How to Outsource SEO Safely: Risk Mitigation + Saving Money

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The Benefits of Outsourcing SEO

If your in-house marketing team doesn’t have a successful track record in using SEO for business growth, you should consider outsourcing an experienced SEO agency:

Here are some reasons why you should consider outsourcing SEO:

Time and Cost Savings: Outsourcing will be more cost-effective than handling SEO in-house because you won’t have to invest into hiring, training and managing additional staff. In addition to resources needed to onboard new employees, you’d also have to invest into developing in-house processes for SEO improvements, backlink building and content production. If you’re looking to take SEO seriously as a growth channel, it’s more efficient to hire an SEO agency because there are varied skill sets involved with ranking websites on Google that often cannot be tackled by a single person. We’ll get into the cost of hiring an in-house SEO later in this blog, but keep in mind that for optimal results, you’ll likely have to hire for multiple roles including a blog content writer, an editor, a link builder and/or an SEO specialist.

Lowered Risk: When it comes to SEO, there are 2 main deliverables to worry about: backlinks and content. Each of these comes with their own set of risks and outsourcing SEO mitigates that risk deftly. Building the wrong types of backlinks puts your website at risk of a manual penalty, potentially ruining your domain’s reputation, sometimes permanently. Producing content that doesn’t convert to new business is a risk of time and money, a common pitfall of those writing in-house. SEO agencies have processes in place to ensure quality and quantity in both of these aspects through risk mitigation best practices.

Scalability: When outsourcing SEO to an agency, you can easily scale the campaign up or down depending on your needs and available budget. This kind of flexibility allows you to optimise your SEO campaigns on the fly. If you did SEO in-house, it’s much harder to make these kinds of adjustments since you have staff who are locked into contracts. When outsourcing SEO, you should consider working month-to-month or locking into a small monthly budget so that you have the ability to scale campaigns with a variable budget. For instance, most SaaS SEO agencies are flexible working on a sliding scale budget, some months higher and some months lower than others. 

Quicker SEO Results: It shouldn’t come as a surprise that working with a team will bring you faster results than working with an individual. Since it’s more cost-effective to outsource SEO to an agency, your budget will go farther, resulting in more backlinks and more pieces of content than doing things in-house. Producing more content allows your site to rank for more keywords and building backlinks improves your site’s ranking for those keywords. So long as you keep up the quality, more is better in this case; you’ll be able to rank your site for keywords that convert faster. 

How Much Does an In-House SEO Cost?

According to Glassdoor, the average in-house SEO specialist makes $65,428 per year, or $5,452.33 per month. As we went over in our guide to outsourcing link building, the average link builder can only build 13-15 backlinks on average per month and in our guide to outsourcing blog writing, the average writer will produce 20 blog posts per month.

If you were to hire an in-house SEO, you can expect them to produce about half this rate for each deliverable because there’s only so much time in a day. 

SEO specialist salary GlassDoor screenshot

On the other hand, if you took that same budget of $65,428 per year and put it towards outsourcing SEO to an agency, you’d build more backlinks and have more blog content published on your site at a higher quality standard.

For a quick cost-benefit analysis of SEO outsourcing at a glance, we recommend you calculate your potential SEO ROI.

Preparing Your Site for an SEO Campaign

While a talented SEO agency should be able to fix up any technical issues with your website, there are some easy, foundational steps you can take on your own to save you money.

Indexability: Make sure your website is visible to Google and is being properly indexed. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and address any errors it identifies. If any of the suggestions here are too technical or out of your wheelhouse, take note of these changes and let the SEO agency handle it for you.

Accessibility: Making your website available for everyone through accessibility compliance will also make it easier for search engines to understand as well. Google puts value on the user experience, so this is an important aspect of any SEO campaign.

Easy Navigation: Navigating your website to any page should be easy and painless. For an optimal user experience, make sure that every page on your site is accessible within just 3 clicks. This means that all of your menus (header, footer, sidebar) should establish logical connections that guide visitors effortlessly to all the valuable content you have to offer. Tools like Screaming Frog can be used to get a visualisation of your website’s pages to identify any orphan pages that need better internal linking.

Outsourced SEO Options

Now that you understand the benefits of outsourcing SEO and know what should be done on your site beforehand, let’s go over how to outsource SEO to the pros.

There are 4 ways you can outsource your SEO:

Hiring a Freelance SEO: If there’s only a single area of SEO you’re struggling with, this is a great option because most freelancers are T-shaped in their skill set. This means they excel in a single area, while they coast by in other areas of understanding the basics. For example, a freelancer might be very strong in backlink building or content production or strategic planning.

Hiring a Full-Service Marketing Agency: Much like hiring a freelance SEO, full-service marketing agencies don’t typically excel in all areas. In fact, this is even more the case because SEO is just one area of marketing they provide services in, without specialisation. However, if you’re looking for an omnichannel approach, full-service marketing agencies will be your best bet. For example, if you want to take advantage of social media and SEO, this is a great option for you.

