In Episode #427, Eric and Neil discuss if should you hire an agency for link building. Tune in to learn if it’s worth it to hire a great agency to do link building for you OR if you’re better off doing it in-house.
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 00:27 – Today’s topic: Should You Hire an Agency for Link Building?
- 00:33 – Neil ran an agency with link building in the past and Eric’s agency is currently handling link building
- 00:48 – Most people don’t have proper connections and use templates that don’t work
- 01:01 – “Links are a very dangerous thing”
- 01:12 – Link building is the same as doing outreach when it comes to sales
- 01:50 – Pitchbox is an SEO outreach tool; if you’re using it, it’s better to hire an agency
- 02:20 – If you’re looking for good links, find the right agency
- 02:24 – Ask for samples first to see if the links are good
- 02:32 – If you want to do it in-house, hire someone who knows the processes well
- 02:40 – If you decide to go with an agency, make sure that you’re not charged per link
- 02:53 – Make sure you’re paying a reasonable price
- 03:11 – Track reports regarding your link building
- 03:40 – Marketing School is giving away a 90-day free trial to Crazy Egg, which is a visual analytics tool
- 03:52 – Go to SingleGrain.com/giveaway to learn more about your FREE trial
- 03:58 – That’s it for today’s episode!
3 Key Points:
- Link building isn’t easy and will hurt your ranking if it’s not done right.
- Before committing to an agency, ask for samples of links to check if they are providing great links.
- If you’re going to do link building in-house, choose someone who knows the processes by heart.
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Full Transcript of The Episode
Speaker 1: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Siu.
Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Siu: And today we're going to talk about whether you should hire an agency for link building. This is funny because Neil actually ran an agency that helped with links before. We do link building as well as an agency. So Neil, what are your thoughts around this in general in 2017?
Neil Patel: If you're good at link building yourself and doing outreach, by all means do it in house. What I found is most people don't have the connections. They suck at outreach. They're using basic templates that aren't getting results. When they're building links, they're not familiar with how to optimize anchor text or they think that all your link anchor text should be too rich, which can actually hurt you, right? So links are a very dangerous thing even if you're not buying them. We don't recommend buying them. If you're doing them internally, you don't know how to do it right, it can actually hurt your ranking.
Eric Siu: Yeah, it's a very thankless job in general. The way I look at link building is it's the same thing as doing outreach when it comes to sales. The difference is you're not generating appointments that can lead into the bottom line. It's not as black and white as sales where, Okay I'm gonna set ten appointments. Then I'm gonna close 20% of them. Then I'm gonna hire this many SDR's. This many AE's and close deals. It's basically doing the outreach, you negotiating it, you have to get the article off, you get the link coming back. At the end of the day all you have to do, all you have to show is the link at the end of the day, what it's linking to and a domain authority.
What I'm trying to say is, If you have a well thought out outreach process, you're using a tool like PitchBox, for example, to organize everything. PitchBox is a SCL kind of outreach tool that organizes everything. You're probably better off hiring an agency that knows what they're doing. There are some out there that strictly focus on outreachers. Others that have a lot of relationships built over the years. For us we have lots of relationships. We've been doing this stuff since, the company's been around since 2009 so we have the network out there. At the same time, we will go out and get that article written with the links coming back. It's the same thing I say to other people. If you're looking for good links, find the right agencies. They are actually out there. You obviously want to vet the links too. Just ask for examples to see if the links are good before you make a big decision like this.
Neil Patel: It's up to you again if you want to do this or not. I recommend if you're gonna try to do it in house then make sure you hire someone full-time who's familiar with the process. If, on the other hand, you're gonna end up going with an agency, make sure you're not paying an arm and a leg per the link cause even though they're not buying them, a lot of them charge you per result. I do prefer doing that because you don't want to be paying someone for their time. Then they produce no links. Then you're just like, crap, I just wasted a shit load of money.
On the flip side, when you're paying them, you need to make sure it's a reasonable price. I typically pay per hour. I go to the other end in which I won't even pay per link. I'll just pay per hour that someone's working. I'll just analyze how efficient they are because I've found that to be the cheapest.
