There are better ways to spend your marketing dollars than paying someone to just add random backlinks to your website. It’s just not a solid tactic when there are much more effective strategies available.
Put your money where you’ll get the most bang for your buck: Pay an expert to optimize your website, complete a thorough keyword and competitor analysis and then create high-quality content that is relevant to your business and audience.
As your professional digital marketing company helps you build brand awareness with a successful strategy, you may also become an industry expert which can then help increase website traffic.
Should You Buy SEO Backlinking?
We say no, your online marketing budget can be spent on other SEO tactics that produce better ROI.
Countless times we have spoken to clients who are using other SEO companies only to find out they are paying upwards of $500 – $1000 per month for back-link building services only. This is a lot of money, especially for a small business, to pay each month for someone to place links on other websites.
While this tactic does work, and I’ll explain a little lower in this blog post why, most SEO companies do not build quality backlinks. Their main goal is to meet the number of backlinks they promised to get each month. Now, the real question, are any of these websites where the links are being placed any good? Will they bring traffic? Did they generate a sale or lead?
Upon reviewing their Google Analytics reports and running backlink checks, the results from this type of SEO service are almost always lackluster. It was almost depressing to see the website traffic results from the attempts to build backlinks.
Example of a Really Bad Backlink
No questions asked, the person (or bot) who posted this comment containing a backlink on my website was grasping at straws.
I received a comment notification from my hobby website, which I neglect, in my inbox today. I like my little website, but I would NEVER recommend having someone pay a company to come and post a comment on my Korean chicken recipe. In all honesty, the page gets about 2 unique users per day, from Pinterest. Does that sound like a valuable backlink source? It’s not.
So here it is…. Someone, with great taste, felt my website was a worthy place to promote a restaurant in North Carolina. While I appreciate their effort, I’m the first to say it, my teeny tiny zombie genre website is a TERRIBLE place for a backlink.
Ps. I denied the comment.
Why You Should Look At Website Referral Stats in Google Analytics, Often
I like to backup what I say with data, screenshots and factual information. If I am advising a client or spending their advertising money online, there has to be a data trail to show how things are performing and whether its cost effective to pay for backlinking services.
Make sure to check the reports you are sent and then go to your own analytics to match up the information. You need to make sure you are not paying for services that do not produce results. If you do not know how to pull up this information in your Google Analytics, Stat Counter or other website traffic data tracking system, please ask for help. Whether from us or someone else who is knowledgeable about data analytics. It could end up saving you thousands of dollars every year that you could use on more effective online marketing tactics.
How To Get High Quality SEO Backlinks From Websites
Become the authority on your product or service topic by creating relevant content to educate and provide factual information to site visitors and consumers. By spending your online marketing budget on creating good quality content and also having it professionally optimized for organic search, you’ll achieve so much more from doing this than by using your money for backlink building.
#1: You’ll Establish Yourself As An Industry Expert in Organic Local Search Results
Why do people use Google? To find products, services, information, entertainment and places to visit. Now how do you get these people to your website if you provide the answers or solutions to their search engine search? By creating content pages that explain in detail the answer to their question or it provides the solution to their problem. In time, you’ll have tons of topic relevant content on your website which will bring visitors back and will provide new organic SERP and social media sharing opportunities. You may even get featured in a blog, video or on the local news.
#2: Your Website Will Gain Organic Traffic From New Target Keywords
Creating new content pages which provide a wealth of factual information typically do well in search engines if SEO best practices are kept in mind and expert level keyword research is done. Our philosophy is… the lure fishing lures you toss into the water, the more fish you are likely to catch. This theory also applies to websites. The more pages you have, the more opportunities you have for increasing visibility for niche keywords to bring in new users.
#3: Other Websites Will Link To Your Pages Because You Provide Relevant Information
Good quality content will bring traffic to your website. More than likely organic traffic at first but in due time you’ll start to see referral traffic to these pages from other websites. These backlinks are exactly what you need and want. Let them find you. Remember that YOU are the expert and they should ask you for a backlink to their website instead.
Still Want To Pay For Backlinks From Other Websites?
Increase the number of backlinks coming to your website by obtaining sponsorship link backs from local organizations and businesses or industry related websites. These can be obtained by becoming involved in the community by putting your backlink marketing budget into sponsoring events, school functions or non-profit foundations.
These are trusted pillars in the community who all have websites with good domain authority scores and page rankings in organic search. You can get a link on their official website pointing back to yours by sponsoring a local team or event, helping a charity by supporting their cause, or donating to a children’s group.
Also keep in mind that by sponsoring these types of events it will create additional online exposure. You can benefit from social media post sharing, local event notifications and be included in other online marketing efforts such as email blasts or print ads.
Spend your SEO marketing money doing something good for your community in return for a backlink.