Link building is one of the most cost-effective digital marketing channels and will remain so for the foreseeable future. As we’ve written recently, the estimated return on investment in link building is a whopping 5,385% as links remain the strongest ranking factor for websites.
There’s just one problem – building links requires a lot of time and effort. There are two paths you can go. One is hiring an in-house team of link builders, which is a good long-term investment.
The other is hiring a link building agency to build high-quality backlinks for your business. This option is more cost-effective, scalable and easy for testing out the effects of link building on your marketing efforts.
Today, we’re going to take a look at some of the best link building companies today and show you how to choose a reliable link building partner for your business.
What are link building companies and what do they do?
Link building companies are outsourced partners for link building. On behalf of your brand, they build high quality backlinks to your website, with the aim of improving search engine rankings. They offer a wide range of link building services, but the end goal is the same – getting reputable websites to add links to their clients’ websites.
These agencies build links through various link building tactics:
- Doing outreach and backlink exchanges
- Guest posting
- Broken link building
- Niche edits
- Link bait content creation
And many others. The end goal is to get webmasters, editors and website owners to link from their website to yours.
There are thousands of link building agencies out there, each of them promising high-quality links that will boost your domain authority, drive traffic and revenue. But as anyone who has ever worked with an SEO agency can tell you, this is often far from the truth.
Here is how to hire a link building partner you can trust.
How to hire a reputable link building agency – signs to look out for
If you have no SEO knowledge, determining if an agency is “good” is akin to doing wine tasting without having tasted a drop of wine in your life. But there are still ways to determine if an agency is worth their salt or not.
Here is what to watch out for.
They have a reputable portfolio of clients and backlinks
A great link building company can show you the clients they’ve worked for and the links they’ve built for them. Unless they’re bound by an NDA, they should be able to show some of their work.
Recognizing a good link is a complex process on its own, so we won’t go into too much detail. However, the agency should have a list of high-quality links built to their clients’ websites, from relevant sources in their industry.
Ideally, your link building agency should specialize in a certain industry or niche and build links in it almost exclusively. For example, at ReportCard, we cover a wide range of industries, but we specialize in SaaS.
They have transparent pricing
The best link building services are those that tell you what they offer and how much it costs, without complex pricing structures.
This means charging a certain amount of money for a link from a website with a certain domain rating.
Here is how we do it at ReportCard:
In our pricing calculator, you can choose the type of link (niche edit or guest blog), the domain rating of your target website (DR30-80), the organic traffic of your target website, and the number of links you want to purchase.
You then learn exactly how much you’re going to pay.
When you’re reviewing the agencies you want to hire, you should tell right from their website how much their services will cost you. Stay away from complex packages and inquiries to jump on a call to find the best pricing package for your needs.
They send detailed reports
Great link building agencies send reports outlining the links they’ve built and the metrics behind them. At the end of a month (or week, or another custom period), you should get a report with all the links they built for you.
The report should include details on the websites where the links are coming from. For example, domain rating, organic traffic, the page where the link is coming from, the page they linked to on your website and the anchor text.
You can then click through and ensure that the links are actually live and pointing to your website.
They do a variety of link building techniques
The agency you choose should offer a variety of link building package with different methods to build links. They can offer link insertions and niche edits, guest blogs, link exchanges with authoritative websites and more.
While they don’t need to show you exactly how they build backlinks, they should be able to describe the process. Through case studies and testimonials, they should outline their blogger outreach process and show how they get the links they do.
You want to learn whether their link building strategy is legitimate or a black hat one that will get your business in trouble at some point in the future.
With all of that said and done, here are our top choices for link building companies to hire.
Top link building companies to hire in 2024
These agencies have a proven track record of link building campaigns for clients in various industries. No matter your budget for SEO services, you’re going to find a great link building partner on this list.
ReportCard
We don’t just talk the talk, we walk the walk too. ReportCard was founded by a SaaS company founder who previously grew their own website with SEO. After successfully building a business from scratch, they built ReportCard as a boutique SEO agency.
What sets ReportCard apart is the turnkey offer. Whether it’s editorial links, HARO links or niche insertions, all you have to do is make an order, and we take care of the rest. We have an in-house team of writers, outreach specialists, technical SEO experts and marketers ensuring we only build high-authority backlinks.
