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boring-friday
- Original Poster
- #2
seo specialist will fiddle round with your website and ask/beg/pay for links, probably guest posts on related websites.
Problem with this is you have more chance of getting value for money if you're already a big company. Small changes to your website will make more of a difference. Then when they contact other websites they're more likely to want to link to you than if you're a startup.
Even if they're paying for links on big news websites, the writer is more likely to accept a bribe if you're already a big company, if he starts writing articles on too many small startups or affiliate sites he'll lose his job.
Link builder is self explanatory, he'll build links on free platforms,use bots to send links to those platforms to make them more powerful (tiered link building) and put articles/links on websites he already owns (private blog network) and if you've got a decent budget the same as the above also.
Either way its highly unlikely you'll ever get a return on your investment unless you learn how to do it yourself and start outsourcing the various parts you need
Problem with this is you have more chance of getting value for money if you're already a big company. Small changes to your website will make more of a difference. Then when they contact other websites they're more likely to want to link to you than if you're a startup.
Even if they're paying for links on big news websites, the writer is more likely to accept a bribe if you're already a big company, if he starts writing articles on too many small startups or affiliate sites he'll lose his job.
Link builder is self explanatory, he'll build links on free platforms,use bots to send links to those platforms to make them more powerful (tiered link building) and put articles/links on websites he already owns (private blog network) and if you've got a decent budget the same as the above also.
Either way its highly unlikely you'll ever get a return on your investment unless you learn how to do it yourself and start outsourcing the various parts you need
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Sounds like someone has advertised on a site and you are thinking about purchasing an SEO service I would strongly suggest you do a little bit yourself to find out a bit more about whats involved. SEO is not an exact science and needs looking at in depth. You need to know exactly what you are buying, otherwise you will end up spending a lot of money for little return. Where to begin? Start with the keywords you want to target and use something like the google keywordplanner or wordstream to find out what keywords might be good for you. A good SEO person will ask you indepth questions about your customers. Incidentally, what is your business?
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Liam Curley
- Original Poster
- #6
Salman makes the key point. If you're asking because you're looking to outsource some SEO work, you're best bet is to get at least an overview of the SEO basics before approaching consultants/agencies. I'm just assuming by the question that your SEO knowledge is limited, and if it is, you'l have no way to make an informed judgment on who to outsource the work to.
Regarding the difference between a link builder and an SEO specialist. A link builder, in my opinion, is a bit of an outdated title in modern SEO, so I'd tread with caution if you're considering recruiting someone with that title. As the title suggests, they'll build links to your website which will support your domain authority and in theory improve your sites rankings. However, earning links tends to be more content lead nowadays rather than 'built', so I'd be concerned that a person with the title 'link builder' may be working with old school black hat link building methods which could damage your rankings.
SEO requires a pretty broad skill-set. Broadly speaking, an 'SEO Specialist' is likely to be someone that works on technical SEO (getting everything on your website in order) and probably looks to earn links (could be through content creation and promotion, could be through other means).
If you are in a position where you want to start learning more about SEO, the Moz website is a good place to start. They have a very good beginners guide.
Regarding the difference between a link builder and an SEO specialist. A link builder, in my opinion, is a bit of an outdated title in modern SEO, so I'd tread with caution if you're considering recruiting someone with that title. As the title suggests, they'll build links to your website which will support your domain authority and in theory improve your sites rankings. However, earning links tends to be more content lead nowadays rather than 'built', so I'd be concerned that a person with the title 'link builder' may be working with old school black hat link building methods which could damage your rankings.
SEO requires a pretty broad skill-set. Broadly speaking, an 'SEO Specialist' is likely to be someone that works on technical SEO (getting everything on your website in order) and probably looks to earn links (could be through content creation and promotion, could be through other means).
If you are in a position where you want to start learning more about SEO, the Moz website is a good place to start. They have a very good beginners guide.
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boring-friday
- Original Poster
- #7
I promised myself I wouldn't get into these arguments but once more.
I can buy a domain with stats of 30 tf/cf/da/pa with 25+ strongish referring domains thats niche relevant to my money site , set it up to look like a 100% legit website with good content that would 100% pass a google manual review if I was ever unlucky enough to get one, it would get traffic etc etc then I can put a link on it back to my main website all for less than £150.