Hiring an SEO Agency: The most stress-free, straightforward way to outsource SEO. Hiring an SEO agency is relatively headache-free and hands-off throughout the entire process. Their exclusive focus on SEO means they have a lot to bring to the table in terms of delivering results. If you don’t have expertise in SEO, this is your best option because an SEO agency will bring the most to the table.

Hiring an SEO Consultant and an SEO Agency: While it sounds like the most expensive option on the list at first glance, it’s actually the most cost-effective option available. Hiring an SEO consultant to do an audit of your website and putting together a game plan going forward (keyword research and off-page SEO strategy) won’t break the bank, but will give you a solid foundation for hiring an SEO agency to execute. Outsourcing to an SEO agency after you’ve already done the strategic planning cuts down on the onboarding costs and is often the cheapest approach to SEO. Some of the easiest clients we’ve ever worked with started with a strong vision for their SEO (from a paid SEO audit) and we were able to deliver results for them by executing on their content strategy and building backlinks at scale.

What to Look For in an SEO Agency

Proven Experience: Ask to see case studies of successful SEO campaigns or at the very least screenshots that detail progress made for their clients or their portfolio of websites they operate. It’s also important that the agency has relevant experience to your business, so ask if they have proven experience within your niche or industry as well.

Pricing: Ideally, you’ll want to look for SEO agencies that cost less than hiring an in-house SEO. This isn’t too difficult to achieve, as the average contract size is typically somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 per month. This works out to being at most $60,000 per year, which is still cheaper than hiring an SEO specialist.

Transparency: Seek out SEO agencies that are transparent with how exactly they operate. What are the strategies they’re going to use to rank your website? Are they white hat, grey hat or black hat tactics? What do their processes look like for backlink building and content production? These are questions you should consider when looking for the right outsourcing partner.

Questions to Ask an SEO Agency Before Hiring

It’s crucial to ask the right questions when prospecting an SEO agency before outsourcing to them. It’s with these questions that you can make an informed decision to find an agency that meets your specific needs to hit your goals. Asking the right questions will allow you to gain insight into an agency’s expertise, their experience in your industry and their overall approach to SEO. 

By getting a basic understanding of the strategies and methodology they use, you can more fairly assess whether or not they have the necessary skills to earn search real estate for your business.

Here are some questions you can ask an SEO agency before hiring them. They should serve as a starting point to get a feel for their competency. It’s important to ask followup questions to each of these so you can get a more in-depth look at what they’re all about.

  1. What SEO strategies do you follow for your clients?
  2. How do you plan to adapt these strategies for my brand?
  3. What’s included in your average contract?
  4. How much involvement will you require from me?
  5. How will I track the progress of the SEO campaign?

Foundational Links: Building Your Website’s First Backlinks

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Foundational Links Explained

Foundational links are the cornerstone of your backlink profile, the first initial backlinks that are built when your website is brand new. They are an essential step in every SEO campaign and allow your site to rank for low competition keywords and most importantly: your brand name.

Backlinks in general serve as votes of confidence from other websites, signalling to Google that your content is relevant and trustworthy. When a reputable website links to yours, search engines will view this as a signal of quality.

By building foundational links, you’ll be able to improve your website’s visibility and credibility on search engines. This results in improved rankings for your first pieces of content, your homepage and landing pages early on in your SEO journey.

It’s also important to note that the anchor text used in foundational links should follow a logical structure to establish your website as a topical authority in your niche. The focus keyword of your homepage is typically a high competition keyword that reflects your overall business, while the focus keywords of landing pages and initial blogs will typically be lower competition, since they’re easier to rank for. When selecting anchor text in foundational links, you should choose a variety of branded, keyword-rich and navigational (click here, learn more, etc.) text.

What’s the difference between foundational backlinks and regular backlinks?

While we’ll jump into the most common types of foundational links later in this blog, you’ll notice many similarities between foundational and regular backlinks. The main difference is the time when the backlinks are built. Foundational links are built at the start of an SEO campaign, often coinciding with a website launch or a rebrand. Standard backlink building tactics can be used to build foundational links, although there are types of foundational links that you won’t be using later on in SEO campaigns as well.

Types of Foundational Links

Having a diverse backlink profile is crucial for SEO because it accelerates the time it takes for Google to consider your website credible. When search engines crawl and index websites, they take into consideration the quality, quantity and relevance of backlinks pointing to a site. A diverse backlink profile will indicate that a website is being referenced by a variety of reputable sources.

Building foundational links from a variety of sources will help your chances of ranking early on in your SEO efforts.

