Advice on keep using a professional vs services here

First I want to offer thanks for the amazing amount of information in this forum.

I have an e-commerce site that I did my own SEO 6-7 years ago when it was a lot easier. I neglected it for a few years then I hired someone to do some linkbuilding to maintain my rankings. They are a great company to work with but because of economics and the direction of our company I am looking to bring it back in house. I am paying $750 a month and this is typically what I get:

• [FONT=Arial, serif]We posted 115 blog articles and submitted to 102 directory websites of which we achieved 14 directory postings.[/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, serif]We submitted 169 articles of which 88 were approved and posted. The remaining are pending approval.[/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, serif]We created 3 original articles this month and created 5 profiles in four different social networking sites and maintain them regularly.[/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, serif]We did 132 social bookmarking submissions of which 132 are public.[/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, serif]We did classified ad posting in 14 different advertisement sites of which 14 posts are published.[/FONT]
• [FONT=Arial, serif]During this month we created 364 backlinks through our article, directory, classified ad posting, social bookmarking and blog postings.[/FONT]

Many are homepage links and the amount, place and anchor does not vary to much. Also I doubt many of the links or postings have wheels (I think I am using that term correctly).

I am looking for affirmation that I should bring this in house. After looking at the services here for $750 a month (or less ideally) I should be able to get a great deal more. Is that correct or am I missing something?

For $750 a month I could purchase from the members here:

Deadly Seo (1 of the 3 options a month)
Big Buddys EDU Service and 101 backlink service
Linkpushing, say 5 a month
Phoenix's Blog Service
Stephen's press release service
Krishananda's social bookmarking service

Is that overkill or not enough? Keywords are competative but my sight is already in the mix. Just want to flush out some deeper keywords. Would is raise some red flags with Google to do all that? The game has definitely changed in the last five years. Thanks in advance!

You can't really compare what $750 will buy you externally, to what you can do by manually outsourcing it...

$750 is not a lot to pay monthly for an SEO, (I charge more,) but you don't seem to be getting very much I have to say. (Unless those last links are all manually built and bought on decent home-page sites.) Large monthly SEO fees should be to buy commercial experience/savvy and an understanding of how SEO works/integrates in your market/sector with your sales process - not just link-building (which is cheap.)

$750 spent on tools/services here will get you a HUGE increase in activity and linking - but you'll have to manage it yourself, and find people you can trust and that really know what they're doing. You'll find a lot of people on here that talk-the-talk, but don't have any real commercial understanding, and won't take nay kind of responsibility...

Remember: if you hire some newbie who fries your rankings, there's little you can do afterwards.

The services you mentioned seem to be mostly pretty respected members, but be careful with your link velocity. If you go from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand links per month - you're going to set off a lot of alarms!

You can PM me if you want a quick chat.

I can vouche for the services here. They're very solid packages that are very fairly priced. You'll definitely get a bigger bang for your buck if you order in bulk form services here. However. from a logistical point of you, it's definitely easier, and less of a headache to have all of your eggs in one basket. So I guess you could say each has its pros and cons. =D

jascoken said:

You can't really compare what $750 will buy you externally, to what you can do by manually outsourcing it...

$750 is not a lot to pay monthly for an SEO, (I charge more,) but you don't seem to be getting very much I have to say. (Unless those last links are all manually built and bought on decent home-page sites.) Large monthly SEO fees should be to buy commercial experience/savvy and an understanding of how SEO works/integrates in your market/sector with your sales process - not just link-building (which is cheap.)

$750 spent on tools/services here will get you a HUGE increase in activity and linking - but you'll have to manage it yourself, and find people you can trust and that really know what they're doing. You'll find a lot of people on here that talk-the-talk, but don't have any real commercial understanding, and won't take nay kind of responsibility...

Remember: if you hire some newbie who fries your rankings, there's little you can do afterwards.

The services you mentioned seem to be mostly pretty respected members, but be careful with your link velocity. If you go from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand links per month - you're going to set off a lot of alarms!

You can PM me if you want a quick chat.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. I am definitely worried about loosing rankings. It sounds like you are saying I should slowly roll out more links? What would be an acceptable increase?

Sorry, I can not PM you. To new here.

mldw13 said:

Thanks for the reply. I am definitely worried about loosing rankings. It sounds like you are saying I should slowly roll out more links? What would be an acceptable increase?

