How to Outsource Link Building: Cut Costs, Scale Faster, and Get Better Results

This guide explains how to do it safely and effectively. Learn what to expect from a reliable partner, how to spot red flags early, and what KPIs prove value. We’ll help you make smarter choices, avoid wasted budget, and finally get links that work.

Outsourced Link Building Possibilities

According to our SEO stats, 92% of marketing specialists agree that link building will remain one of the top ranking factors over the next five years. And yet, almost 69% of companies still try to manage external linking campaigns within their own teams. But is that really the most efficient way forward?

In fact, outsourcing link building is quite often more effective than hiring and training an in-house team, especially for small and mid-sized companies. Below, we break down the key advantages that make this approach worth considering.

Lower Cost of Link Building

When you first see that the cost of a quality backlink from an agency starts at $300, it’s easy to assume that building links internally must be more affordable. But let’s test the logic with some basic numbers!

According to Glassdoor, the average salary for a full-time link builder in the US is around $80,000 per year. Add taxes, benefits, and workspace, and the total cost climbs closer to $90–100K annually.

Now, consider the output. Authority Hacker reports that 73.5% of link builders generate fewer than 10 links per month. Even if your hire delivers 10 high-quality placements monthly, that’s 120 links per year. That puts the base cost per link at approximately $667.

However, in reality, many in-house link builders also need a budget for content creation, outreach incentives, and occasional paid placements. Which means your real cost per backlink could be much higher. So, against the full cost of doing it yourself, a $300 agency placement starts to look more affordable.

Delegating to a link building outsource company eliminates overhead and shifts the focus to results. You only pay for what moves your search engine rankings forward, without managing hiring, training, or team churn.

Access to Specialized Expertise

One of the biggest benefits of outsource link building is that it connects you with teams that already have strong, working relationships with site owners across different industries. But when you hire in-house, even experienced link builders rarely bring their own outreach lists. Most contact databases are owned by the company, protected by NDAs, and built over time (so prior experience doesn’t mean they can reuse old contacts).

That means you’ll be starting from scratch. You’ll need to test markets, collect new contacts, and build trust with site owners step by step. Outsourcing saves you that time. Established link building teams already have vetted lists, proven outreach flows, and working relationships across industries.

More importantly, you get specialized expertise that goes far beyond contacts. These teams know how to adapt link building strategies to niche industries, handle region-specific outreach challenges, and avoid mistakes that could hurt your domain. Instead of trial and error, you get execution that’s informed by years of focused experience.

Professional Tools Included

Good authority link development requires a tech stack that’s expensive to maintain (from Ahrefs and Pitchbox to email outreach tools and CRM systems). Just consider the cost of Ahrefs alone: the Standard plan is $249 per month (since the Lite plan doesn’t give you access to the tools you actually need for link building). Add Pitchbox at $165 for the basic plan, Semrush at $249.95, and tools like Hunter.io or NeverBounce for email verification. In total, you can easily spend over $1,000 per month just on software.

Agencies already have the best SEO tools and know how to use them effectively. You get the benefit without extra subscriptions.

Easier Scaling

Need 10 links this month but 30 next quarter? Outsourcing gives you flexibility. Agencies can adjust the volume of work depending on your goals, which is much harder with a fixed team size and bandwidth.

More Diversity in Link Types

When most of your backlinks follow the same pattern, it signals to Google that your site might not be earning links organically. It can also suggest that your overall content and outreach strategy lacks variety.

This often happens when reference building is handled in-house. Internal teams tend to rely on familiar formats and sources. Agencies, by contrast, can offer a more diverse link profile. Guest posts, niche edits, digital PR mentions, local citations, all from different domains and regions. That helps with both SEO performance and risk management.

Niche and Regional Precision

If you’re working in legal, SaaS, or healthcare, or trying to rank at the top of search engine results pages in markets like Spain or the UAE, you need someone who actually understands how those spaces work. Outsource SEO teams already have vetted lists and local know-how, which means fewer mistakes and better results.