Here are the 4 types of foundational links that we like to build for clients:

Business Directories: Directory backlinks don’t always pass link equity, but when they do, they really do. This is because most business directories are established websites with robust backlink profiles and authority on search engines. Business directories are also location or niche specific, which can help build your website’s trustworthiness. For example, if you were running a SaaS, it’d make sense to create profiles on software review sites like G2 Crowd and Capterra.

citation building example

Social Media Profiles: While social signals are not a ranking factor, it’s still important to claim your brand’s social media profiles at the start of an SEO campaign. While social media profile links won’t really move the needle when it comes to ranking for your focus keywords, it will flood the page 1 results for your branded terms. For example, if you search for “Spacebar Collective” on Google, our Linkedin Page and Twitter/X Profile are among the first results.

social profile backlinks

Guest Blogs: Writing new content as guest contributions for established blogs is a great way to build foundational links because you have complete control over the anchor text used. And as we’ve already mentioned, anchor text is important in building yourself up as a topical authority. Guest blogging is the link-building tactic you’ll likely continue well beyond your initial foundational links, as it’s one of the most consistent ways to build powerful backlinks.

Link Insertions (Niche Edits): Unlike guest blogs, link insertions are where your link is edited into existing content that’s already published on someone else’s website. Some would argue that link insertions are more powerful than guest blogs because Google has already indexed these pages and already ranks them for keywords in your niche.This is especially true if the page you’re getting a link insertion from is getting meaningful search traffic. You’ll not only earn a relevant backlink to your site, but you’ll also gain referral traffic from their article. 

3 Link-Building Tactics for New Websites

Citation Building: Citations are any mentions of your business details and link to your website on business directories, review sites and social media platforms. These are considered foundational links because you build them just once when you launch your website. If you’re a brick and mortar, you might want to look into local citation building, which will help your business appear on Google Maps, Apple Maps and other local search engines. If you’re a startup, you’ll want to build citations on websites like CrunchBase and G2.

Cold Email Outreach: Sending cold emails is one of the most effective ways to build backlinks from guest blogs and link insertions. It all starts with link prospecting, the process of identifying websites most likely to accept guest contributions. Once you have your list of target websites, you’ll need to find contact email addresses using tools like Apollo.io. From here, you can use email outreach software to send out your cold emails and a small % of the people you contact will accept your guest blog content.

Competitor Backlink Analysis: Checking competitor backlinks will allow you to understand what’s already working for websites in your niche and give you target websites that are up for collaboration. If your competitors have built links from a site, so can you!

When Should You Build Foundational Links?

Website Launch: As soon as your website goes live, you should be thinking about building foundational links. In fact, if you can accelerate your website launch, this would be beneficial because SEO takes time and there is a time cost involved with ranking. The sooner you rank, the sooner you can earn organic search traffic. 

Website Rebrand: Since many of the foundational links you build will help with branded terms, it makes sense to focus on updating your foundational links when going through a rebrand. You’ll want to make sure that all citations have up-to-date information. If your rebrand also includes a new domain and 301 redirects from your old site to the new one, you’ll want to make sure to update as many of your foundational links as possible to the new website. While a 301 redirect will help pass link equity from old to new, there is a chance that some of your website’s authority will be lost in the process. Updating backlinks safeguards you from this potential loss in site migration.

Before an SEO Campaign: If you didn’t build foundational backlinks at your website launch, this is the time to do it. Make sure you have a strong foundation before putting resources into SEO as a growth channel to ensure the best odds of ranking on Google. 

Outsourcing Foundational Link Building

Outsourcing link building is ideal if you don’t have the time or expertise to build backlinks in the early stages of SEO. There are 2 categories of foundational links you should consider outsourcing, each for different reasons.

Citation Building: While you should be able to handle citation building on your own, outsourcing citation building to an agency often results in a higher volume of citations and it’s a massive time saver. Building up profiles in business directories can be a time consuming task, so hiring an agency is a great option if you’re swamped with other work around the time of your website launch.

If you’re interested in letting us handle your citation building campaign, contact us today for a custom quote.

Guest Blogs and Link Insertions: While these are considered some of the most powerful foundational links you can build, they’re also the most difficult ones to build. If you don’t have experience building backlinks through cold outreach or experience producing blog content, this is best left to the pros. For those ready to pull the trigger on a campaign, we have 3 tiers of backlink building packages to choose from.

outsourced link building packages

How to Outsource Blog Writing & Earn Organic Search Traffic

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The Benefits of Outsourcing Blog Writing

If you’re new to leveraging organic search traffic for business growth, outsourcing blog writing to an experienced SEO agency is a great option.

Here’s a few reasons why you should consider hiring a content production team:

Lower Risk: Any SEO agency worth their weight will have strong in-house processes for keyword research, content planning, blog writing and editing. If you wanted to produce blog content for your business on your own, you’d have to develop these same processes from scratch, which comes with financial risk because you’re bound to make mistakes in your early days of writing blog content. It’s extremely likely that at the very least, your keyword research won’t be as strong as an SEO agency’s, leading to content that doesn’t rank and ultimately, doesn’t bring in new business.

Time and Cost Savings: Hiring, training and managing new staff doesn’t come free, unfortunately. In addition to developing in-house processes like the ones we described above, you’re going to (inefficiently) expend resources to get the same quality results. While the cost of hiring a single content writer might be cheaper or similar in price to hiring an agency, you have to also consider the time costs associated with going in-house. Editing content requires time and so does managing your writing staff.