How is your white hat strategy going to beat me? What will £150 get a small business on average?
And one last thing, you say in the first paragraph to get a grasp of seo first so you know who to chose but how does that work, how is somebody supposed to chose white hat seo? You all say exactly the same, technical on site seo, beg for guest posts. Whats the difference between you all? I don't see any of you promising x amount of traffic or even x amount of guest posts on related domains so how is anyone supposed to know who knows what they're doing and who's just swallowed Rand Fishkins google bible
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Liam Curley
- Original Poster
- #8
Not sure why you're making the argument. The thread was about the difference between a link builder and an SEO specialist. The point was that if you're new to SEO and you're looking to buy SEO services, best to do some research so that you can make an informed decision on who you go with. If you go black hat, maybe all of the incredible promises you make will come true. On the other hand, maybe you'll get dumped from Google rankings within 6 months because the black hat used loads of spammy links. How can someone with no experience tell whether your promises for £150 worth of work are legit, or whether they're similar to all the spammy email promises from SEOs promising the world for £5?
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boring-friday
- Original Poster
- #11
What are you talking about spammy links? I just told you what my black hat method would be and it costs £150 for one link.
I don't particularly care whether someone choses a link builder or a 'seo specialist' but if they chose the link builder they'll have a better idea of what they're getting because the various links would be listed infront of their eyes.
My question was how does anyone differentiate between you white hat guys? I see 10-20 of you here saying the same thing as I said above, good on site seo and begging for guest posts. I'd only personally use any of you if I had a recommendation from somebody I knew well who had got good results.
Not like I have anything wrong with people doing white hat seo just in my opinion you should be selling to bigger brands as its better value for them. Doing white hat seo for amazon would be great, make a press release on some drones doing deliveries and suddenly you get 500 links from great websites. For a local business or small e commerce site not so much
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SEO specialist and Linkbuilder are nothing but terms of dread which make you think of fiverr and scam emails.
I'm a saddo, I love SEO. After getting fleeced by incompetent agencies who outsourced to the land of low quality SEO, I decided it was time to learn it myself.
Technical SEO is actually fascinating and very beneficial. Relatively simple changes to your webpages or structure can make a big difference. The fundamentals are pretty straightforward, haven't really changed and combined with a little common sense can be picked up by ANYONE.
More complex topics such as structured data and semantic search keep things interesting, while content creation, along with quality control, proof reading, and building content partnerships allows you to utilise marketing skill sets. Very rarely you will come across a one man band who is skilled and current in all these fields. Most SEO's I know can't spell for toffee, me included.
For the OP looking for somewhere to start, begin with your website.
Be brutal, get some honest feedback, does it work? Does it convert? Is it ready for SEO? Don't waste money on SEO to acquire visitors who don't convert into leads/sales etc.
When your happy, Google SEO 101, look at the Moz guide or similar and follow their advice.
Anything you can't do yourself, you will then understand what you need, which maybe just someone to point a few quality links at your super duper content. (Black, white, grey, It just works and continues to work). Or you will have a better idea of the world of SEO, so when you talk to an agency, they can't pull the wool over your eyes.
Get yourself a realistic budget, then get the best SEO you can based on genuine recommendations from peers as said before, or forum recommendations from places like UKBF. Ignore all SEO spam emails and anyone who promises you top of Page 1 Google.
I'm a saddo, I love SEO. After getting fleeced by incompetent agencies who outsourced to the land of low quality SEO, I decided it was time to learn it myself.
Technical SEO is actually fascinating and very beneficial. Relatively simple changes to your webpages or structure can make a big difference. The fundamentals are pretty straightforward, haven't really changed and combined with a little common sense can be picked up by ANYONE.
More complex topics such as structured data and semantic search keep things interesting, while content creation, along with quality control, proof reading, and building content partnerships allows you to utilise marketing skill sets. Very rarely you will come across a one man band who is skilled and current in all these fields. Most SEO's I know can't spell for toffee, me included.
For the OP looking for somewhere to start, begin with your website.
Be brutal, get some honest feedback, does it work? Does it convert? Is it ready for SEO? Don't waste money on SEO to acquire visitors who don't convert into leads/sales etc.
When your happy, Google SEO 101, look at the Moz guide or similar and follow their advice.
