If you have ever outsourced your link development then you probably have an answer to this question, and the good answer is probably NO. Additionally, you might know as well that this particular area is ripe with link abuse from those who either don't know what they are doing or wish to scam you only for your money. Make no mistake, the links you get are hardly the concern. So the talk these days is all about quality. What constitutes quality in a link and how can you ultimately measure it and be so good that you could tell a link development firm what you need?
This can be a difficult road for the regular website owner. There are a million questions that you might need to ask. In my experience I have rarely seen the value returned from outsourcing a link building campaign to be the same or more than the money I paid for it. There are a lot of metrics involved and ways to determine success but I am specifically talking about the low hanging fruit. One of the most successful link building campaigns I have seen recently was not done by an SEO, link builder, link baiter, or anyone of the sort but a single PR person who just knew who to talk to. So again the talk today is... who do I talk to and how can I get better quality links? Its like buying jewelry right, give me the best for the least amount of money!!
So what should you be concerned about when your outsource a link building campaing? There is an excellent thread on Webmasterworld discussing this very topic. The thread starter starts about explaining his experience of hiring an Indian link building firm and his dismay at what resulted and the resulting things he did afterward.
He says about defining quality:
I defined very clearly my parameters in order to avoid directory spamming. Things like "no pages named links", "no pages with more than 25 links", "on topic sites only", "no reciprocal links will be given", "no bad neighbourhoods", "PR4 or higher sites only", etc. etc. My hope was to find someone who would go out there and truly "sell" the virtues of our site to real sites in order to have them link to us.
Some great comments from Martinibuster who said on the topic of quality:
First off, the above are poor metrics for quality. All of your above metrics have zero, absolutely nothing to do with quality. So your project was doomed from the beginning.
I feel like he just blew up my battleship after reading that, but he is 100% correct. Those metrics are extremely dated and ineffective at measuring the success or quality of a campaign. They mean nothing. He goes on to say "The requirement for PR 4 is a totally random metric, also with zero relevance to what constitutes a quality link. You mean to say that you won't accept a PR 3link from a .gov resource page called links that lists quality sites in your industry? Do you see how your metrics have nothing to do with metrics of quality?"
Some other people chime in an voice some opinions on outsourcing link development. I will summarize:
On the topic of Indian link building firms:
I would only recommend something like this to a competitor who had pissed me off at some point. In fact, I have a competitor who used an outfit from India. They wreaked havoc with the reputation of his site.
On the topic of PR:
One of the biggest mistake outsourcers make while defining Quality website is put up a minimum qualifying PR for linking to other website.
Continued discussion on WebmasterWorld