Scalability: When outsourcing blog writing to professionals, you can easily scale the campaign up or down depending on and available marketing budget. This kind of flexibility allows you to optimise your SEO campaigns on the fly. If you produce blog content in-house, it’s much harder to make these kinds of adjustments since you have staff who have quotas to meet and are locked into contracts.

Quicker SEO Results: Working with a specialised team results in stronger results in terms of both quantity and quality of blogs written. This leads to stronger search engine rankings, increased organic traffic and improved conversions on your website.

Why Blogs Matter for SEO

Producing new pages (ie. blog content) for your website can be seen as widening the net of total keywords you can rank for.

Simply put, you can’t rank (well) for keywords that you don’t produce content for. While you might be able to rank for keywords related to the focus keyword of a page without explicitly writing content about it, you still need to produce content that tackles the focus keyword in the first place in order to rank.

How Much Does In-House Blog Writing Cost?

According to Glassdoor, the average blog writer makes $53,766. On average, you can expect an in-house blog writer to publish 1,000 words per day (about 1 blog). In annual terms, you can expect 250,000 words (250 blogs) at a rate of $215 per blog based on an average of 250 work days per year.

blog writer salary Glassdoor screenshot

In addition to hiring a blog writer, you’ll also need to hire an editor to handle quality assurance so that your content not only ranks on Google, but converts visitors. Glassdoor cites an average annual salary of $56,719 for a blog editor.

blog editor salary Glassdoor screenshot

Adding these 2 salaries together, you’re looking at an average of $110,485 per year to produce 250 blog articles for your business. Breaking things down, you’re looking at an average of $441.94 per blog! 

If you took that same $110,485 budget and put it towards outsourcing blog writing to an experienced SEO agency, you’d produce more blog content of the same or better quality since the average rate would be lower. 

For example, if you outsource your blog writing to us at Spacebar Collective, we only charge $300 per blog so you’d get 368 blogs for the same price. That’s an additional 118 blogs you’re losing out on by writing blog content in-house!

Preparing Your Site for Blog Content

Indexability: Ensure your website is visible to Google and properly indexed. Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and address any errors it identifies, if necessary.

Accessibility: Accessibility compliance will make your website available for everyone, and in turn, make it easier for search engine crawlers to understand as well. Since Google puts weight on the user experience, this is a crucial aspect of SEO that doesn’t get discussed often enough.

Easy Navigation: For optimal user experience, ensure that every page on your website is accessible within just 3 clicks. This means that your menus should establish logical connections that lead visitors effortlessly to all the valuable content you have to offer. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to get a visualisation of your website’s pages to fix any navigation issues.

Fix Technical Issues: Make sure your website has a strong technical SEO foundation. Page load speed is especially important for the user experience and should be prioritised before publishing your library of content.

What to Look For in a Blog Writer

When shopping around for a writer to outsource your on-page SEO efforts to, it’s crucial that you ask the right questions. We’ve identified 3 key areas that you’ll want to dive into before trusting your content budget to a blog writer.

Proven Experience: Ask to see samples of their writing, preferably from your specific niche. Writing for a particular industry requires finesse in using the right language and tone. For example, when writing for B2B SaaS companies, writers should make sure to refer to conversions as signups.

Pricing: Not too low and not too high. You’re looking for the Goldilocks of blog writing. If a writer prices themselves too low, it’s likely they’re churning out high volumes of content using AI rather than giving proper TLC to the blogs they sell. If a writer prices themselves too high, it’s likely they’re gouging you for an absurd profit margin. 

Transparency: Since low quality blog content is unlikely to rank and can actually hurt your SEO, you should seek out blog writers who are transparent about how they operate. What is their process for writing? You should understand this at a basic level, from blog research to on-page SEO practices. 

Professional Blog Writing Services

There are 2 pricing structures for blog writing services: monthly retainers and à la carte per blog. Monthly retainers are great for ongoing SEO efforts, while paying per blog is better suited if you have a specific number of blogs you want to publish. 

Blog Writing Subscriptions: Paying for blog writing on a subscription basis is ideal if you want consistent results over the long-term. Agencies or freelance writers will commit to writing a minimum amount of words (or blogs) every month for a monthly subscription fee. When spread out over the course of a year or several years, the savings from this payment model can be massive. Working on a monthly subscription also allows the writer time to better understand your brand voice, which often results in higher-converting content.

If you’re interested in a monthly blog content writing subscription, contact us today and we’ll get you a quote that fits your specific needs.

Paying Per Blog: If you don’t have complete buy-in from the leadership at your company to tackle SEO as a growth channel, paying per blog is a great option because you can treat it as an experiment before committing a larger budget.

For those that are ready to tackle outsourcing blog writing today, we have 3 tiers of blog content packages available on our content production service page.

content production packages

How to Outsource Link Building to Improve Organic Rankings

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The Benefits of Outsourcing Link Building

If you’re just getting your feet wet in the SEO game, you should really consider outsourcing your link building efforts to an SEO agency that knows what they’re doing.

