Why in-house link building isn’t a practical solution for most companies
Posted by: Marketing Guy Date posted: December 1st, 2007 Published in: Link BuildingADDED: Welcome SmallBusinessNews readers! Just an advanced warning that this article contains a range of profanities. But seeing you already read the article over at SBN or by email that’s too little too late ain’t it? Perhaps that should be the motto for the SEO industry? 
Ho-hum.
I read an article over at SEW today by Justilien Gaspard, which gives reasons why companies should keep their link building efforts in-house (hat tip to Sphinn). While I agree with the points made, I do think the general argument only really applies to a minority of companies – so I thought a post showing the flip side was in order. 
First of all, the core of my argument here is that SEO professionals are like doctors. Experienced and knowledgeable, they can diagnose a variety of problems from limited information – they can spot hidden solutions and don’t necessarily jump to conclusions.
And with that in mind, I would label absolutely every other person who flirts with SEO as the biggest fucking hypochondriacs in the world. And this is why…
I’d class a SEO professional as someone who has a reasonably wide scope of success in SEO. That might be through their own sites, or managing client sites – the point is that the hands on experience over a number of projects arms them with the knowledge to be able to adapt to most future projects that come their way. Basically, it takes more than optimising a single 20 page site for a low competition term to really consider yourself as a professional.
The problem is that the first barrier to overcome when understanding the industry is first getting your head around the concept (on page optimisation / link weight). It just seems too easy for a lot of people when they get to this point and that gives them a kind of self confidence that I would guess doctors see every day when they have to address people self diagnosing their own ailments.
An arrogant belief that they must be right because SEO is oh-so simple – the kind of arrogance that means SEO agencies and consultants get a lot of work fixing DIY SEO problems – the kind of arrogance that enables marketing agencies to demand “100 PR4 deep links” for their client’s site – the kind of arrogance that leads to corporate websites losing all organic traffic because their newbie in-house SEO doesn’t know shit.
There are loads of reasons why in-house link building simply isn’t a practical approach from the majority of businesses (of all sizes) out there – these are just a few:
Where you going to recruit a link builder from?
There are no link builders. It’s not a career. Sure – agencies will have link building teams – these people are trained internally and very rarely arrive at their job with experience (of course this will change over time though). There are link building specialists, but the money they can make there’s no chance you’ll get them working for you.
Link building is a boring, shit job on the whole. It can be very repetitive – lots of admin work involved.  Generally an entry / graduate level position agency side.
There is little scope for career progression as an in-house link building – you will be a team of one in most companies so no chance of a promotion to manager (that’s why your job title probably already has “manager” in it! ). You could perhaps move to a different company, but your job will basically be the same (just a different industry). And when you get experienced enough, it’s time to move into the consultancy to see your pay cheque and add a few zeros to it!Â
The only prospect of recruiting an experienced staff member to take on a link building role would be to focus on the industry experience rather than the link building experience – that would be an effective approach, but obviously has some pitfalls.
I don’t mean disrespect to any link building professionals out there. My point here is that as happy in their job as people may be just now, I would imagine most would be early in their career and would expect to be in a more challenging position in 5 years time. In-house link building can’t offer that – agency link building can to a certain extent (larger team, more clients, more work, more experience).
If you can’t offer your employee a future with your company, how do you expect their function in the company to be part of an effective long term strategy?
Perhaps you will simply have a member of staff “do link building as well”?
Seriously? Then your chance of them have any link building experience is reduced and they won’t be focused on the task. Not a big deal – smaller companies commonly have staff members undertaking multiple roles and this can work very well. It also has the bonus that you can combine industry / company experience with the job role.
But it is a short term solution. Either their “other job” will take more of their time up or the link building will. At that point, your company needs to consider a longer term strategy – simply juggling link building isn’t giving it the importance it should have (if you are considering in-house link building in the first place).
The main problem is experience
Recruitment and staff retention concerns aside, what if your staff member screws up? Remember the hypochondriacs who took that mild headache and jumped aboard the “OMG BRAIN TUMOUR” ship? That’s your newbie link builder that is.
SEO is full of chains of thought that lead to the wrong conclusions. Ooh – I added more keywords to the page and it ranks better – let’s add even more! Shit, Google didn’t like that – I know, let’s make the text the same colour as the background. Nope, OK can we just push it off page with CSS? No? Damn…OK hire the consultant to fix this…
Everything in moderation – this applies to link building as well. Just because your new recruit knows “links = rankings” and has some previous experience on their CV, doesn’t mean they are fully versed in the more advanced areas of link building. Not applicable to all candidates of course, but there’s a reason that hiring someone full time may be less expensive than outsourcing!
So what does outsourcing your link building bring to the table?
Let’s run down the list:
- Experience – to do the right thing.
- Peace of mind – that the right thing is being done.
- Stability – agencies and professional link building services usually have teams so even if someone moves on or is off ill you still get the work done.
It seems like a short list doesn’t it? But that’s what you pay for and I don’t think I need to elaborate on this anymore.
