The simple answer to this question is: It depends How much time should you devote to link building?!
Some of the variables to consider include:
Your focus on other marketing strategies. If SEO is your primary growth driver, link building should be at the top of your list. But if you use other strategies like PPC, you may want to limit link building to about 10% of your total marketing time.
Your link-building skills. If you’re new to link building, it will take longer to earn backlinks. Make sure you factor this reality into your planning.
Your access to tools. If you’re on a limited budget and can’t afford specialized link building tools like Norbert for outreach or SEOptimer for tracking, link building will take more time.
Your existing network. If you have a large network, you can occasionally ask for backlinks. If you have a smaller network and rely more on cold calling, the process will likely require more effort.
Your existing backlinks. Brand new websites generally require more effort to build links than established websites with already strong backlink profiles.
As a beginner in link building, you probably have very limited time and resources to invest. I’ve been there!
In this case, a good place to start is the 4-hour workweek approach :
Lesson 1: Research your market and competitors. Brainstorm content ideas.
Hours 2-3: Create and publish content on your website.
Lesson 4: Outreach for Links. With a little practice, you should be able to send an outreach email in about five minutes.
As you have more time and resources, or as you become more efficient, you can gradually increase your commitment to link building each week.
After all this, you may be wondering: Can I just hire someone else to do all this link building work for me?
Lesson 6: Can you outsource link building?
Yes, there are companies that can help amazon database you with link building. That’s the good news!
But before you dive in and start paying for a link building service, you need to exercise caution. If you end up with low-quality backlinks, you could actually damage your search engine rankings.
If you want to pursue outsourced link building , take the time to carefully evaluate potential providers by asking them these questions:
How long will the link building process take? If they offer instant backlinks or a guaranteed number of backlinks in a certain time, stay away. It’s impossible to make such promises if you’re doing link building the right way.
Can I see a case study of your link building? You’d like to know about the links you’ve acquired for your clients, as well as the rankings and traffic you’ve achieved.
What tools or software do you use? Article spinners, rewriters, and other automated tools are a big red flag.
How will you improve my brand through link building? It’s possible to use very aggressive methods to gain backlinks in the short term, but these efforts tend to damage your brand. You want to hear how and where the link building provider will incorporate your brand into their strategy.
How much do you charge? While it’s difficult to give hard and fast guidelines for pricing, I would suggest avoiding backlinks that cost less than $100 each. Very low prices likely indicate a service that’s “too good to be true.”
If your link building provider seems to be acquiring a lot of low-quality backlinks with warnings (e.g., low domain authority and high spam score), you need to ask them to change their approach.
If they refuse to change their approach, consider terminating the agreement. Attracting too many low-quality or spammy backlinks will only hurt your rankings and traffic in the long run.
Bonus: The Part of Ten
At the end of every “For Dummies” how personalization can improve search visibility book, you’ll find the author’s top 10 tips in a section called “The Part of Ten.”
So, with that in mind, I will leave you with my top 10 tips to continue your link building journey.
1. Get all the free backlinks you can
As a beginner in link building, usa lists you might feel completely overwhelmed by the entire process.
To help you stay focused, I recommend starting with some easy wins. Specifically, securing free Google backlinks from sites like YouTube and Google My Business.
Check out this post for more insights on how to get Google backlinks and this post for more free backlink ideas .