Here’s a few reasons why you should consider outsourcing link building:

Time and Cost Savings: Outsourcing will free up your resources so that you can focus on more pressing aspects of your business. Outsourcing is also more cost-effective than handling things in-house since you don’t have to invest into hiring, training and managing additional staff.

Efficiency: Experienced link builders can leverage existing relationships with website admins to earn more powerful backlinks than you’d be able to on your own, in a shorter time than normal as well. Building these types of connections and relationships from scratch can often be a shot in the dark. It’s a complex process that is inconsistent at best if it’s your first time doing it. SEO agencies have processes in place to make the process push-button, simple and painless.

Risk Mitigation: Link building can be a complex and time-consuming process, one where mistakes can have real-world negative consequences on your business. If you build the wrong types of backlinks or from the wrong types of websites, this could result in an SEO penalty on your website. These can be a real pain to recover from, requiring vast amounts of resources and time. By outsourcing to professional link builders, you can minimise the risk of these costly mistakes. This ensures that your backlink profile remains strong, compliant with Google guidelines and resilient to future link spam updates that Google implements.

Scalability: When outsourcing link building to a pro, you can easily scale the campaign up or down depending on your needs and available budget. This kind of flexibility allows you to optimise your SEO campaigns on the fly. If you build links in-house, it’s much harder to make these kinds of adjustments since you have staff who are locked into contracts.

Quicker SEO Results: Working with a specialised team results in stronger results in terms of both quantity and quality of backlinks earned. This leads to stronger search engine rankings, increased organic traffic and improved conversions on your website.

Why Link Building Matters for SEO

Producing new pages (ie. blog content) for your website can be seen as widening the net of total keywords you can rank for.

Backlink building is like reeling the net in, improving rankings of individual pages and keywords.

backlinks net metaphor

Metaphors are nice and all for understanding concepts, but you want data as well, right?

Here’s a study by ahrefs that shows there’s a positive correlation between backlink volume and rankings on Google.

correlation between links and rankings

Build more backlinks, rank higher. SEO doesn’t have to be complicated. KISS.

How Much Does an In-House Link Builder Cost?

According to GlassDoor, the average link builder makes $66,379 per year. On average, you can expect an in-house link builder to bring you 13-15 high quality backlinks per month. In annual terms, that’s a range of 156-180 backlinks per year at a rate of $368 to $425 per backlink.

link builder salary from Glassdoor

If you took that same $66,379 budget and put it towards outsourcing link building to an experienced SEO agency, you’d build more backlinks of the same or better quality since the average rate would be lower. 

For example, if you outsourced your backlink building to us at Spacebar Collective, we only charge $300 per backlink so you’d get 221 backlinks for the same price. That’s an additional 41-65 backlinks you’re losing out on by link building in-house!

Preparing Your Site for a Backlink Campaign

According to John Mueller in a reddit comment, Google finds it hard to call a site authoritative after 30 articles. This means that without a base library of content, it’s going to be difficult to rank for valuable keywords, regardless of your link building efforts.

Google topical authority statement

That’s why we recommend first building out your base library of content, at least 30 blog articles that position your website as a topical authority of a subject. This will help strengthen your odds of improving rankings as you build backlinks towards your content and money pages.

On top of working towards becoming a topical authority on a subject, here are some other things we consider pre-requisite to link building efforts:

  • Indexability: Is your website visible to Google and being indexed properly? Try submitting your sitemap to Google Search Console and fix any errors it gives you (if at all).
  • Accessibility: Accessibility compliance will make your website available for everyone, and in turn, make it easier for search engine crawlers to understand as well. Since Google puts weight on the user experience, this is a crucial aspect of SEO that doesn’t get discussed often enough.
  • Easy Navigation: Every page on your website should be accessible within 3 clicks. That is to say, your menus should be logical connections to everything you have to offer. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to get a visualisation of your website’s pages to fix any navigation issues.
  • Fix Technical Issues: Have a strong technical SEO foundation. Page load speed is especially important for the user experience and should be prioritised before backlink building.

What to Look for in a Link Builder

When shopping around for a link builder to outsource your off-page SEO efforts to, it’s crucial that you ask the right questions. We’ve identified 3 key areas that you’ll want to dive into before trusting your backlink budget to a link builder.

Proven Experience: Ask to see case studies of successful link building campaigns or at the very least, screenshots of results they’ve achieved in the past. It’s also important to ask if the link builder has relevant experience, so ask if they’ve earned links within your specific industry in the past. This is important because building backlinks in different niches may require different strategies, especially if you’re in an industry notoriously difficult to build links for like finance or cannabis.

Pricing: Not too high and not too low. You’re looking for the Goldilocks of backlink building. If a link builder prices their backlinks too low, it’s unlikely they’re doing things above board. If a link builder prices their backlinks too high, it’s likely they’re gouging you for an absurd profit margin. Don’t trust anyone selling quality backlinks for under $100 or average backlinks for over $500. At the lowball, you’re going to wind up with some sketchy backlinks. At the high end, you’re better off looking at slightly cheaper options. The most reputable link builders will charge somewhere between $250 and $400 per backlink.