Bottom line
If you are considering hiring someone to do your link building in-house, then consider this. If you don’t know enough about the job to do it yourself, then you don’t know enough to know how well they are doing their job or how much risk your business is at.
OK, that sounded way more melodramatic that it should – if things go wrong, it isn’t the end of the world. But as a conscious business owner / manager, you do need to know about the possible issues that you could be facing.Â
If I had to sit here and develop an ideal strategy for a large company / website, then of course that would include someone in-house, full time dealing with link building and related areas. However, the reality of business, careers and the SEO industry means that simply isn’t a practical solution for many companies.
Long term strategies NEED to be grounded in reality – otherwise they just become bollocks marketing documents with no real purpose.
MG
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Comments
First, I wanted to say that the use of profanity undercuts an otherwise very interesting article. I am over shit and fuck, they got old in college. They don’t have a place in the article unless they add something valuable. Here they don’t.
Second, I agree that in house linkbuilding is in general a mistake but there are just as many pitfalls in hiring an outside firm. They are never apples to apples, some will only make suggestions and will make your webmaster implement the links. Some will pull links that have no relationship to the business owners content. They aren’t listening and payng attention to the clients needs. I tell my clients I do NOT do SEO. I refer them on to professionals who focus on that. It is not part of my core competencies nor do I want to spend my time finding and negotiating linking for my clients. I would like to see another article from you on how a business owner can choose a reputable SEO/PPC/ linkbuilding professional and what results to expect. I would imagine it would be easy to get a page one ranking on “edible purple underware in boonton nj” But what kind of increase is normal to expect? What are the warning signs of a huckster? I am a Brand manager for my clients and as such I know a bit about quite a few things but this to me is still very new and there are no SOPs.
Thanks for a great article
I think its time to settle down a bit. Your whole post is a rant that is almost identical to any other “Why a consultant or agency is worth the fee” post. You don’t need to bombard my inbox with expletives to get across the point that work is slow around Christmas and you are looking for new projects. Take a month off and just relax.
Good article here. There are some things you can outsource pretty easily for linkbuilding, but the bread and butter of link building is getting those links where you need 1-on-1 contact. If there ever was a position for small SEO companies to get filled, a ‘link builder’ would be one of them. But you’re right in saying that it’s not really a ‘profession,’ as of yet.
Really nice article and well written in no nonsense English. You have hit the heads of so many nails here.
I think the main problem with outsourcing is cost. Lots of businesses think (oh ive got Joe over here, hes not doing much ill get him to do it, that will save some money).
If Joe’s is not doing much, then sack him.
You would not get Joe to build your house extension, so why let him build your links?
Cheers for the comments folks.
I realise the swearing isn’t entirely necessary but that’s just me! 
@ Paul, yes I agree totally that outsourcing has its own array of issues and I have been thinking about doing an article on that subject – it’s just a lot more work than this topic to cover with anything resembling authority. This article was more of a spur of the moment thing after I read the SEW article. As I said above, I do agree with the points on it – I just felt it had a little bit of a “this is definitely the right way” attitude to it.
The other issue with writing an outsourcing guide is the perspective – as a consultant it is quite difficult to be objective on that one (have you read some agency “buyers’ guides”? Lol they suck!). I do have a lot of experience working with small businesses though and have been notes on some of the common issues that have cropped up so will look at writing something up soon.
@ Shycon – yep, I agree although I think a small agency needs to reach a certain size (employees and clients) before it can really justify a permanent link builder. I worked at a large agency for a while and even with 25-30 staff and 250+ clients the link building fell to account managers – it was only later as the company expanded that they started to hire full time link builders. Although they aren’t the best example of how an agency should work – their overall model wasn’t great!
@ Mike – yeh that’s the real kicker. I do think some link building can be carried out in house by Joe who happens to be doing nothing. I just also think that Joe should perhaps be managed by the external consultant / agency to keep some quality control in there. Using your analogy – while Joe ain’t gonna build my house, I’m OK with him helping out the builders if it gets things moving quicker and better.
@ Graeme – no one is bombarding your crappy little anonymous posting bitchy comment Inbox. You chose to come here and read the article and you chose to comment. You’re more than welcome to comment positively or negatively here – I’m more than happy for that. But don’t come here and give me crap like you’re hard done by – like somehow this article nestled in the pits of the Internet has in some way taken on its own life and attacked you personally. Chill and take your attitude elsewhere.
ADDED: Whoops! Blogging on the road and had no idea SmallBusinessNewz picked up the article. So it was bombarded to your Inbox! My bad! But in fairness, it was done without my knowledge! Go moan at ientry about it – it’s not my fault!
So apologies – your Inobx isn’t crappy at all. I’m sure it’s very pretty.
ADDED MORE: If it makes you feel any better, I just checked my email and found 7 copies of my own article in my inbox lol!
MG
Really good article, and make me laugh as well. Good one mate!
Link building – not an easy job, its boring, its time consuming. Link builder definetly deserve to get high pay.
