Should You Use Backlink Builders?
My Honest Advice…
Backlinks are a very touchy area. They can skyrocket your traffic if done right, and they can sink it with a penalty if done wrong. There is a lot of spam and black hat around link building as well, so understandably it’s confusing to know if you should consider backlink builders or not.
Well, for context a backlink builder is someone who will build you natural links from one website to your webpage to help boost your rankings.
There are also backlink builders which are essentially a website where webmasters can submit their sites for people to buy links from. These are called link farms and probably best to be avoided with. I’ll explain more below.
Anyway, I’m giving the run down on whether or not you should use backlink builders or avoid them. I’ll break down the difference in quality and explain a few things you should look for if you are looking to engage a backlink builder.
So, let’s get straight into it. Should you use backlink builders?
Quick summary:
Yes, But Make Sure They Are High Quality
It’s as simple as this: If the backlink builder creates high quality links, then you shouldn’t have an issue using them. However, if the backlink builder provides low quality links from farms and other link spam areas then you should try to avoid this at all costs.
Link building is technical and requires knowledge to get it right. The frustrating thing with links is that they can seriously improve your websites rankings, or seriously damage them. If you don’t do your link building right, you can get caught with a penalty and end up worse off.
So back to using backlink builders, the honest answer is that you should check through a list of areas to see whether or not they are offering quality links. I’ve got a more in-depth guide that can help you go through some of those areas here.
It’s not really an area you want to risk because of the damage you can cause. So, make sure if you are using a backlink builder, they only create quality links.
What makes a link high quality?
Usually I check a few areas to determine the quality of a link. I’ve shared them down below:
Volume of search traffic to the page of target
The amount of organic search traffic the page you are getting a link from carries will be a significant metric in the quality of the link. If the webpage isn’t getting any traffic, then the link won’t carry as much importance.
Volume of search traffic to the website
If the website has a large volume of organic search traffic, I think this is a good indication that they are in favour with Google and therefore getting a link from this site would indicate quality. If their site had previous traffic but has dropped out, then I’d avoid as this signals a penalty or users don’t like their content.
Relevancy of the page content
The relevance of the content on the page to your website or webpage. If the content talks about the same type of thing, or provides more context around the topic you are talking about then this would signal a high quality link.
Relevancy of the website content (whole)
Also the same applies for the website as a whole. If you are getting a link from a website that is only about your topic, then this will carry more weight than another blog that has no niche and talks about everything. E.g. Car mechanic. If you get a link from another website that is a mechanic, vs getting a link from a blog that talks about travel, cars, lifestyle etc.
Anchor text content
The optimisation of your anchor text will play a significant part in the quality of your link. Also the context of the paragraph around the anchor text needs to make sense and be relevant as well. Good anchor text will get users to take action and click the link. You can optimise your keywords by looking at your competition anchor text.
Domain rating of the website
Although a 3rd party metric that Google doesn’t actually use, it’s a good indication of the website's link profile. However, be careful as some sites with the higher domain rating might not indicate the quality of their link. Generally, the higher the DR the better.
Page rank of the target page
The number of external links pointing towards the page will calculate its page rank. The more quality links, the higher the page rank will be. If you are getting a link from a page with a lot of links, then this can be classed as a high quality link as it will be passing juice through to you.
Number of external links in the content
Ideally you want to be getting a link from a piece of content that doesn’t have too many links in the content as the juice will be split between all of the links, including the internal ones. Also, if you are obviously getting a link from someone else's guest post, then it might come across as quite unnatural.
Backlink Builders Can Help Speed Up Your Link Building
One of the biggest benefits of using backlink builders is that they speed up your link building process. For example, when I build links, I will create up to 5 campaigns at a time. This means I’m building links for at least 5 articles during 1 given time.
This can really speed up the process of link building and there is no end there. I don’t have to stop at 5, I just use this so it’s manageable for me. You could scale this up to 50 if you wanted too, meaning you would have links coming in all of the time.
Not only this, but backlink builders have extensive experience. If you are trying to build links by yourself, it can be seriously time consuming. Trust me, I’ve been there and spent years mastering the craft.
For most business owners, time is money. If you don’t have the time to learn how to build links then I would suggest looking towards using backlink builders as a quick solution so you can spend time scaling your business.
Avoid Paying By The Hour for Backlink Builders
This is quite an important one for me. Avoid paying by the hour for backlink builders. This isn’t a good way of doing things, and actually it’s more risky if you think about it.