Transparency: Since low quality backlinks can actually hurt your SEO, you should seek link builders who are transparent about their operations. How exactly are they getting backlinks? You should understand their process at a basic level, from link prospecting to content production. Transparent operations are also a must-have when outsourcing link building. Ideally, link builders should disclose which websites they’re in talks with to secure link placements so that you can do your due diligence and approve which ones will actually get produced.

Professional Backlink Building Services

There are 2 pricing structures for backlink building services: monthly retainers and à la carte per link. Monthly retainers are great for ongoing SEO efforts, while paying per link is better suited if you have a specific number of backlinks you want to build. 

Managed Link Building Subscriptions: Paying for link building on a subscription basis is ideal if you want consistent results over the long-term. Agencies or freelance link builders will commit to building a minimum amount of links every month for a monthly subscription fee. When spread out over the course of a year or several years, the savings from this payment model can be massive. Working on a monthly subscription also allows the link builder time to better understand your brand voice, build more contextually-relevant backlinks and fine tune the campaign over time.

If you’re interested in a monthly link building subscription, contact us today and we’ll get you a quote that fits your specific needs.

Paying Per Backlink: If you don’t have complete buy-in from the leadership at your company to tackle SEO as a growth channel, paying per backlink is a great option because you can treat it as an experiment before committing a larger budget.

For those that are ready to tackle outsourcing link building today, we have 3 tiers of backlink packages available on our backlink building service page.

outsourced link building packages

How to Check Competitors’ Backlinks: SEO Competitor Analysis

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Competitor Backlink Gap Analysis

If you’re struggling to build backlinks (consistently), observing and studying how your competitors are doing it is an excellent starting point. 

Understanding your competitors’ backlink profiles will open doors, allowing you to formulate your own strategies for building backlinks and in turn, improving your rankings.

One of the most simple ways to improve rankings is to check competitor backlinks and to build similar backlinks. Or you could earn backlinks from the exact same websites. If you can earn backlinks from the same websites as your competitors, think of it as evening the playing field, nulling each other out.

Analysing competitor backlink profiles will reveal low-hanging fruit backlinks that you can build with minimal resources. It will also show you the types of backlinks competitors are earning, which can act as inspiration or direct guidance for your own campaigns.

In this blog, we’ll teach you how to find your competitors, how to check competitor backlinks and how to calculate an estimated number of backlinks needed to rank for a specific keyword.

How to Find Your SEO Competitors

You probably already know who your competitors are, but your SEO competitors need more consideration. The real-world businesses that are in direct competition with you are likely also SEO competitors, but that’s not always the case.

Real-world business competitors are the companies that are directly competing with yours in the marketplace by offering similar products or services.

On the other hand, your SEO competitors are any websites that rank for the same keywords as your business in search engine results pages (SERPs). They may or may not be in direct competition with you, but they are definitely vying for the same search real estate as you.

The Battle for Search Real Estate

Search real estate is the general term for the valued space on SERPs, the top-ranking positions for any keyword.

The higher up a website ranks on search engines, the more visibility they have and the more organic search traffic they will earn. Most search engine users will click the first results, so it’s important to rank highly for valuable keywords.

For example, if you were customer.io, a customer engagement platform, you could earn search traffic and organic signups by ranking highly for keywords like “customer engagement platform” or “messaging automation”.

As you can see below, customer.io ranks 18th for “customer engagement platform”, placing them on page 2 of Google.

customer.io ranking for customer engagement platform

The battle for search real estate is a race to the top of the SERPs. Websites with stronger SEO will win more search real estate by meeting the needs of search engine algorithms and by satisfying search intent.

But how do you outrank competitors on search, exactly?

Backlink building is one of the most effective and straightforward ways to improve search engine rankings. When a contextually-relevant website links to yours, it indicates to Google (and other search engines like Bing) that your website is trustworthy and deserves to be ranked higher than other sites. Building relevant backlinks is a surefire way to earn organic search traffic.

Backlinks act as votes of confidence in the eyes of big G and the stronger the backlink, the stronger the vote of confidence is for your website. The link equity sent to your site through a backlink varies due to a number of factors, but mainly the authority of the website linking to you, its contextual relevance to your page and its contextual relevance to your overall domain.

The more quality backlinks to your site you can build, the better.

Think of your backlinks as soldiers in your army, pitted against the soldiers of other websites. The more troops you have, the better your odds of winning search real estate.

Age of Empires Janissary rush

How to Identify SEO Competitors in ahrefs

Before we hop into our tutorial on how to use ahrefs to find SEO competitors, let’s first define what an SEO competitor is, exactly. There are 2 types of SEO competitors we consider when building backlinks to improve rankings: page-level and domain-level.

Page-Level Competitors: These are the individual pages that rank for a specific keyword. For example, if you wanted to rank for “veterinary software”, your top page-level competitors would include Capterra, idexx and Vetport.

