rather, it is a baseline for how much time and expertise is invested in getting the needed results.

The total number of hours involved in the campaign to complete the deliverables, and the project, on the whole, is calculated, multiplied by the hourly rate. It helps clients understand the pricing structure and why they are charged that amount. Hourly-based model is the best for startup agencies as it is flexible and profitable to both the SEO agencies and the clients.

Hour-based pricing works for long-term and short-term clients as you can clearly demonstrate how many hours you have put in the effort, and you can easily upsell when you renew your order. It’s easy to raise the price in the new order, and you need to justify the reason in the new campaign. The structure of the pricing clearly conveys the reason behind the price shift.

Link building service is not just about links; it consists of content writing, SEO services, and building relationships with websites with high DA. Generally, a link building campaign would consist of building 3 to 5 backlinks for a client. Again, this is a very rough figure, and it changes from client to client and is based on the project.

Campaign setting, creating a blog and posting it as a guest blog or on your own websites, and finding link placements, comprise link building services. This is another model of pricing where you pay per link acquired, placed, and monitored.

Retainer-based pricing –  this model is not tied to the number of links you produce each month. You set a number of hours per month to acquire links. The process contains the following steps: prospecting, pitching, and managing links. A set of hours is kept aside to complete the process for each project.

Bad Practices a Link Builder Must Avoid

Link building is a systematic process and while you look at strategies that work, you must also be aware of certain bad practices that you must avoid. Though, Google does not penalize you, it certainly devalues the links if it was earned using one of the following methods mentioned below.  

Targeting Domain Authority Over Website Relevance

Though domain authority gives the score of how likely your website will appear on the search results, don’t just focus on getting links from sites with high domain authority while building links. In such cases, you will be able to get links from only limited websites, which would be too unnatural. 

Instead, build links from as many websites as you can. As long as it is from a relevant website of your niche, you can get links from such websites, irrespective of their domain authority.

Link-Worthy Content

Content plays a major role in link building as relevant, informative, and targeted content fetches you the desired result. Your content will only attract links if you are keen on quantity and quality. 

Instead

Research and find what your target audience is looking for and their interest, and cater to their needs. Your link building strategy must contain the following steps. 

(1)  Find the keyword that your competitors rank. This is known as competitor analysis.

(2) Create content that aligns with your business goals and answers your customer’s pain points. 

Invest in the Right Tools

When it comes to link-building, more than hard work, it’s smart work that will help you accomplish the task. 

Instead, invest in the right tools such as project management, content writing, SEO, and blogger outreach tools to make your efforts worthy.

No Internal Linking

Google finds newly created web pages through links. Internal linking helps Google find and index your page. Internal links send the Page Authority (PA) to the page to which it is linked to. 

Instead, when you have internal links you engage the audience when they click on your internal links, they stay on your website moving across and not jumping to any other website for an answer.

Ignoring Broken Links

Broken links reduce a website’s value as your visitors move away from your website increasing your bounce rates.

Instead a link building strategy is to find a broken link on your competitor’s website and ask them to replace their broken link with  a link from your website. This would add value to you as well as the other website.

Link Trading

It’s trading or bartering of links between two sites saying that if site A links to site B the site B also links to site A. This kind of link building builds more relationships like, site A links to site B and site B to site C and site C to site A. 

Google looks for relevancy between the linking sites. It’s good to have reciprocal links on your website, but if the favor is not returned by another participating site, Google devalues the link. 

Instead, grow your link building by creating content that others want to link. Go a step further and link to other sites and their resources voluntarily. They will return your favor by linking back to you.

How to Find the Perfect Link Builder?

Searching for the perfect link builder means that you have to place their company services under scrutiny. If you’re looking for a new addition to your team, you should start with their credentials and track record. Here’s a quick checklist to save your time:

• Do they have any SEO knowledge? If so, how elaborate?
• Can they operate online link building tools and do keyword research for your client?
• Were they able to write a high-quality guest post that’s informative and engaging for the host’s audience?
• Can they find new opportunities to build links? If so, rate the quality of the websites they found.

READ MORE: How to Find White Hat Link Building Services

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Word

Now that you’re equipped with the requirements, roles, and responsibilities for link builders, it’s time for you to scour the Internet to find backlink-worthy sites. Remember to practice white hat link building techniques to avoid roadblocks for you and your client. We hope that this crash course will help you become an esteemed link builder in your industry. Good luck!