Eric Siu: At the end of the day, you have to make sure, just like with sales, with the link building, you have to be tracking whatever reports they have coming in. You have to be tracking if your traffic is actually going up at the end of the day. Sure you can track rankings, but what do you care about overall. You care about traffic and you care about revenues. Overall, I think it makes sense for the most part, for most people listening to this, you probably do want to go with a good agency. If you want to build it in-house, just make sure you have the right processes in place to really scale this thing out. Neil, anything else?
Neil Patel: That's it for my end.
Eric Siu: Great, so before we go, we have a special giveaway for you. This time we're changing it up. We're actually doing a 90-day free trial of Crazy 8, which is worth 300 bucks. We're giving it to everyone. So forget about the one-week thing. We're giving it to every single person. Just go to Singlegrain.com/giveaway to learn more and we will see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. Don't forget to rate and review so that we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow. Right here in Marketing School.
Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu
Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel.
Eric Siu: And today we're going to talk about whether you should hire an agency for link building. This is funny because Neil actually ran an agency that helped with links before. We do link building as well as an agency. So Neil, what are your thoughts around this in general in 2017?
Neil Patel: If you're good at link building yourself and doing outreach, by all means do it in house. What I found is most people don't have the connections. They suck at outreach. They're using basic templates that aren't getting results. When they're building links, they're not familiar with how to optimize anchor text or they think that all your link anchor text should be too rich, which can actually hurt you, right? So links are a very dangerous thing even if you're not buying them. We don't recommend buying them. If you're doing them internally, you don't know how to do it right, it can actually hurt your ranking.
Eric Siu: Yeah, it's a very thankless job in general. The way I look at link building is it's the same thing as doing outreach when it comes to sales. The difference is you're not generating appointments that can lead into the bottom line. It's not as black and white as sales where, Okay I'm gonna set ten appointments. Then I'm gonna close 20% of them. Then I'm gonna hire this many SDR's. This many AE's and close deals. It's basically doing the outreach, you negotiating it, you have to get the article off, you get the link coming back. At the end of the day all you have to do, all you have to show is the link at the end of the day, what it's linking to and a domain authority.
What I'm trying to say is, If you have a well thought out outreach process, you're using a tool like PitchBox, for example, to organize everything. PitchBox is a SCL kind of outreach tool that organizes everything. You're probably better off hiring an agency that knows what they're doing. There are some out there that strictly focus on outreachers. Others that have a lot of relationships built over the years. For us we have lots of relationships. We've been doing this stuff since, the company's been around since 2009 so we have the network out there. At the same time, we will go out and get that article written with the links coming back. It's the same thing I say to other people. If you're looking for good links, find the right agencies. They are actually out there. You obviously want to vet the links too. Just ask for examples to see if the links are good before you make a big decision like this.
Neil Patel: It's up to you again if you want to do this or not. I recommend if you're gonna try to do it in house then make sure you hire someone full-time who's familiar with the process. If, on the other hand, you're gonna end up going with an agency, make sure you're not paying an arm and a leg per the link cause even though they're not buying them, a lot of them charge you per result. I do prefer doing that because you don't want to be paying someone for their time. Then they produce no links. Then you're just like, crap, I just wasted a shit load of money.
On the flip side, when you're paying them, you need to make sure it's a reasonable price. I typically pay per hour. I go to the other end in which I won't even pay per link. I'll just pay per hour that someone's working. I'll just analyze how efficient they are because I've found that to be the cheapest.
Eric Siu: At the end of the day, you have to make sure, just like with sales, with the link building, you have to be tracking whatever reports they have coming in. You have to be tracking if your traffic is actually going up at the end of the day. Sure you can track rankings, but what do you care about overall. You care about traffic and you care about revenues. Overall, I think it makes sense for the most part, for most people listening to this, you probably do want to go with a good agency. If you want to build it in-house, just make sure you have the right processes in place to really scale this thing out. Neil, anything else?
Neil Patel: That's it for my end.
Eric Siu: Great, so before we go, we have a special giveaway for you. This time we're changing it up. We're actually doing a 90-day free trial of Crazy 8, which is worth 300 bucks. We're giving it to everyone. So forget about the one-week thing. We're giving it to every single person. Just go to Singlegrain.com/giveaway to learn more and we will see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. Don't forget to rate and review so that we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow. Right here in Marketing School.
