Choosing a Link Building Package for Your Business: 5 Things to Keep in Mind

Choosing a link-building package for your business is similar to picking an all-inclusive accommodation.

Sure, you’ll have breakfast, lunch, and dinner included in the package at a much lower price.

But will you like the offer, or will you have to roam around for better meals?

You must choose correctly if you want to avoid the same thing happening with your SEO link-building packages.

This article discloses five tips to remember when analyzing a link-building agency, with plenty of examples to help you understand better.

And as always, we’ll disclose our personal experience to make it worth your while.

‍TL;DR

• Choosing a link-building package is crucial for SEO success, like picking an all-inclusive vacation.
• Link-building packages typically include link prospecting, link building, and link monitoring services.
• Pros of link-building packages: convenience, cost-efficiency, and faster campaign execution.
• Cons: potential inclusion of unnecessary services, low-quality agencies may provide spammy links.

Tip 1: Ensure your agency uses white-hat techniques for building links to avoid Google penalties.

• White-hat methods include creating quality content, HARO link-building, broken-link building, and building linkable assets.

Tip 2: Request link samples to evaluate quality and relevance.

• Analyze website authority and niche relevance for sample links.

Tip 3: Consult with professionals within the agency to determine the types and quantity of links you need.

• Consider the link-building strategy's stage in the sales funnel.

Tip 4: High-quality links come at a cost but provide better ROI.

• Factors affecting link-building prices include link quality, industry competitiveness, and agency expertise.

Tip 5: Be realistic about link-building results, as it may take months to see substantial improvements.

• Link-building is a crucial part of SEO, but it's essential to avoid low-quality services.
• A reputable link building agency focuses on long-term strategies following Google's guidelines.
• Invest in a link-building package that aligns with your business goals and ensures steady growth.

‍What Is a Link Building Package?

An effective link-building strategy is the engine of increased website visibility and ranking.

The keyword, of course, is “effective.”

The best NYC link-building agencies and international SEO companies include everything you need at an affordable price.

They also sport quality links obtained through white-hat techniques.

These packages include several services:

• Link prospecting: Sourcing relevant link opportunities. The agency will have to find quality websites willing to include your content links.
• Link building: This stage of the process involves getting the actual contextual links. Your agency may create valuable pieces of content that become linkable assets and reach out to the relevant site owners and managers found in the previous step.
• Link monitoring: The agency will keep track of the link-building campaign to ensure the included links offer value and actually stay live on target websites. Good monitoring software includes SEOMonitor, Ahrefs, SEMRush, and others.

Pros and Cons of Buying Link Building Packages

Let’s delve straight into it with the advantages and disadvantages of link-building packages:

PROS

• You get a flat fee instead of having to negotiate for different services and pay for additional link-building tools.
• Choosing a link-building service saves you hours of work. If you’re sourcing all your link-building needs to one agency, you won’t have to do anything by yourself or look for other professionals.
• Communicating with just one other agency is seamless. That means your campaign can unravel faster.
• It’s more affordable than buying single links.

CONS

• You may have to contend with some services you don’t actually need for the sake of a larger package.
• And more importantly, low-value agencies and freelancers produce low-quality links. So, don’t settle for grey or black-hat links just for the sake of a lower price.

Tip 1: Ensure Your Agency Discloses HOW They Build Links

You must understand how your agency builds links because you need white-hat links posted on reputable websites.

An agency that gets you black-hat links sets off Google’s alarm, which will have no remorse to downgrade your website into oblivion.

Aka, the second or even the third page of results.

• White hat techniques take a lot of work and involve producing relevant content for the audience. However, these methods build genuine outreach.
• Black-hat methods are spammy and cheap. Sometimes, they may not even use real websites.

White-hat backlinks are acquired by:

• Asking your house content team to create quality blog posts
• Using HARO link-building, aka responding to journalists so that they can cite you as a valuable source
• Doing broken-link building, which means finding broken links on relevant websites and offering your resources as valuable replacements
• Building linkable assets, aka awesome content and tools other websites are happy to link to.