You can find page-level competitors by searching for a keyword you’re ranking for in ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and looking at the list of pages ranking for said keyword.

organic competitors

Domain-Level Competitors: Domain-level competitors are the websites that rank for a large number of keywords that your site also ranks for. This type of overlap is called content gap analysis. If you were trying to rank for terms related to “fleet management”, your domain-level competitors would include Geotab and Fleetistics.

You can find domain-level competitors by putting a domain into ahrefs’ Site Explorer and going to the Organic Competitors tab on the left.

ahrefs organic competitors

In this example, we looked up Triple Whale’s organic competitors. This is a case of SEO competitors also being real-world business competitors. Most of the sites on the list are rival analytics companies.

How to Check Competitors’ Backlinks

Checking competitors’ backlinks in SEO software is a straightforward process that provides valuable insights into their link building strategies. But fully understanding the data and its implications can be challenging, especially for those who don’t have experience ranking websites.

How to Find Competitor Backlinks with ahrefs

Once you’ve identified who your page-level and domain-level competitors are, it’s time to look up their backlink profiles. This can easily be done in ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

check competitors backlinks with ahrefs Site Explorer

For this example, we’re going to pretend we’re a customer success software trying to compete with ClientSuccess and Gainsight. First we pop their domains into the Site Explorer, then we click on the Backlinks tab to get a full list of their backlinks.

backlink checker in ahrefs

ClientSuccess has a grand total of 1,928 backlinks according to ahrefs, quite the backlink profile to compete with. However, not all of these backlinks are worth paying attention to and not all of them will move the needle for them.

In the next section, we’ll go over how to evaluate competitor backlink profiles in a practical way for planning out backlink building campaigns.

Other SEO Tools to Check Competitors’ Backlinks

Evaluating Competitor Backlink Profiles

To find the truly needle-moving backlinks, we’ll need to apply some filters to narrow the results down from ClientSuccess’ 1,928 backlinks. 

First, let’s switch to view only One Link Per Domain. After all, we aren’t going to be building multiple backlinks from the same website, as this is an extremely inefficient use of resources. This brings the backlink total down to 493.

one link per domain filter

Next, we apply our filters, the same ones outlined in our link prospecting guide.

  • dofollow only: Nofollow links are much weaker than dofollow.
  • DR 45+: Anything below this will take high volumes of links to improve rankings.
  • Domain traffic 1,000+: Sites with less traffic are more likely to be link farms.

This effectively weeds out spammy backlinks, link farms and low authority websites that don’t help improve rankings. The end result is just 82 backlinks that actually move the needle. This is a lot more approachable than the original list of 1,928 backlinks.

filters for checking competitor backlinks

If you want to be extremely thorough when checking competitors’ backlinks, you should repeat the same process for each page-level and domain-level competitor. Once you’ve come up with an estimated number of needle-moving backlinks for each competitor, you’ll have a better idea of how many backlinks you need to play catch-up.

Quality Over Quantity

Improving rankings in search engines requires a strategic approach to backlink building. By analysing the domain traffic, eliminating link farms and low authority websites, we can focus on just the backlinks that truly make a difference.

In the example we gave on ClientSuccess, a customer success software, we found that out of their 1,928 backlinks, only 82 were actually effective in moving the needle. This highlights the importance of quality over quantity when it comes to building backlinks.

The 10 Industries That Benefit from SEO the Most

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The 10 Best Industries for Taking Advantage of SEO

While most businesses in general can benefit from SEO, it simply performs more cost-effectively in some industries and for certain business models. SEO works best when the average sale size or customer lifetime value exceeds the cost of enlisting SEO services year-round.

In this article, I’ll be going over 10 industries that are strongly positioned to take full advantage of SEO. 

SaaS

At the heart of every SaaS startup is problem solving. Your SaaS solves a problem that’s a paint point for consumers or other businesses.

So, what do people typically do when they encounter a problem?

They hit up Google in search of a solution. Ideally, your SaaS will be the first solution in search results when they look for relief from their problem. That’s where SEO comes into play: building inbound traffic from potential users.

SEO is a powerful growth channel for SaaS companies when harnessed properly. Organic search traffic builds stronger brand positioning, strengthens your reputation and is often more likely to convert to new signups than other channels. SaaS SEO is often seen as merely a demand capture channel, but with some finesse, you can also use it for demand generation as well.

That said, there are some essential pages that every SaaS should have to leverage their website to earn signups at every stage of the customer journey:

  • About
  • Pricing
  • Integrations
  • Case Studies
  • [competitor] vs. [your SaaS]
  • [competitor] alternatives
  • [category] software
  • 404 → Content Hub + Contact

Home Services

Local SEO is powerful for anyone offering home services because it captures the regional demand for their services. People are always actively seeking out home service professionals, so by putting resources into SEO, you can appear at the top of their search results. For example, if you were a roofing company, it would greatly benefit you to rank well for high buyer intent keywords like “emergency roof repair” or “roof replacement.”