Anything you can't do yourself, you will then understand what you need, which maybe just someone to point a few quality links at your super duper content. (Black, white, grey, It just works and continues to work). Or you will have a better idea of the world of SEO, so when you talk to an agency, they can't pull the wool over your eyes.
Get yourself a realistic budget, then get the best SEO you can based on genuine recommendations from peers as said before, or forum recommendations from places like UKBF. Ignore all SEO spam emails and anyone who promises you top of Page 1 Google.
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Liam Curley
- Original Poster
- #13
Didn't say that you would offer spammy links, but there are plenty of black hats out there that would and it's difficult for a newbie to work out who would bring healthy links and who wouldn't. I also didn't mention guest posts, never mind 'begging' for them, you can do white hat marketing without guest posts. Lastly, where above was I selling white hat services? White hat marketing can work for small businesses as well as large businesses, particularly as part of a broader digital marketing strategy, but it's not a short-term option.
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I'm new to the forums here but when did £150 become a "cheap link"??
The majority of our clients are small businesses and if the cost to get a link was £150 we wouldn't have a business today.
There are lots of places and ways to get legitimate links. You don't need to buy a dodgy website for just 1 link...it would have very little effect anyway and it's not a good strategy at all.
There are thousands of related websites in any niche. A good SEO is one that knows how to find the sites that are worth approaching for a link...and it doesn't have to cost the Earth.
The majority of our clients are small businesses and if the cost to get a link was £150 we wouldn't have a business today.
There are lots of places and ways to get legitimate links. You don't need to buy a dodgy website for just 1 link...it would have very little effect anyway and it's not a good strategy at all.
There are thousands of related websites in any niche. A good SEO is one that knows how to find the sites that are worth approaching for a link...and it doesn't have to cost the Earth.
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boring-friday
- Original Poster
- #15
tl;dr: don't comment on link building if you have no idea what consists of or how it works.
I've looked hard through my posts and still can't find anywhere where I've said £150 is a cheap link.
The fact you think a homepage link with whatever anchor text my heart desires on the homepage of a website with the stats I posted pointing to any page I like from a website with only 1-3 other outbound links depending on how safe I want it to remain has little effect....well, mind blown. I go from nowhere-10th or higher on medium comp keywords with one link on websites with very little domain authority.
And yes I understand what a white hat SEO does, as I said begs for guest posts or however you want to word it, I've already listed my opinion on why it isn't particularly effective for small businesses because its harder to get them to link to you if you're smaller.
I'm well aware what your guest post links do, I was brokering links from some big sites for a couple of months, entrepreneur.com,techcrunch etc and it gave me such a headache because people didn't seem to understand (despite me saying it multiple times) that the main reason to get those sorts of links is for the traffic and direct sales you get, if you buy them for trashy or local sites just for seo you won't get good results atall because the authority of the page is ZERO and it also has lots of other links on the page. ZERO/40 isn't much power.
When you're getting links from standard 'niche' sites they do even less, you might get lucky and write a really good article and then they'll get linked to and gain authority but thats a lot less likely to happen if you're a small business than a major one already worth talking about (like I said above)
Really bored of having this similar argument multiple times, I don't mind if white hat guys think their method is best as I think mine is but the way a lot of you seem to think link building never works is laughable, there's a lot of people making a lot of money from it, I don't really understand why you think otherwise, its not like everyone is going to waste money on it and continue wasting money on it just for the fun of it. A lot who use link building services end up spending £2000 and get their websites penalized, a lot end up completely loaded.
Just like a lot of people who use white hat services end up still on page 8 and £20,000 worse off and some end up completely loaded. Guess it comes down to opinion which you think is better/happens more often.
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@boring-friday of course link building is important, it's a big part of what we do every day. What I'm saying is that we do it in a way that doesn't cost a business too much whilst getting decent links in place that work. If I could post a link here I could prove that.
I launched one of my new websites 5 months ago, I spent less than £100 and have already 20 links in place, all relevant and the site is growing already at 500 uniques per day. All clean, whitehat link building that I would be more than happy for someone at Google to take a look at.
Link building doesn't have to be expensive and there are plenty of good sites where you can get good links from and often they are free. You just have to know where to go and how to get them.