Outsource Link Building Best Practices

Knowing how to outsource link building the right way is what separates rankings from regrets. This section shows you what to look for, what to avoid, and how to make every dollar count.

Basic SEO: Prepare a Base for Resultative Link Building

You can build dozens of links, but if the page is slow, unindexable, or filled with weak content, none of them will help. Before you even think about outreach, make sure the foundation is solid. Here’s what we recommend fixing first.

Optimize on-page SEO

Google doesn’t guess what your page is about. It relies on specific on-page signals to classify and evaluate it. These elements need to be in place:

• Title tag: Include the target query and match the search intent.
• Meta description: Write a clear summary that helps drive clicks.
• H1 to H3: Use one H1 per page, then structure the rest in order.
• Alt text: Describe each image in plain language that supports the topic.

These signals help search engines understand how the page fits into a query. Without them, references will have limited impact.

Produce Quality Content

Not every page is equally linkable. Some formats attract high-quality backlinks naturally, while others require heavy outreach. Research studies, visual data, tools, and comparison pages tend to earn references on their own. Pages with weak or overly commercial content rarely get mentioned unless you push hard.

Just compare Backlinko’s very useful ranking factors study with their backlink checker tool page. The first earned thousands of dofollow links organically. The second works as a free tool but redirects users to Semrush after a few checks. It has significantly fewer referring domains.

Effective link acquisition starts with choosing the right content to promote. You should match each asset to the query intent and the funnel stage. Remember, strong content makes a professional’s job easier. On the other hand, weak content forces them to beg for links no one wants to give.

Optimize for Mobile Performance and Technical Health

Google expects pages to load quickly, work smoothly on mobile, and offer a clean crawl path. So, before launching a link building campaign, check for these basic performance issues:

• Page speed: Test with PageSpeed Insights and fix slow-loading assets.
• Broken links: Identify dead internal or external links using Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, or link building experts who have access to those tools.
• Mobile usability: Make sure the layout and functionality work across devices. Since July 2024, Google ranks and indexes pages based on their mobile version only because over 60% of global traffic now comes from smartphones.

If the site is slow, broken, or unreadable on mobile, Google may not even index the page. And if it isn’t indexed or fully usable, backlinks won’t help it rank.

Make Sure Google Can Access Your Pages

To finish preparing your site for building links,  it’s time to go beyond the basics and address the technical signals that affect discoverability. Here’s what to focus on:

• Sitemap: Submit an up-to-date XML sitemap through Google Search Console.
• robots.txt: Make sure important pages aren’t blocked from crawling.
• Indexability: Check that pages return a 200 status and don’t have a noindex tag.

This is a technical area that many teams skip or mismanage. If you’re unsure, it’s worth delegating this to a link building agency that knows how to handle it properly.

Expert Link Acquisition for Your Website

Outsource link building process to a team that brings experience, strategy, and quality control. With SeoProfy, every campaign includes:

• Manual outreach with strategic follow-up
• Clean backlinks that support rankings and trust
• Weekly progress updates

Talk to a link strategist

Define Clear Link Building Goals

To get you results, the link building company needs to know what outcome you expect. You should set specific, measurable objectives, such as increasing referring domains to priority URLs, improving visibility for mid-funnel queries, etc. Here’s the contrast between a vague request and a goal that actually helps the agency do its job:

Weak goal → Get more links → Says nothing about where, why, or how those backlinks should help.

Strong goal → Secure 30 referring domains to our comparison pages to support mid-funnel traffic → Gives clear direction and lets the link building agency choose the right tactics.

A generic brief leads to generic results. The clearer your objective, the easier it is to track progress and prove ROI.

Select Link Building Strategies Aligned with Your SEO Goals

The agency won’t guess which strategies fit your business. They’ll rely on the aims you set. Your job is to make sure the approach they propose actually supports them.