The notion that link building is fit for some sort of entry-level position is something that professionally, I have an issue with. I would never give some green fresh out of college candidate the link building portfolio, it’s (link building is) a little more complicate then that, especially in the realm of search 3.0.
hey Christian I’m not berating the link building are of our industry – all I’m saying is we have a long way to go before it is considered a career route. Specialising is a different kettle of fish but link building is an off shoot of seo which in itself is still a hard industry to break into.
My point is that a lot of link building is fobbed off on inexperienced staff and a lot of the job is fairly repetitive and mundane – that’s not suggesting that to be good at it doesn’t take a lot of skill and talent.
But with respect I’ve seen recent graduates being given link building responsibilites for big brands – yes that’s the failing of the agency not the employee or profession but it’s still a reality of the business.
Another reality is that not matter how complicated link building issues are, it is still relatively easy to summarize them so an inexperienced member of staff can carry out the job adequately well – well enough to price specialists out of the market in a significant amount of jobs.
I both believe and hope that situation will improve to the benefit of the industry in the future but that doesn’t change how things are now.
[...] Scott Boyd counters last week’s articles about outsourcing link building with his post about Why In-House Link Building isn’t always the most practical solution [...]
Really nice article I agreed with you. Iam in this field (link building) from last 3 years.
I tend to agree that in-house work is tedious, boring, and down-right malignant. But if you are starting out, it is useful to learn how to do it. Once you are past the entry phases, and a little money is coming in, I would agree that it would start to make sense to contract it out. Good post.
Excellent article. I wrote something similar (see the page my name links to) on the benefits of hiring a consultant’s services over doing things in house. I should be linking to this from SEO ROI by the end of the month (have to pass my exam first!) but in case you don’t see a link by Christmas, please do email me a reminder!
Cheers
Gab
Good post. Most of it is agreed, especially the area about hiring grads to do link building.
Additional comment, you can’t full teach link building, it comes natural.
Great point Dell and I think it also extends to SEO in general. You can learn the technical side of things (for example, the general concept of on page vs off page optimisation), but the application of that knowledge can vary a great deal from SEO to SEO.
Link building is becoming closer to PR (pardon the pun) these days – and that means an individual’s approach can make a lot of difference to the success of the campaign.
Great comments folks – keep em coming!
MG
[...] I also believe there’s a point of diminishing returns (aka “growing pains”). Finding experienced staff isn’t easy, particularly in a field where someone with a couple years experience can go it alone and make more [...]
[...] who wins it? Both the resources have their goods and bads. It really depends on you and the SEO Company for the type of work you want to do or require and [...]
“Link building is a boring, shit job on the whole. It can be very repetitive – lots of admin work involved. Generally an entry / graduate level position agency side.”
I disagree.
Maybe if you are a link spammer. If you are a proper link ‘builder’ you are probably more like a PR agent. For example, bloggers try to get on each other’s “blog rolls”. To get on the blog roll of a very high quality blog for your topic is probably not going to be an easy task.
Also (on the black hat front) you are ruling out the building of automated content generators link farms. This is noit as easy as some people probably think it is and requires considerable server side scripting knowledge.
Observation #3 – alot of the value you will actually get from an SEO campaign comes more from the link building, rather than the consulting. Since we work on an economy where greater supply and not enough demand means higher pay, AND because an SEO firm that is better at link building will generally do better in business. In summary, as much as people think link building is unskilled labour, it is not. If you do think this, you should probably just use a bot instead.
Hi D-SEO and thanks for dropping by.
While I agree that there are PR-esque elements to link building work, I would argue they would be better accomplished by a PR professional rather than a “link builder” (a term which can apply to both an experienced SEO and an unskilled graduate at the same time, depending on how they want to spin it).
At least with PR professionals you can expect a minimum amount of skills and experience – a degree, press contacts and so on. Like you said, link building for a high profile blog is very different to server side scripting knowledge.
It’s like the difference between “PR professionals” (i.e. consultants and agency staff) and “PR reps” (ticket touts for bars). They both may “work in PR” but their skills and experience are very different.
I’m not saying link building is unskilled labour – I’m just saying it can be (and is quite often) due to the nature of the industry.
Scott
You make some great points. I think that far too many people assume they know about SEO because they read a few articles or did a course or 2. I have been in SEO for 5 years and I am still learning! The thing about SEO and link building is that the industry is constantly changing and so are the search engine algorithms. There will always be the simple link exchanges that will work to a degree, but you cannot use one or 2 proven methods, because one day Google may decide that one type of link is no longer important, or that too many links too fast is spam, and if you have done either of these then there go your rankings, instantly!
That’s why it is essential to get the right people to do the link building for you. No one who is successful in business really has the time to build links themselves because, as you mentioned, it is time consuming and redundant, but you have to know what is right and what is wrong so you can identify the right people when you find them. Outsourcing is really the only option when it comes to large companies, but more and more developing countries are attracting this type of work because of the low costs, but you get what you pay for and in most cases they will have trouble doing it right. So yes we all need to outsource this, but make sure you find capable link builders.
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