Maybe you could get 1 link in an hour, maybe you could get 0 or maybe you could get 5. You don’t know, it’s more risky and you could end up with nothing.
Instead, I’d suggest looking at using backlink builders that charge when they have landed the link. This way it’s risk free and you are not paying for all the wasted time setting up campaigns or for them to outreach and things like this.
High quality backlink builders will only charge per link and have a good price range. Most of the time links are extremely overpriced because they are being marked up twice. Once by the webmaster, then again by the backlink builder.
Instead, when I build links I will get them for free. Therefore, the mark up is only once and therefore links are cheaper and more natural. You’re only really paying for the tools and my time to do this.
It’s Better To Hire a Specialist For Better Quality Links
I would recommend hiring someone who is a specialist if you need to build high quality links. It’s like this, if you needed your garden landscaped you could attempt to bodge it yourself or you could hire a specialist landscaper who has extensive experience, lives and breathes landscaping and will do a really good job.
Most of the time, you’re going to get a way better service by hiring the specialist as they have a deep understanding of their skill. For example, there are so many aspects to link building. As a backlink builder, I need to know about the ever changing algorithms on Google to ensure I keep ahead.
You might find that if you do link building yourself, it might work for a small period but then it usually tends to drop off. Or you might end up getting a penalty. I have this a lot with clients. They usually come to me and say “oh we tried link building ourselves by stealing our competition links and now we’ve got a penalty”.
With a backlink builder, they will take into account the quality of the link, how to create a natural link profile and how they can effectively boost your rankings. I think it makes a big difference in terms of quality and speed by hiring a specialist.
Be Careful Buying Links From Sites Selling In Link Farms
There are heaps of tools around the web selling links. They will list a number of websites that are selling links and hope that you will buy them.
Avoid these at all costs. This will end you up with a penalty.
Think about it, how many people can just buy these links. It’s a clear violation of Google’s policies and they do say you will get penalised if you are caught up in link farms.
You are literally putting yourself right in the middle of link farms by purchasing these links. I wouldn’t go near these as they are actively selling links and probably have already suffered from penalties and site traffic damage.
Also, most websites will build spam links to these sites as well to boost the domain authority. This means they will be passing the juice of spam links through to your site as well, as part of their tier 2 links.
Let me also stress, if you look to engage a backlink builder and they send you a list of websites you can purchase links from, to me this is another no go. These are link farms, and will do more damage than good.
Backlink Builders Can Give You a Natural Link Profile
Natural link profiles are super important when it comes to link building. You do not want all of your links going to 1 single page, instead you want them naturally spread across your articles with more links going to your most important pages.
Then you can use an advanced internal link strategy to pass through your link juice across your site. Usually, without having a skilled backlink builder you may struggle to achieve this level of natural profiling.
Usually when I do my link building, as mentioned above I will create 5 campaigns so we can naturally build links across 5 different blog articles. We can then pass the juice through to our important pages and focus on these 5 to look natural.
We do not just focus on 1 page, because this may seem like we are just buying links and placing them on the pages we want to rank. Instead, we aim to create a natural profile with links across multiple pages.
You Can Automate Your Link Building By Using Backlink Builders
I think this is probably a huge factor for a lot of business or SEO agencies. Being able to automate a process makes it so much easier for you to focus on the things that matter in your business. By outsourcing to a backlink builder, you are essentially automating your link building processes.
This means you can scale up the number of clients you have, or get peace of mind knowing that this area is covered in your business.
Of course there are benefits to using backlink builders, and this is potentially the biggest one. If you know that each month you are going to be getting around 10-20+ new, high quality links to your website then you can relax and focus on a different area.
Very important to business owners and agency owners to consider. Automating your processes saves you time and money.
Conclusion
So over all, backlink builders are a big yes, but only if they are high quality. There is a lot of spam around this area so go very careful as it could make or break your website.
It’s actually better to have 0 links than a bunch of spammy ones. So consider that before you go to engage in any quick and easy link farms. Anything that seems too good to be true, it probably is.
I hope you feel more confident in using backlink builders now. It’s certainly a good way for businesses to outsource a very technical area of SEO. Because this requires someone with skill, it’s mostly affordable to outsource rather than hiring in house.
Either way, it’s going to save you time and money by hiring a backlink builder so I’d recommend giving it a go. You don’t know until you’ve tried it right?
Share with us your thoughts in the comments below!
