Outsource Link Building Guide – Where To Start

Where do you start with outsourcing your link building operations? 

Personally, I feel like the ‘operations’ classifier really sums up link building, and how much goes into the process. 

We speak to so many agencies and freelancers who introduce link building as their own service with all the intentions of scaling and servicing their clients alongside all of their other operations, but they quickly realise how time intensive link building can be (particularly as your team grows). 

However, many of the pain points that we hear when initially talking to the agencies that we work with is that they feel like choosing to outsource link building, or simply finding a supplier that they can trial with a smaller batch orders of links, is no mean feat. If you’ve been in the SEO industry for a while, then you’ll be no stranger to the unwelcome cold outreach emails from questionable backlink sellers, alongside trying to find outsource partners who align with how you choose to approach link building. 

For example, we introduced our pre-approval blogger outreach option because, before Complete White Label, our agency-side directors needed the option to pre-approve when building links to client sites. Some agencies aren’t concerned with this (which is also fine), whereas for others it’s pre-approval or nothing. 

All in all, it can be tough to find reputable, transparent link building partners who can work with your SEO team or business, whether you’re ordering two or two hundred backlinks per month. So, let’s take a look at some of the things you should look for when it comes to knowing where to turn with outsourcing your link building operations. 

8 Ways To Get Started With Outsourcing Your Link Building 

1. Have a link building strategy in place 

Due to the nature of how many of the outsource partners work, you may not find agencies or freelancers who will both help you to put a link building strategy together, and obtain backlinks for you. 

That’s not to say that you won’t find a business offering both, it’s just more common for productised agencies in particular to work just on the link fulfilment element, where the order comes after the link building strategy has been put together on the side of the client. 

For example, most of our orders are from agencies who understand the types of backlinks that they need, how many they need, and the timeframe to obtain them. We’re also not the type of agency to say no to questions, so if you’re looking to outsource your link building for the first time and have questions, then please contact us and we’ll do our best to answer them. 

The main advice here on the point of having a strategy in place is that you as the agencies or business owner are in control of the strategy from the outset. You understand your backlink requirements, and you know what ‘good’ looks like when it comes to achieving them.

Without this knowledge, you might find that every partner you approach has different thoughts around how is best to tackle your link building requirements inline with how they do things, so it makes your life easier when it comes to ordering because you can essentially test the same orders across several suppliers, because you know what you need to begin with. 

2. Define the metrics that will pass your quality checks (and how your outsource partner aligns with these)

This is really important, as you need to have authority and traffic minimums at the least, so that you have a baseline in which to compare quality against.

For example, our blogger outreach minimums are based on Ahrefs DR bands, with rigorous quality checks (minimum 1k traffic in Ahrefs and all the signs of being a ‘real’ website, not a link farm!): 

It’s also why more and more white label SEO agencies and resellers are providing pre-approval options for their clients, particularly around guest posts and the more productised types of backlinks. It’s because clients want transparency, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. 

You as the client need the option to disapprove any publishers who don’t align with your website or your client, or don’t meet the metrics or checks that you have internally.

Essentially, everything needs to be a perfect match inline with your metrics and checks, because it’s not just what you expect to see, it’s likely what your clients expect to see from their side as well. 

3. Decide on the types of  backlinks you want to acquire 

These days, link building isn’t just about ordering 1,000 guest posts and hoping for the best. Not that it ever was, but the landscape is changing and it’s more important than ever to understand how you’re positioning your website as an authority in its space. And it’s exactly the same for your clients too. 

It’s one of the reasons why we speak a lot to agencies about how they can integrate digital PR and journalist request link building into their current outreach processes, rather than simply relying on a singular link building approach. 

This could mean that you use one supplier for digital PR campaigns, one for journalist requests, one for niche edits/link inserts and one for blogger outreach, or you find a supplier who can do all of the above, and do it well. 

We find that the clients with the best results are those who obtain external authority from a variety of sources, not sticking to one approach and maxing out their budget because of the predictable results or number of links each month that their preferred approach provides.