White-label link building may take longer – which it should because building value for your audience is not something everyone can do.

From our experience at Blue Things, white-hat link building is like erecting a strong foundation for a house that you will have for years.

Our inBeat case study shows how we helped this influencer marketing platform reach 300k visitors/month from a previous 500:

• We got 100+ links through relationship link-building: We identified low-hanging keywords with mid-funnel / bottom-funnel intent. Then, we created authority and relevance around these pages.
• We had over 30 links through HARO: Being quoted as experts increased people’s trust and organic traffic. As a consequence, inBeat’s Domain Authority increased as well.
• We built an array of free tools: These have high-traffic potential and increase organic traffic. Since inBeat’s tools are also high-quality, the website’s reputation has increased significantly. Besides, Google understands better what the website is about.

Here’s just one part of the tools you can find on inBeat’s website:

So, what black-label link-building services should you steer clear of?

• Buying irrelevant links: Beware, Google will penalize you for using link farms and PBNs.
• Automating link generation: Sending impersonal, spammy-looking e-mails to other website owners to ask them for links.
• Spammy comments: Unlike HARO, comments that are there purely for the links are irrelevant and don’t help the audience whatsoever.
• Linking to your homepage: Again, this is not relevant. You should instead link to assets such as free tools, extensive guides, or statistics that bring value to your audience.
• Creating duplicate content for multiple pages: Google becomes confused about which page it can rank for your website.

Insider Tip Time: Cheat Sheet with questions to ask potential agencies

1. How do you acquire links?
2. Do you use white-label link building?
3. Do you work with real websites?
4. What type of links do you like to get for your customers?
5. How do you evaluate these links to ensure they’re high-quality?
6. Do you have any case studies with link profiles you have built?
7. How do you get information on the current link-building trends to gain quality links?

That brings us to the next step.

Tip 2: Ask For Link Samples

You need these link samples to review the quality of the placements.

Here are the steps:

1. Ask for link samples: Don’t take no for an answer.
2. Analyze the websites they point you to by reputation: Use Ahrefs to look up that website’s authority score. High-authority websites rank better on Google, so they have more organic traffic. And people are more likely to click your links in return.

3. Analyze the niche relevance: Ensure the websites where their sample links are posted are relevant. Niche relevance increases the chances of your link being clicked on. And it also shows Google what your website is about. As such, your website will rank high for users’ intent, and your authority will increase.

Want to see some of the links we’ve built for our customers?

• Whatagraph: Now at DR76
• Monday.com: Now at DR88
• Mention.com: Now at DR 83

Here’s another neat example from the famous Ahrefs posting in the also famous Search Engine Journal.

The article is called “Free SEO Tools To Help You Dominate Your Competition As A Beginner SEO,” and you can notice that the first three links point to the Ahrefs website:

Most other links on this webpage also point to their website.

At first glance, the article seems to be pushing spammy links because it doesn’t analyze different tools critically.

However, people who open this article want to learn about SEO tools for beginners.

And Ahrefs helps them with very practical advice.

Lesson learned: Don’t demonize link quantity just because link quality is technically the better indicator of long-term success. You can include more links to your website if they bring value to the readers.

And that brings us to a new point:

Tip 3: Consult With A Professional On What Kind Of Links You Need

You need to consult a professional to understand the links you need.

Your agency should gauge these links in terms of quality and quantity, depending on the results you want to achieve.

Besides, link-building packages offer different types of links.

You need a package that:

• Is large enough for your needs, so it doesn’t provide too few links.
• Includes different types of inbound links to build awareness of your website and, therefore, organic traffic. As you get more and more visitors, your SEO improves.

Pro tip: Ideally, the professional you are consulting works within the agency.

How do you know if you can trust them?

• Research that agency, looking at their reviews and reputation. Is it a popular link-building company? Do its SEO link-building services get plenty of good reviews?
• Analyze their customer service to ensure they’re sharp and efficient.

