Best turn key practice with budget for link building project

[Whitey]

What would folks consider the best generalised turnkey [en.wikipedia.org...] project plan that has worked for them, to build links on an ongoing basis. And how is that broken down, say over, months 1 thru 6, to give a snapshot, in terms of the brief, skills, relative % dollars and where the techniques will be applied.

The focus of the question is on link acquisition and optimisation of links and content for links, and assumes that sites have a sufficiently competitive value proposition to be linked to on it's current site, amongst an audience with average to good reputation, and quality websites.

The other assumption is that the marketing department of the site owners, provide a brief on the ambit of the target audience, spelling out the value proposition and where they can be researched and identified online . They can be communicated with by phone and email, and might not often follow through with commitments to link - so good quality follow may be required.

The other assumption is that the links will given freely, and not necessarily contain popularised anchor text, rather more natural links.

One thing, the plan must respect the building of reputation amongst it's target. Complaints are a big thumbs down, if received by the site-owner.

And Google's apparent new policies are a big thing to respect also.

Scenarios may be different, so let's play with an e-commerce site that sells widgets in a popular vertical and try a starting point, that a site owner could adapt to, and let's say an initial budget of $1000 to prove concept, then $5000 that could scale up organically, if required , during the initial phase.

[martinibuster]

The focus of the question is on link acquisition and optimisation of links and content for links...

I've never recommended optimizing links, ever.

Best practice maybe depends on your risk tolerance.

Conservative equals free link outreach mixed with select article outreach. No anchor text optimization at all.

Less conservative, well, everything else?

[Robert Charlton]

martinibuster essentially sums it up....

Conservative equals free link outreach mixed with select article outreach. No anchor text optimization at all.

I tend toward this more conservative side on link building... generally train clients to do it themselves with adult supervision, or to have someone I trust train clients. Major problems are clients who've read a few SEO articles or link builders who think in old school keyword->keyword style of linking... and who believe that more is better. The rate of turnover among the help that small clients pull in to do their link building can be discouraging.

"Turnkey" models that are good are extremely hard to find. Those that charge by the link are inherently flawed, as the pressures and motivation to increase backlink volume end up encouraging bad linking practices. Backlink sources, eg, grow skewed toward easy sources, not toward identifying undiscovered partner sites within a niche or related niches. Quality will always get compromised in volume-based models.

Link builders who specialize in a niche are frequently cookie-cutter, drawing from same sources as they use to link to your competitors. Quality and imagination tend not to be high among this group. Often, these link building companies also build sites in these same niches.

The other assumption is that the marketing department of the site owners, provide a brief on the ambit of the target audience, spelling out the value proposition and where they can be researched and identified online.

Alas... this is what I find myself training marketing departments to do... generally not the other way around. Often it takes careful listening during an orientation phase followed by pulling teeth. Sometimes it takes search research presented to clients to get them to begin thinking along productive lines. But yes, business owners must participate in the process.