For example, journalist request link building and digital PR is much less predictable in terms of number of backlinks per month than something like guest posts, but the link types are totally different. They’re usually national publications with branded links to the homepage of your website, and you don’t usually get much better than that. 

It’s important to understand whether you need this blended approach, and then research link building suppliers to see whether you need to split approaches across several agencies/businesses, or stick to one to cover all areas of your outreach requirements. 

4. Understand how scaling fits into the process 

If you’re looking at a small number of backlinks for a handful of clients, then working with freelancers closely on strategy and deliverables may make more sense than a larger agency who are just focusing on the deliverables side. 

For businesses requiring a large amount of backlinks and who already have a strategy in place, then it makes sense to go with whoever has the easiest ordering process, or the outsource partner who aligns best with your ways of working. 

5. Agency, freelancer or marketplace – Which one fits your requirements? 

Whichever approach you choose for outsourcing, it’s crucial that you don’t just think about your link building processes as they are now, but where they’re going to be in 12+ months time from a client perspective.

If you’re not looking to scale, then perhaps platforms like Upwork and Fiverr are enough to find quality freelancers, and work with them for the long-term. 

If you’re planning to scale from ten to a thousand backlinks per month, then familiarising yourself with productised services and putting together the strategy element to your link building may make more sense, as you’re then primed from the outset for scaling (and can avoid the headaches of having to change processes whilst also juggling scaling). 

Also think about aspects like account management and how easy your outsource partner is to contact. If it’s through a third-party platform, then it’s not as easy as picking up the phone or arranging a call with an account manager who works for the agency you’re using.

Then again, this might not be a concern to you, but it’s definitely something to be aware of if you have questions that need answering on behalf of your client. 

6. Have a ‘why’ behind outsourcing your link building 

This is so important, because if you don’t actually need to outsource and have the time and budget to either build an in-house team or to do link building yourself, then outsourcing may not make sense. 

It more than often does, purely based on the amount of time that link building can take away from other SEO tasks and business operations, but if you’re a startup with limited budget or a freelancer with enough time to dedicate to link building (and no plans to scale past a certain point), then understand the ‘why’ behind looking for an outsourced partner before going ahead. 

From what we’ve seen, the most common reasons for outsourcing link building is time, budget, lack of resource, and lack of knowledge specific to the changing landscape of what ‘good’ actually is from a backlink.

Essentially, business and agency owners who don’t have time to put into learning link building, or don’t have the budget or justification to hire an in-house team for clients on short-term contracts, but still have a need for links to be acquired each month. 

7. Get quotes or create a monthly budget 

The great thing about link building agencies and suppliers is that many of them have prices listed on their website, so you can start to put together costs without having to reach out to them beforehand. 

This is fantastic if you’re understand both link types and quantities, and it makes it simple to calculate your margins before you reach out to a potential outsourced partner to see if they’d be a good fit. 

8. Know what questions to ask your outsource partner 

Remember that this is your link building strategy for your clients or website, so come armed with questions for potential partners. 

For example, questions like: 

• What does a good backlink look like? 
• Do you have examples of backlinks you’ve obtained via blogger outreach/digital PR/niche inserts? 
• What are some ways you’d approach link building for ‘x’ niche? 
• My budget is ‘x’ – How do you recommend I allocate that across your link building strategies? 
• What are the types of checks you do to look at backlink quality? 
• What are the minimums you guarantee for backlinks e.g. traffic and DR minimums for blogger outreach campaigns versus digital PR campaigns? 

Feel free to take the above to a potential agency you want to use, however we’d also recommend that you have your own questions inline with your current link building operations, and what works for you currently. 

So, there we have it! Hopefully this has helped to look behind the curtain at the link building outsourcing world, and the types of things you need to be aware of when choosing a supplier to suit your requirements. 

Want to discuss how our white label link building services can work for you? We’d love to have a chat.

You can either drop us a message and our team will get back to you ASAP, or you can choose to order directly through our website if you already know exactly what you’re looking for.