Advice on finding a link monkey - link builder - link hunter?

[joewood3]

What is the best way to find a company to build links for you?

I am not looking for a commercial response, but am interested in feedback on how others may have found good link building companies.

[limitup]

You might want to consider just hiring someone and having it done in-house. With the inexpensive commercial services I can almost guarantee that the work is going to be done offshore, by people whose first language is not English. I've found that this doesn't work well in my niche, because it just doesn't come across the way I want for my site. It may not matter to you. We've also found that prospecting for affiliates and links via telephone versus just email has increased our results at least 500%. You can't do that with an inexpensive offshore "link monkey" service ...

[tahiti]

I am looking into the same problem as well. So far i haven't hire any 'link-monkey' yet but i feel that looking for trustable people around you might be the best approache as you can deal with it face to face.

I rather go throught the hassles to teach a link-beginer and will not look for link professionals/companies out there as i often hear bad experience about it, ie. bad link partners, sneaky method in digging out money form your pockets ...and things like that.

[harleyx]

If you understand the process of running a proper link campaign, head over to your local high school's computer classes and ask the teacher if he knows of any enthusiastic computer students with good grammar skills that might want a summer job learning a real trade skill not related to deep fryers.

[jeffb]

I'll answer your question from a different direction. I have clients with very visible sites that get tons of link exchange requests, many of them from "professional" link brokers.

It's gotten so that I immediately become skeptical the moment I see a request submitted from an email address that looks like a link broker (especially overseas ones). 90% of such links are pure junk - way off topic or on pages that ensure that the link partner never gets a worthwhile link in return.

I ignore or decline almost all requests I get from link brokers. Most of the ones I receive merely give their clients a black eye. I can't imagine that they get any webmasters to accept their requests except for those who are so blind as to accept any link exchange in the futile hope that numbers alone will benefit them.

So if you want to pay good money to (MAYBE) get some off-topic, low-quality links, hire a link broker. Personally, I'd rather train a high school or college student eager to learn a little something about web promotion than pay about the same to outsource the job to someone who's going to take a shotgun approach, irritate a lot of other webmasters, and present me with a bunch of worthless links for my money.

I apologize in advance to any reputable link brokers reading this. If you care enough about your business to be on this forum, I assume you're one of the reputable ones who actually try to give your clients and their potential link partners quality service. I'm just pretty jaded by my experience with the bad ones, whom I've found to vastly outnumber the reputable ones.

[Crush]

I would say outsource unless you know what you are doing. Years ago before we got good at links I hired a Nigerian student to look for links manually. He got frustrated and so did I. Looking for links all day long is a stupid task and people often leave unless you pay them well then you are back to square one. The key is if you do get sonmeone inhouse is get some tools and some good link software that makes there task more automated. On topic links, off topic links, they are all good if you have a good mix.

[sugarrae]

Hiring a link developer can come down to training IME. Link building in and of itself isn't hard - get sites to link to you using X anchor. Finding someone who can think outside the box on ways to obtain those links aside from exchanges is not always so easy. If you can direct that person with how to obtain links, as well encouraging them to use that training to be able to think for themselves about new ways to obtain links, you can end up with some pretty decent link development staff in house.

[jeffb]

Also, if your site has a subject that lends itself to informational articles, you might want to consider writing some to submit to article syndication sites. If your articles are useful, other sites will pick them up and you'll get incoming one-way links to your site from the "About the Author" blurb at the end of the article. That way you don't have to depend as much on reciprocal links as your only way of receiving incoming links.

[jonnyzone]

I would just post something at a nearby school and see what happens...

[edited by: martinibuster at 4:05 pm (utc) on May 25, 2005]
[edit reason] tos#3 [/edit]

[neuron]

What is the best way to find a company to build links for you?

Show up at PubCon 8 in New Orleans next month. Go to the bar and ask if anyone knows anyone that can get you lots of links. Ask other people you meet during the day the same thing between sessions. If you end up getting introduced to the same link builder repeatedly, it's a good bet you have found the one you are looking for.

Not all link buiders are bad guys. Some have been in the business for a while, and are flush with repeating clients. Sometimes there is just no substitute for being there in person, this is one of those times.

[Lee_Wilde]

Hi, interesting thread. Apologies in advance if this is a really dumb newbie question, but I've found many "Link Exchange" services on Google. Aren't they any good?

[shri]

>> If you end up getting introduced to the same link builder repeatedly, it's a good bet you have found the one you are looking for.

Or one to avoid, given that he is probably also dealing with your competition. ;)

[Crush]

yeah, guys that worked for us now work for the comp and they got all our nasty little secrets. That sucks!