SEO is an especially effective lead generation channel for home service companies because their average ticket price is often several times higher than the cost of ranking on Google locally.

5 Types of Home Services That Benefit from SEO:

  • General Contractors
  • Roofers
  • Plumbers
  • Electricians
  • HVAC

Startups

Startups, especially early-stage startups who haven’t (yet) raised investment, can rely on SEO as a growth channel.

Startups are uniquely positioned to earn backlinks through PR because of the sheer amount of tech news outlets that cover milestones like launches and funding rounds. Startups can also get listed in startup and software review sites and directories that other types of businesses don’t have access to like Crunchbase and Capterra. This results in powerful backlinks that don’t require much (if any) resources to earn.

Backlink building is often an expensive endeavor for new companies, but startups are able to earn backlinks naturally through tech press and directories without breaking the bank. That just leaves the other part of the equation to focus on: content. When done right, this can be done on a small initial investment. 

It’s best for startups to work with an SEO agency that has sliding scale pricing without long-term commitments to get the job done efficiently. If this sounds up your alley, contact us today and we can get you a custom quote to match your startup’s growth goals.

Medical Providers

Would you blindly trust a dentist that pays a hefty sum of money on advertising to get your business? Maybe.

But I bet you would more easily trust a dentist that has an overwhelming number of positive reviews on Google Maps, appears at the top of search results underneath the paid advertising and has a professional-looking website.

5 Types of Medical Providers That Rely on SEO:

  • Dentists
  • Doctors
  • Naturopaths
  • Chiropractors
  • Cosmetic Surgeons

Food and Beverage

It doesn’t matter if you’re a large chain or a local gem: bars and restaurants need SEO. After all, customers need to know where you are and what type of food/beverage you offer before they can come in.

Searches for “[cuisine] restaurant” and “restaurants near me” are all too common to ignore.

Types of Food and Beverage Businesses That Need SEO:

  • Bars
  • Cafes
  • Caterers
  • Bakeries
  • Breweries
  • Restaurants
  • Private Chefs

Travel & Hospitality

Unless you’re 100% confident in your presence on booking websites, travel SEO cannot be ignored. Whether you’re a bed and breakfast, a hostel or a large hotel chain, we’re willing to bet that you’d love a passive method of increasing your bookings.

While most travel brands will benefit greatly from local SEO efforts, if you’re multi-location or service a broader area than a single city, you’re going to want to put some resources into backlink building from websites established on a national or international scale.

Travel & Hospitality Businesses That Benefit from SEO:

  • Hotels
  • Hostels
  • Events Companies
  • Tour Guides and Companies
travel SEO industries

Online Businesses

Online businesses should tackle as many growth channels as they can realistically handle without being overworked or spreading themselves too thin. SEO is a great growth channel for online businesses because it’s a powerful way to tap into already existing demand for products and services.

Types of Online Businesses That Can Leverage SEO:

  • eCommerce shops
  • Blogs and informational websites
  • Affiliate marketing websites
  • Online courses and educational platforms
  • Online marketplaces
  • Review and comparison websites
  • Service based businesses like agencies

Real Estate

Real estate (in general) is absurdly competitive and even more so in densely populated areas. And with great competition comes massive budgets that you have to compete with. Fledgling realtors have to compete with large, seemingly endless advertising budgets, making SEO an attractive alternative.

SEO is relatively cheap by comparison and a much better long-term investment because you’re actively building digital assets that will bring in business over time. PPC, on the other hand, stops working the second you stop running advertisements. PPC feels more like a band-aid solution than a true solution to growing a real estate business like SEO is.

eCommerce Brands

Much like other types of online businesses, eCommerce brands live and die by digital channels, so it’s important to take advantage of every traffic source possible. Ranking on page 1 of Google also helps build brand positioning in a very direct way. If the SERP for your eCommerce brand looks something like this, you’re sitting in great shape:

  1. Big Retailer 1
  2. Big Retailer 2
  3. [your eCommerce Brand here]

Legal Services

Much like the real estate industry, advertising for legal services can be not only highly competitive but also expensive to get started. SEO is cheaper by comparison and a stronger long-term investment than PPC for legal services. SEO requires less resources off the hop, creates content assets you can repurpose for other channels and builds brand positioning in the SERP.

Local SEO services are powerful for lawyers because they can tackle specific issues by publishing their own legal advice in blog content. Those that see value in their expertise will contract them for their legal needs.

Final Thoughts

Although certain industries may appear to be more popular for SEO, there are many other sectors that can benefit greatly from implementing strong SEO strategies.

Whether you’re a startup looking for cost-effective backlinks, a food and beverage business needing more visibility online, or an eCommerce brand trying to compete with larger retailers, SEO can help drive traffic and increase conversions. And with the right SEO agency backing your company, you can achieve success in any industry.

So don’t hesitate to dive into the world of SEO and start seeing the benefits for your business today! Contact us now and we’ll provide a custom quote tailored to your specific needs. Let’s work together to reach your growth goals and dominate the SERPs!