For example:

• If the focus is on ranking commercial pages, they may suggest link insertions or contextual outreach.
• When you’re building a long-term website’s reputation, they might prioritize content assets and digital PR.
• In case you need faster gains, they could include unlinked mentions or broken link recovery.

So, if you outsource link building tasks, make sure the agency explains why they chose a specific mix of tactics. If their plan isn’t clearly tied to your goals, you risk spending your budget on backlinks that bring little SEO value.

Choose the Right Link Building Partner Carefully

The success of your campaign depends on who you hire. Well-structured outsource link building strategies can fail if the agency cuts corners or doesn’t understand your industry.

So, do your homework:

First, study their website and blog to see which industries they focus on. Agencies tend to have stronger networks in niches they work with regularly. If your niche matches their portfolio, they’re more likely to have relevant contacts and outreach data.

Use SEO tools to verify the agency’s case studies. Check real rankings, backlink profiles, and referring domains. If you are not ready to invest in paid tools, Semrush offers 10 free queries per day that are enough for basic checks.

Review the types of backlinks they build for their own site. If they don’t invest in their own authority, they won’t build yours either. If you have access to Ahrefs, check their referring domains, anchor texts, and link velocity. If not, you can go back to Semrush for a quick overview of their backlink profile using the free version.

Look for client reviews on Clutch, Upwork, or G2. Focus on detailed feedback and long-term partnerships, not just high star ratings.

Good link building is complex and takes time. In SEO, it’s rarely possible to promise outcomes with certainty. If someone makes it sound predictable, they’re either not being honest or skipping the hard parts.

Understand What Link Quality Really Means & Avoid Shortcuts

Sometimes you’ll come across offers for dozens of backlinks at surprisingly low prices. If you’ve ever had a LinkedIn profile, you’ve probably received messages offering “high DA links” for next to nothing. If you’ve browsed freelancer sites like Fiverr or PeoplePerHour, you’ve seen ads promising 10 links for $20. Tempting?

Many of these offers rely on shortcuts like automated spam, irrelevant directories, expired domains, or networks of fake sites with no real traffic. This can result in ranking drops, visibility issues, or even your website not showing up on Google search results at all.

So, instead of building new links, you’ll end up hiring experts to disavow “bad” ones. And that’s neither quick nor simple. In one of our case studies, we shared how we handled this process for a client step by step, showing how low-quality placements can accumulate and what it takes to clean them up.

So, there’s a clear difference between reliable link building and manipulation (“white hat” and “black hat” practices). One earns trust. The other creates risk.

Monitor and Track the Results

Even if you delegate link building, you still need a clear view of what is happening and how it affects your site. There are three ways to stay informed:

1. Track key metrics yourself
2. Review regular reports from your agency or freelancer
3. Combine both

All three options require clarity on what to track. Key indicators include:

• Referring domains to your target pages
• Quality and relevance of linking domains
• Anchor text breakdown
• Organic rankings for relevant keywords
• Traffic growth to the linked pages

If you rely on reports, make sure these metrics are included. You do not need to manage every detail, but asking for this level of clarity is standard.

Once you have this visibility, use it to make better decisions. If a specific type of page consistently gains rankings and traffic after being linked, prioritize that format in future successful campaigns. If references come from repetitive spammy sites, talk to your provider and adjust the outreach strategy.

For hands-on SEO measuring, use tools like Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Search Console. Ahrefs gives a clear view of new referring domains and backlink quality. Semrush helps track ranking progress. Google Search Console shows how the linked pages are performing in terms of visibility and clicks.

Link building is not a set-and-forget process. Ongoing feedback helps improve focus, avoid wasted effort, and keep the campaign aligned with real business goals, such as qualified traffic, lead growth, or visibility in the right market.

Cost Considerations for Outsourced Link Building

So, you’ve decided to outsource SEO link building. Now come the questions that concern every business owner: “How much will it cost, and what factors drive the price?” Let’s break it down.

What Influences Cost?