Services offered:
- Niche edits/editorial links
- Digital PR links (HARO)
- Backlink exchanges
- Guest posting
While we primarily build backlinks for SaaS clients, we are no strangers to local businesses that need help with their SEO strategy. For example, you can read how we increased the revenue for a local jewelry store by 91% by using SEO as a channel.
Pricing: starts at $175 per link (minimum DR 30, 1,500 website traffic)
FatJoe
A global full-scale digital marketing agency, Fatjoe has been around for years and have built a reputation as a reliable partner. Both businesses and other agencies use FatJoe for their link building efforts. In other words, you can use it for white label link building if you want to add this service to your agency offer.
What sets FatJoe apart is that they offer a wide range of services in one place. Content marketing, technical SEO, citation building, keyword research, digital PR, copywriting – these are just some of the many services included.
When it comes to link building, these are the main services offered:
- Blogger outreach
- Niche edits
- Infographic outreach
- Multilingual outreach
Fatjoe guarantees that when you hire them, your backlink profile will be free of low-quality placements.
There are a few peculiar things about their offer. First, they use Moz domain authority (DA) as a metric, which is rather outdated by today’s search engine optimization standards. Two, they guarantee that your placement will go live within a certain time frame, such as 7 or 14 days.
Pricing: starts at $79 per link (domain rating of 10, no website traffic)
Siege Media
Want to attract more organic search traffic and build high-quality links to your website? Siege Media is one of the default choices, as a long-standing full-stack marketing agency. Siege Media specializes in three key industries: SaaS, fintech and ecommerce.
You can choose to just build links, or grab their full offer and hire this agency on a retainer. Their services include:
- Content strategy
- SEO consulting
- Blog design
- Content marketing
- Link building
- Digital PR
- Content creation and graphic design
In short, everything you need to make your target audience find your website more easily.
Their roster of link building clients includes top-notch names such as Airbnb, Zillow, Intuit, Tripadvisor and many others.
The problem? They say that you can expect the first links after about four months of working with them. And while they will build links from quality websites, Siege Media says that the average DR you can expect is around 40.
Coupled with the high price per link, Siege Media is an expensive and slow option for SEO link building.
Pricing: starts at $250 per link placement
LinkBuilder.io
While this agency has not been around as much as its bigger counterparts, it paved a way for itself with well-written content. LinkBuilder.io explains their link building process in detail, and even if you have no knowledge of SEO, you’ll learn exactly what they are doing for your business.
LinkBuilder.io has a great case study section, showing clients they worked with, as well as the results they brought for those clients. It’s not exactly clear how they got their data, but you can see the progress and growth in traffic over time, as well as the number of links built.
Services offered:
- Competitor backlink analysis
- Keyword research and planning
- Keyword analysis
- Anchor text optimization
- Target page planning
While they cover a range of industries and types of links, the pricing is not very friendly for startups. In other words, you’re forced to buy links in packages, with the smallest package equating to $2,999 or about $375 per link.
This is not exactly transparent, because they quote a domain rating range of 50-90, which is a massive difference and you don’t really know what you’re going to end up getting.
Pricing: starts at $2,999 per month
Page One Power
This is another example of an on-site SEO agency with a focus on link building. With more than 14 years of experience, they’ve helped more than 1,000 businesses with their link building and outreach service.
They not only build links, but can also help with content marketing services. In other words, they can help you build and promote blogs, as well as linkable assets that can drive more links in the future.
Services offered:
- Broken link building
- Guest posting
- Unlinked mention link building
- Resource link building
Besides working for businesses big and small, Page One Power can also be hired as a white label link partner for your agency.
The problem with Page One Power is that there is no clear pricing structure in place. While they are clear about their processes and the absence of PBNs and spammy links, you don’t get to find out how much their links cost.
Pricing: not disclosed – reach out for a custom quote
Wrapping up
Link building is a vital part of digital marketing and getting links from relevant websites has an immediate effect on your bottom line. However, it’s also very time-consuming and not every business has the budget for an in-house link building team. Link building companies bridge the gap and allow you to get great links at the fraction of a cost for hiring an in-house team.
If you want to learn how exactly an agency can help you build links from relevant sites, give us a call! At ReportCard, we offer transparent pricing and processes, and you know exactly where every dollar of your link budget is going.
Book your free consultation call today!