Sorry, I can not PM you. To new here.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say there is an exact number that would define an acceptable increase. Just make it look really natural. I mean, there isn't much of a difference if you're building 100 links a day, then jump to 130 links a day. But if you're building 100 links a day, and you jump to 1000 links a day, that's going to throw up a red flag. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. Just make it look natural and you should be fine.

thedon23 said:

I wouldn't say there is an exact number that would define an acceptable increase. Just make it look really natural. I mean, there isn't much of a difference if you're building 100 links a day, then jump to 130 links a day. But if you're building 100 links a day, and you jump to 1000 links a day, that's going to throw up a red flag. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. Just make it look natural and you should be fine.

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Thanks for the reply. But it looks like I was getting about 10 a day. That is a pretty limiting starting point for using some of the services here. Would matching the link increase with new relevant content help?

mldw13 said:

Thanks for the reply. But it looks like I was getting about 10 a day. That is a pretty limiting starting point for using some of the services here. Would matching the link increase with new relevant content help?

Click to expand...

Yeah, I understand. There are a number of service providers that do drip feed (build the links gradually). Make sure they specifically mention that, otherwise assume they don't drip feed. I had a service provider build over 1000 links to a new site of mine in 2-3 days and that site got sandboxed.

Then again, it appears that your site is fairly aged, so you can take more risks here and there. Personally, I'd start off with MrE's private blog network. He drip feeds the articles and I've seen some great results from it. Once you get started there, you can start increasing the number of links being built to your site.

For the package you are getting you are paying too much IMO.

thedon23 said:

Yeah, I understand. There are a number of service providers that do drip feed (build the links gradually). Make sure they specifically mention that, otherwise assume they don't drip feed. I had a service provider build over 1000 links to a new site of mine in 2-3 days and that site got sandboxed.

Then again, it appears that your site is fairly aged, so you can take more risks here and there. Personally, I'd start off with MrE's private blog network. He drip feeds the articles and I've seen some great results from it. Once you get started there, you can start increasing the number of links being built to your site.

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Thanks for the follow up reply. It is an aged site and I rank well for my main keywords. According to SEOMoz analysis:

Domain Authority: Predicts this domain's ranking potential in the search engines based on an algorithmic combination of all link metrics.
(out of 100)
40

Domain MozRank: 3.63
Domain MozTrust: 3.66
Total Links:

452,443
Ext. Followed Links:

7,178
Linking Root Domains: 222
Followed Linking Root Domains: 171
Linking C-Blocks: 176

With that type of a background would I be able to add more than a few. Thanks too for the drip feed idea. Wonderful advice!

Also thanks for the offers of help through the PM. It will not let me reply as I am to new. Sorry.

its hard to say exactly not knowing your site or aanything
but if it was me. id drop the company and order some services here
to be on the safe side,
I would definitely reduce my budget
You will get a lot more bang for your buck here.

Your site being old and established, will gain you a lot of forgiveness from big G.
So I wouldnt be overly worried.
5 linkpushes a month is more than plenty
add in aa few small quality link services
and this should be ok to at least you stay where you are, maybe even improve your rank
build a good quality 1st tier linkwheel. which you can strengthen pretty quickly,
These will always stand you in good stead.
and you can add to them over time,
Dont put loads of links to your main site on them.
Just one is sufficient and make sure your internal linking is good
Hope this helps

like jass said, For the same amount of money you would get much more here. There are some unbelievable services here that worked well for me, at a fraction of that price.
Look at these guys:
George
Botwiz
MRE
BTB

nanavlad said:

its hard to say exactly not knowing your site or aanything
but if it was me. id drop the company and order some services here
to be on the safe side,
I would definitely reduce my budget
You will get a lot more bang for your buck here.

Your site being old and established, will gain you a lot of forgiveness from big G.
So I wouldnt be overly worried.
5 linkpushes a month is more than plenty
add in aa few small quality link services
and this should be ok to at least you stay where you are, maybe even improve your rank
build a good quality 1st tier linkwheel. which you can strengthen pretty quickly,
These will always stand you in good stead.
and you can add to them over time,
Dont put loads of links to your main site on them.
Just one is sufficient and make sure your internal linking is good
Hope this helps

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. Still trying to figure out my internal linking. When I run it through some SEO software it says I have to many internal links.

hardybents said:

like jass said, For the same amount of money you would get much more here. There are some unbelievable services here that worked well for me, at a fraction of that price.
Look at these guys:
George
Botwiz
MRE
BTB

Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice. I will check them out.