Outsourced link building is not a flat-rate service. Costs vary based on the scope, quality expectations, and technical depth of the campaign. Here is what drives SEO pricing in real projects.

Link Quality and Authority

The number and quality of links are the most obvious factors. High-authority placements on trusted sites are harder to secure and take more time. For example, an agency may use services like HARO to get a backlink from a source with a strong site’s authority. Getting featured on a site like Forbes can take months and hundreds of pitches before anything lands. The more competitive the niche, the more link building efforts it takes to get relevant publishers to engage.

Content Requirements

Content quality also plays a role. Some references can be placed with short blurbs, but valuable editorial placements often require full-length articles written by specialists. For example, imagine how strong your copy needs to be for a site like Business Insider to accept it. If the text involves original research, data visualizations, or custom assets, that increases the total investment. One well-produced article can cost several hundred dollars.

Outreach Workload

Outreach complexity adds labor costs. Link building isn’t just sending one email and getting a reply. It includes prospect research, qualification, writing custom pitches, handling follow-ups, and maintaining relationships. Each of these steps takes time, and agencies may spend dozens of hours building and managing outreach pipelines for a single project.

Project Strategy and Account Management

Finally, campaign strategy, communication, and reporting are all part of the service. That includes identifying targets, mapping keywords to content, negotiating placements, and keeping reporting structured. In some cases, there are also placement fees for highly competitive sites with strict editorial standards or even for mid-traffic sites that just sell links.

What Does Outsourced Link Building Actually Cost?

Pricing models vary, but most campaigns fall into a few predictable ranges. Here’s what to expect.

Freelancers often charge between $200 and $1,000 per month. These rates may seem attractive for small budgets, but results can be inconsistent. Some rely on low-quality link exchanges or directories that do more harm than good.

On top of that, freelancers often fake their reputation. There are entire Facebook groups where people sell fake Fiverr/PeoplePerHour reviews for just a few dollars. This makes it difficult to assess quality before committing to a partnership.

Most of the best link building agencies usually charge between $2,000 and $10,000 per month. The final number depends on reference quality, industry competitiveness, and how many links are built monthly. For example, a $4,000 campaign may include six to eight editorial placements from relevant sites with real traffic.

Some providers charge per link. Placements on websites with high domain authority typically cost between $300 and $700 each. Lower rates are possible, but they usually mean weaker backlinks from low-traffic sources.

To make this concrete, let’s say a mid-sized SaaS brand wants 10 contextual, not spammy links per month from blogs in its niche, with all outreach and writing handled by an agency. A realistic monthly budget would fall between $3,500 and $5,500, depending on the quality of placements and whether custom content for guest blogging is included.

The more competitive your niche and the stricter your quality requirements, the higher the investment. But high-quality links are what drive long-term SEO goals. Сutting corners here usually means paying twice later.

Final Thoughts on Outsourcing Link Building

At first glance, choosing a partner to outsource building backlinks seems simple. Open Clutch and you’ll find thousands of options. But the reality is more complex. Behind the glossy profiles and five-star reviews lie huge differences in quality, strategy, and long-term value.

That’s why understanding the best practices for outsource link building is so important. You need more than just a list of backlinks. You need an SEO strategy aligned with your goals, transparent reporting, and a team that knows how to build lasting website authority.

If your aim is to increase organic traffic, investing in the right link building outsource company will save you time, protect your domain, and drive real results. At SeoProfy, we’ve been delivering white hat, data-backed external linking campaigns for over a decade. Our team plans around your goals, works transparently, and builds backlinks that help your site grow in search.

Want to see what that looks like in practice? Let’s talk.

Author

Andrew Shum

Andrew is the Head of SEO at SeoProfy, leading a team of more than 20 experienced SEO specialists. He has been involved in search engine optimization and digital marketing since 2016, gaining hands-on experience across various niches and regions. Andrew possesses strong analytical and strategic skills, particularly in planning SEO strategies for highly competitive projects.