I only do clean links these days...lost too many good sites in the past with suspect link building
I launched one of my new websites 5 months ago, I spent less than £100 and have already 20 links in place, all relevant and the site is growing already at 500 uniques per day. All clean, whitehat link building that I would be more than happy for someone at Google to take a look at.
Link building doesn't have to be expensive and there are plenty of good sites where you can get good links from and often they are free. You just have to know where to go and how to get them.
I only do clean links these days...lost too many good sites in the past with suspect link building
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But if that link brought in £10,000 of business then that would make it a very cheap investment. Not everything has to be valued in terms of SEO and ranking.
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Liam Curley
- Original Poster
- #20
@boring-friday You make loads of accusations on what 'white hat marketing' and other peoples' services might consist of with absolutely nothing to back up your claims, based on opinions on white hat marketing consisting purely of begging for guest posts which clearly shows you know nothing about what a white hat does these days. Not sure how credible that makes any of your own grand claims about what you can do for a website.
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ZeroDouble
- Original Poster
- #21
At the end of the day, it's all just SEO. IMO There's no white or black hat, just the right approach(s) for the right task - Obviously taking into account risk vs reward and ROI.
IMO a good SEO should know how to use every method at their disposal to get the required results, not limit themselves to one particular approach or group of approaches needlessly.
I've never understood that mindset - it's like going into a boxing match with one hand tied behind your back...
Pretty much every method mentioned in this thread has it's place, the 'trick' if you like, is knowing what to use (where, when, and how) to get you where you want to be.
IMO a good SEO should know how to use every method at their disposal to get the required results, not limit themselves to one particular approach or group of approaches needlessly.
I've never understood that mindset - it's like going into a boxing match with one hand tied behind your back...
Pretty much every method mentioned in this thread has it's place, the 'trick' if you like, is knowing what to use (where, when, and how) to get you where you want to be.
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boring-friday
- Original Poster
- #22
Nothing to back up claims? I've read what others here say and seen their sales pitches in the marketplace. Beg for guest posts, 'link bait','skyscrapping' and other cringe worthy terms.
I couldn't care less if you or anyone else believes my 'grand claims' as I don't sell seo and doubt I ever will, trying to get away from having whiny customers, not have more
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There is a clear difference.
The role of an SEO Specialist is to rank websites using whatever tried and tested method works for them.
The role of a link builder is to build links to your website regardless of whether this improves your rankings.
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Court Jester
- Original Poster
- #28
Anything free is worthless and entry isnt protected, so is open to spam and thus worthless and tough to stand out. If something is that good, the full/best element won't be for free and what is, will be impossible to get on/included. If you include many for free, everyone will expect it and you cant make money.
Link-building is out and out spam, I've seen this, lived it and breathed it.
So chances of a freebie is too small to mention.I will say that natural linking comes with a great site, and there's no short-cuts, it takes much time even with a good biz idea. A new site takes about 12 months to just get pagerank, natural free links are built over time when people link to you, the quality may not be good, but a link is a link, and as we know quality is so tough to get, which is also obvious why that is
Judging by too many SEO's and from what I've read for years, you'll never get on the major traffic sites for free. Everything costs and if you can get a good link for £100/£175 yearly fee, I'd do that, as it gets you out there.
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@Court Jester whatever. You can believe what you want. It doesn't bother me. I'll carry on getting my quality free links from sites that you won't spam. I'm happy for you to keep paying for your links.
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I'm talking about outreach, viral content, good old PR and....picking up the phone and talking to people. It's amazing how well this final one works in getting links from their sites...for free.
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Court Jester
- Original Poster
- #34
What makes you think I even pay for my links....... ofcourse I've bought a few links here and there, but I don't have to bother anymore.
Its not luck, just good ideas and some work. I've spent years dealing with idiots who tried to mug me for free links on what I built up over the last decade, but they lose every time.
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You seem very bitter about something. Really not sure what point you're trying to make. Sounds like you're just trying to blow your own trumpet.
You said before "that anything free is useless". I assume therefore you have paid for all of your links...which Google classes as spam. So in essence you are just a spammer buying your way into the serps. If it works for you then great!
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@boring-friday sorry, don't see your point. We get paid to do it as clients don't have the time...they are generally too busy running their businesses.
Time = Money...not sure what you don't understand about that.
Time = Money...not sure what you don't understand about that.
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