Let’s review another example (we promise we’re not building links for the Search Engine Journal):

Roger Montti wrote an article for them that got 115 shares and 267 reads in just one day (at the time of this writing).

Roger is a search marketer, and it could have been easy for him to introduce some links to his other blog posts in this article.

But Roger's link-building process doesn't seem to include this tactic - at least not in this case.

The article is very in-depth and cites only specific tools or SEJ articles.

That’s the hook:

Roger attracts potential customers’ attention by building his reputation and authority without spammy techniques. And interested prospects can easily find Roger’s website by clicking on his name.

Remember: Sometimes, you don’t need to include links pointing to your website in the body of a specific article. You can build your reputation by sharing your relevant experience on relevant websites in your business. If you're new to business, bolster your online presence with an IAM resilience platform, offering backups and flexible recovery options.

Insider tip: This strategy works amazingly well for the bottom of the sales funnel.

Why? Because only very interested prospects will take the time to scroll back to the author’s name, click on their website, and reach out to them.

People who do this are almost halfway convinced.

If they also contact you, they are as good as converted.

Remember: Some strategies may require more links per month; others focus on quality to drive referral traffic.

That’s why you should work with a professional link-building agency.

Tip 4: Be Aware That High-Quality Links Cost Money

You can get links for $10 on Fiverr, but these are not the link packages you want to get.

A high-quality SEO agency for SaaS or B2B businesses like Blue Things may cost a bit more, but we bring you specific advantages:

• With us, you pay for what you get. And that's a high-quality link-building service.
• We provide link-building opportunities in authoritative websites with Domain Ratings (DR) between 50 and 90+.
• You get do-follow links.
• We use white-hat link-building tactics that follow Google’s guidelines and aim for long-term results.
• Our strategies are scalable.

And think of the ROI.

Our client, Jake @Content Allies increased his revenue by $2,000,000 from quality backlinks. Cheaper links couldn't have done that. Here is his testimonial:

What is the typical link-building price in the industry?

A high-quality, efficient link-building campaign that generates results costs $1,000 to $10,000 per month.

These prices depend on multiple factors, though:

• Just a handful of powerful links cost more than a hundred low-quality ones.
• Links cost more if you are in a highly competitive industry such as SaaS. However, your ROI will also be on par if your agency builds a top-notch campaign.
• The type of links you need affects the price. For example, editorial links are more expensive than others because editorial placement helps build your reputation.
• The agency’s reputation and expertise will increase the overall price of your link-building campaign.

Insider Tip: Cheat Sheet to pick the right agency

1. What is included in their backlink services? 
2. Does this package include good value for me?
3. What are its competitors’ prices and features?
4. What return on investment am I looking at?
5. Do I get a guaranteed number of links per month or link quality?
6. Do you offer monthly link monitoring?

Tip 5: Be Realistic About The Results You Want To Achieve

It is our experience that it can take months to see durable results from link building, and that’s provided you know which pages to build links to.

The first results appear within two to four weeks, though.

Of course, each link-building campaign has a specific timeline according to your business goals.

The factors affecting this turnaround time include:

• The package size
• The number of links
• The link quality
• Campaign complexity

However, it is better to take your time and aim for the results that can flourish your business.

This long-term strategy helped us get Monday.com to DR88 and 351k organic traffic, while Whatagraph is now at DR76 with 104k organic search traffic.

Is Getting A Link-Building Package Worthwhile?

Link-building is a key part of your SEO strategy.

However, using iffy link techniques such as private blog networks (PBN) or buying links triggers Google.

Is it worth purchasing a low-quality link-building service?

The answer is no.

But if you work with a reputable backlink provider like Blue Things, you invest in your future.

Our strategies aim for the long-term, following Google’s guidelines.

You won’t just see a spike in your ROI after a week; you will see your business steadily flourishing.

Not sure if we can help?

‍Book a call with us to discuss your needs, potential strategies, and convenient timelines.