Which SEO company to choose?

Hello all,

I am new to BHW, and relatively new to IM in general. I own a company that develops web sites, mostly intranet type web apps that streamline business processes for corporations. I also run a company which provides a must-have product to companies who market on CL (no, I am not trying to market this service here).

Anyway, I have a few sites that I need to do some link building for and I've been reviewing some of the thousands of companies that are offering link building and other SEO services. One that sticks out to me is submitedge. I guess what got me interested is their low price, and also their alexa ranking (most other SEO companies have very high alexa ranks, which tells me that they aren't able to market their own site, but idk).

Question 1:
Who do you outsource your whitehat link building to?

Question 2:
Also, if you use white hat link building, is it a good idea to mix it in with blackhat techniques, such as Xrumer?

Thanks!

Alexa does not mean crap...any stats outside the top 100 or so are pretty worthless.

If you want to gauge a company by rankings then look and see how they rank for their own keywords in Google though I am not sure even that is going to tell you much.

1. Do most of my own link building. When I do outsource it is for something particular that I either do not have time for or saving the time is worth the cash.

2. Nothing wrong with xrumer. It is only a tool and how it is used is the most important thing.

check the services offered in the forum

Thanks for the advice. Good point about Alexa. I forgot to mention though that I did run into that company via google. Alexa seems like a relatively good method to get an "idea" of how popular they are to me, especially if the company ranks below 10k, which they do. I know that there are ways to sort of cheat an Alexa ranking, but it would be costly and difficult to rank below the 20k or so mark and the benefits aren't worth it for most niches.

6hundy: I have checked the services but I'd like to see some feedback from people who have actually outsourced seo services to these companies. Anyone?

Just go to Google keyword tool and search for the relative keyword terms for link building. Sort out the important keywords which has highest searches.

Then apply in google search and see, where they ranks. Pick from them. (I am not ranking Number One page in Google )

Do not look for alexa, anyone can cheat or buy junk traffic to improve alexa rankings.

IMO those SEO companies are going to charge you a LOT more than the people offering services here. Do a little research into the different tools / services offered here and figure out which one(s) would suit you best. The time spent researching and purchasing services here will save you a lot of $$ in the long run.

When you want a real SEO Company then stay away if they offer any of this:

- Blog commenting
- Profile Links
- Linkwheels
- xrumer

Any decent SEO Company wont use those tactics, as they can get your site banned from google. Also try to make it in a way where you only pay a part on results.

When I do white hat link building I usually contact webmasters and either offer cash for a link or provide them an article that is related to their site that has a link embedded in it.

I get a real good response when offering an article.

If you can find someone who finds backlinks in this fashion you will do well. You also need to find someone who has a knack for getting in touch with webmasters or blog owners. They have to be good at figuring out who to contact, how to get their contact info, and finally how to write a subject to an email that the blog/site owner doesn't think is a spam email.

Ideally you have a few "sacrificial lamb" websites that you can test out potential SEO experts with and then stick with the one who does the best job and unleash them on your "real" sites.

Make sure to actually interview them. Don't be afraid if they also know black hat techniques - at least they will know how to not use a black hat method by mistake.

Hope that helps a bit

1) The history of the seo company/firm providing SEO services.
2) The keywords for which you want to promote your website, because the keyword chosen is directly proportional to the cost of seo services.
3) Timescales involved with the rankings.

Unless you're a big-time operation, most of the companies that show up for a search of "seo" will be too expensive.

Try out a few services in the services thread here on BHW and go from there.

Sorry, which service were you looking at submitedge for? I don't suggest you buy their article submission service for example, since all they do is use one article most of the links won't be indexed thanks to g**gle's dupe filter.