If you own a website or blog and use some form of content marketing to make money on the web, you have probably heard about how search engines rank content in various niches.

You have heard about the ranking factors they take into consideration when ranking different pages in their search results pages. And yes, they look at the quality of every piece of content they rank. After that they will often look at other things such as the number of incoming links a web page has.

That is why you will find even new pages on sites with high domain authority ranking highly compared to similar pages (on low domain authority sites) that have been online for awhile.

And when you go online to look for help with link building, you will always find that the businesses servicing website owners usually charge their clients more money to get them links from high authority sites. You can see this on sites owned by:

• SEO agencies
• Content marketing agencies
• Digital marketing agencies

Some people go the agency route to get links and content while there are others who assemble their own team to help them with their link building campaign. They sometimes use their staff, but oftentimes, they’ll just hire freelancers online.

Why hire someone to build links for your website / blog

Usually, you will hire someone to build links to your website / blog in order to:

To increase your rankings in page one. To go from say position ten on the SERPs (search engine results pages) to position 9, 8, 7, 5, 4 and eventually 3, 2 then 1. The higher up you go on page one, the more links you will often require. So, even if you manage to get a post to page one on search, you might want to get someone to build those extra links so you can move quickly up to the top without spending extra time emailing other webmasters to ask if they can link to you.

To go from page 2 to page 1. For example to go from the top of page two to bottom of page one for your target search term. If you want to make the move from page two to page one fast, you might want to get a link builder. Sometimes adding just 10 to 20 links can accelerate this process – and make something that could have taken many months (without links) take just a few weeks.

To get into the top 100 results on Google Search. Yes, if you write good content on most topics, you will often rank in the top 100 without building any links. But when ranking a page just in the top 100 is taking too long, you can hire someone to help you go under 100, then under 50, under 25 then onto page 2 and eventually to page 1.

Before they start a link building campaign, the freelancer you hire can help you with basics like:

Fixing your broken links internally. They can remove links entirely or replace the dead links with other links to pages and posts on your site or to your homepage.

Optimizing your blog post titles. If for example you published a post but didn’t do a lot of keyword research when coming up with the title, they can make some changes here. And little tweaks like these usually does a lot of wonders for site owners.

Adding subheadings to posts to add ‘Jump to section’ links on your search results. You have seen those results on Google where you can click on the main title or click on a subheading used in the post? Well, the freelancer you hire can help you take advantage of this by adding table of contents to your pillar posts.

Checking if the content you want to build links to is indexed in Google Search Console. This is also another thing the freelancer can do for you before they start building links for you. It is even more important that they request indexing for a post that is already indexed on Google, if they make changes to the headline, subheadings and a few paragraphs.

Once your on-page SEO is taken care of, the freelancer you hire for your link building can

Start getting you links from other blogs and websites out there. Some of the things they can help you with include:

Sending outreach emails. So, the emails where they introduce themselves (or you) and make a pitch that can lead to them getting a link. Some people usually send more than one email when trying to get a link.

In the first email they may introduce themselves, talk about what they do (shared interests), and make a suggestion (that could lead to them getting a link). So, the suggestion could be them saying (to the person they are reaching out to) that they have an additional resource the person might want to take a look at (mention in a particular post they have already published).

Then they will send a second email with a link (to your post) to get you the links you want. Some link builders also just send one email. I have seen a Hubspot email template that goes straight to the point – saying they have an awesome resource (including the URL to the resource) and just asking a webmaster to take a look at the resource and link to it.

So, it is up to you to agree with the freelancer you hire on which approach to take. But as they usually say, do a lot of tests….then stick to what works, what yields the best results for your business.

Writing content such as guest posts. For the websites that won’t give you a link unless you write a piece of content for them, the freelancer you hire can pitch other sites on your behalf, write a guest post, submit it and get you links that way.

So, make sure you get someone who can write well (or hire someone separate for your content creation needs if you don’t want the link builder to get sidetracked with research and writing).

You can ask the freelancer you hire to build links to:

Your domain / homepage. For example using brand keywords like Niabusiness, Niabusiness Kenya, Niabusiness Classifieds or Niabusiness Blog if I were hiring a link builder for this site.

An article on your site that is steadily bringing leads. You can give pages that already doing well on your site a little boost by building 10, 20 or 30 links to them.

A review article on your niche site bringing affiliate income. If there are people out there who buy link building packages (promising 30 to 40 links sometimes) for their niche sites, you can get the freelancer you hire to help you so the same without relying on agencies.

The process of hiring a freelancer on Niabusiness to help you with your link building

To hire someone to help you build links, go to the Outreach, Link Building & SEO category on Niabusiness.com Classifieds page.

Browse through the listings and reply to some of the ad listings you like.

Once a freelancer messages you back, give them details about the link building campaign you want to roll out.

Tell them about your niche, site’s current domain rating / authority, how many links you want, where you currently rank for the search terms you want to get more organic search traffic from, your budget, any links you have built to the page and other details that can help them understand what you are trying to achieve.

Ask them about their experience. See if you would like to work with them by looking at some of the projects they have worked on.

Agree on milestones they will have to hit. Then outsource the work to them.

Pay them for the service they deliver.

If you don’t find what you are looking for in the Link Building category, place your own ad on Niabusiness for free (about what you need help with) and have freelancers contact you.

Best practices when building links

Do some analysis. Check the keyword difficulty scores of the search terms / keywords you want to rank for using tools such as Ahrefs, KWFinder, SEMRush or UberSuggest. A keyword tool like Ahrefs will usually tell you the approximate number of links you need to get your blog post / webpage to rank on page 1 of Google.

Focus on building links to one or two URLs / destination (s) on your site. Instead of spreading your efforts on a large number of posts, ask the person you hire to just focus on one or two pages / blog posts. And to rank those highly before you start working on pushing other pages up the SERPs.