Forum Moderators: martinibuster
One of the routes we came across in several books and online reading was to outsource our linking program to India. Does anyone have any experience or information that I can use to make my decision? Whatever you can offer I would greatly appreciate.
However i'm staying away from India (I live in the US). There are plenty of people in the USA capable of doing this and enough of our jobs are going overseas already.
But I STILL receive on average 3 to 5 link swap emails every day, and it's painfully obvious they were sent from non-native speaking countries "please to link with site to rank yes?"
If these people would take one dang second to look at my site they'd see I'm not a linking prospect for them.
So, if they don't even bother to look at the sites they contact, and if they send incomprehensible email, all that happens is linking gets a bad rap, when it's actually morons who don't know what they are doing.
Email link requests work if you do them right. I've obtained at least 25 links this week for some <snip> content, using nothing but email to request those links.
I'm sorry to be so passionate, but it really angers me when my industry gets a bad name because of idiots
with email bots. To spam me of all people with a link request email is so dumb it's funny.
Eric
[edited by: engine at 1:47 am (utc) on June 23, 2005]
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i agree, i've been spammed plenty by non-native speaking countries link builders but at the same time there has to be some sort of reputable outsourcing in some countries, such as India. I get spammed just as much by American SEO sites that have no idea what my site name is when i reply back.
I'm just trying to render any kind of information for both sides to make an intelligent decision. Price is always a factor but i will not put my sites reputation online due to spam or lack of reciprocation and use of proper English. I am mostly trying to hear of experiences or companies used in the past to help my decision process.
[edited by: engine at 1:48 am (utc) on June 23, 2005]
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[edited by: engine at 1:49 am (utc) on June 23, 2005]
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You'all know I've been building links since cavemen walked the earth
I didn't know that. But then again, I've never heard of you either.
Outsourcing linking can help, however, it's important that a clear plan/strategy and expectations are agreed before commencing.
It does pay to have a native speaking link hunter so that they fully understand the nature of the sites in question.
If the business offering the linking service cannot meet the expectations, move on and find another.
Caveat emptor!
Here's a technique I've used for outsourcing of link dev.
If a client asks me about outsourcing link building, I first ask them if they live in a town that has a university. Most do.
Tell them to offer a paid internship to a grad student in the college of communication, or library science, or bus admin, for one semester, 10 hours per week. Or call it a practicum and don't pay them, but the quality you'll get if you don't pay will rival that you find in India.
Once the client hires the right intern, I give the intern a couple hours of intense training via phone and IM, and provide some tracking tools and a good pep-talk :) Most college kids understand linking immediately, innately. They've literally grown up with the web. Most 22 year-olds had personal web pages at Geocities 7 years ago when they were 15.
I know this works becasue I've done it at least 25 times over the past ten years (that's TEN), and I have yet to see it NOT work, if it's set in motion properly early on.
Side benefits:
You're a hero to the University and to the department where your student came from, as you just provided a real-world paid experience for them.
You can issue a press release locally telling people how you just launched an Internet marketing internship program with the University of whatever.
If the student doesn't do good work, it's not the end of the world, because there's a time limit of one semester to the internship. If they do great work, simply renew the internship, or heck, hire them outright.
ew - now aka braincloud
[edited by: martinibuster at 4:56 pm (utc) on June 27, 2005]
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For the second team I broke the project down. I mined 3000 sites and let them screen them/collect email addresses. We just started the contacting part of the campaign and in the last two days they've collected 2 pr 5 links and about 30 PR4/PR3 50 PR 2. Granted... they probably wouldnt of done it without guidance. If these people just knew how to use Arelis and Seo Elite, they have the potential of doing really well on their own.
I suggest breaking the project down and outsourcing cheap. Be sure to explain in great detail what you are looking for. Make sure you hold their hand or look over their shoulder on the first campaign.
[edited by: martinibuster at 4:51 pm (utc) on June 27, 2005]
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His initial efforts did have a bit of a language problem. I've spent quite a bit of time working with him and giving him the exact language I want him to use. I also get copies of every email he sends out and the replies. He's not perfect, still sends out the occasional poorly worded e-mail, but all in all I would say it's working out pretty well. He's aquired quite a few good links and seems to have a good understanding now of the kind of sites to go after.
It has been a lot of work to get there though.
None could figure out what to do after hours of training and chatting. And the laziness factor was remarkable. I went out of my way to find people who wouldn't engage in link schemes.
I've decided the only way to go is with someone local who I can meet face-to-face and really see that they are connecting with the task at hand.
it has to be a planned process if you ever wanna go for outsourcing your link building.
for it is your website that we are talking, which with one wrong move can get banned sine die...
Last week we introduced a bonus for the amount of links people get. Productivity increased 200%. Now people do not go for smoke breaks, toliet breaks, food breaks.....heh. You can control the amount of links that you get to your sites just need a financial incentive.
And incentivizing by the link increases productivity but greatly increases the tomfoolery that could be done.
I don't have a problem outsourcing. I do it for tech and design work. But link development has been a bigger problem. I wouldn't have believed it until I tried it.
