Evaluation Criteria For Link Building
The independent authority on search vendors, topseos.com, evaluates and ranks the best link building companies in the industry. Through in-depth company analysis, review of work completed, and client evaluation, topseos puts together a list of the top companies in the industry. Our analysis delves into a company’s business practices and compares them against industry standards to ensure that work is quality. The real indicator of a business, however, comes through client evaluation. topseos often times contacts clients about their overall experiences with the company as well as details about the processes, reporting methods, and success of the campaigns.
topseos identified five key areas when it comes to link building services: assessment, identification, analysis, acquisition, and reporting.
The assessment is the first aspect of link building that is evaluated. What processes does the vendor have in place in order to determine the link quality of the client’s site? Does the vendor have any proprietary tools in order to determine the link quality?
Next we assess the vendor’s ability to identify sites that they can post quality incoming links for their clients. Are the sites that are being identified industry specific to their clients? How many outbound links does the potential site already have?
Once sites have been identified, our research team then review the vendor’s analysis process. Are they taking into account the target market of their client? Another factor is the link quality. What sort of value will the link provide to the site? How does the vendor prioritize the sites to target?
We then analyze the acquisition processes of the vendor. This aspect of the evaluation analyzes the ability of the company to provide their clients with the most value in acquiring links. This includes an evaluation of the actual links obtained whether through paid advertising, link posting in comments, or other various means of link building.
The last important area identified by topseos is reporting. Evaluation of reporting methods includes an analysis of the actual reports given to clients to determine effectiveness and clarity. Have recommendations been provided to the client for their next steps?
A few questions that we may ask clients of link popularity firms in the course of our evaluation process are:
General Queries:
- What type of needs analysis was conducted before work initiated?
- What type of a ROI were you anticipating, what was achieved and in what time frame?
- What would be 3 things you would change about your experience?
- What was your total investment?
- Rate your overall experience (1-10; 10 being the highest).
Project Specific Queries:
- What is the average quantity and quality (page rank) of incoming links achieved to date?
- What activities have been put into place to seek out new links?
- How is the link popularity campaign being measured for success?
- Are there any link popularity software applications put into place? If so, which ones?
- How many keywords and which keywords are being targeted in your link popularity campaigns?
