In this guide, we're going to cover everything white label link building, including:
- What it actually is
- How it works
- Why it makes sense
If you're already familiar with regular link building, go ahead and skip to this section.
If not, let's get right into it.
What Is Link Building?
Starting off with the basics, let's first cover what 'link building' actually is.
Link building is where links are 'built' between websites, a link here being a hyperlink from one website to another. This, for example, is a link to our homepage - a link in the context of link building is where one website links to another.
When I go through examples of types of links you'll see what I mean by 'built', just stick with me for a few minutes.
Why Links Are Important
Links have always been a ranking factor on Google, and the more quality backlinks you have, the higher your website will rank.
More specifically, links pass 'link equity' to the linked page. Link equity - also known as link juice - is a very popular SEO topic, and in general, more link equity (links pointing to a page) means it will rank more highly for its top terms.
This means that for SEO, link building is a fundamental part of most strategies to get a websites to rank more highly.
Pretty much every SEO agency and freelancer will build links in some capacity.
Types Of Links That Are Built
There are a lot of different types of links, but fewer that are 'built.' In theory, all backlinks should be natural.
Natural links are when one website links to another because they have genuinely good content, and they want to direct their readers to the site for a specific reason. For example, directing your readers to a case study or a piece of original research.
As websites grow and attract more organic traffic, they attract natural links a lot more often.
So, what do I mean when I say 'built'? I mean links that can be produced consistently by various methods (see examples below).
It wouldn't be much of an SEO service if you couldn't actually create links to client websites consistently.
Guest Posts
Guest posts are when one author writes a guest article on another, including somewhere in the content a backlink to their own website.
This has long been a practice in the SEO world, and today's guest posts look a little different than what they used to.
Previously, a guest post would include a detailed author profile of the guest contributor, with clear indications that the article was submitted from a third party.
Nowadays, it is becoming less and less common to have 'obvious' guest posts.
A lot of guest posts you'll see now are impossible to tell apart from a 'normal' article that any website would publish. For example, how do you know I actually wrote this article, and not someone else who paid for an article on this site?
Obviously we don't sell links here, but a lot of websites do - thousands, in fact.
How Are Guest Posts Built?
The process of building a guest post link is very simple in theory, but a massive pain in practice.
We do a lot of guest posts for clients, so here's the Tl.Dr of how they're built:
- Build a list of websites that are likely to sell guest posts, filtered by niche and sorted by competitor analysis on a tool like Ahrefs
- Reach out to these sites using a custom outreach sequence or manual emails
- Wait for responses, negotiate prices, send content
- Get the link published
And that's pretty much it.
The secret here is to build up a vast database of connections, and make sure that the websites are high quality.
We'll cover what a good backlink is soon, don't worry, for now let's focus on learning the types of links.
Link Insertions
Link insertions (also known as niche edits) are essentially the same as a guest post, but a link is inserted into an existing article rather than in a new article.
Link insertions are a lot sneakier than guest posts, although the gap is closing these days, with 'stealth' guest posts becoming common.
A lot of people like link insertions because you can choose a specific page for the link - this opens up strategic placement for pages with more referring URLs, topical relevancy, and so on.
On the flip side, many SEOs like guest posts because the links are part of completely new posts, rather than additions to old posts.
Digital PR
Digital PR is a pretty broad term, but these are typically links from large news or authority sites that are much harder to build than your typical guest posts.
There are many ways to build these links, but let's look at the most common.
Journalistic Outreach
One of the most common ways to get digital PR-type links is to answer queries from journalists who are writing stories for large publications and looking for expert insight.
This is a lot more common than you would think, so much so that multiple platforms are built for this very purpose.
Examples include HARO (now CisionOne) and Qwoted.
These links tend to be a mix of do follow and no follow, and are mostly going to point toward the home page.
Viral Digital PR
Viral digital PR is when a story, case study, etc goes viral and attracts lots of links from larger sites who want to cover the story.
This one is a lot harder to replicate, but can have very positive results if done properly.
Press Release
The last common type of 'digital PR' is press releases.
These are a lot easier to understand and also quite easy to replicate, as this is usually done as a paid service. Common press release include mergers, acquisitions, new business announcements, and so on.
Citations/Directory Links
The last type of link we're going to cover is citations or directory links.
Directory links are simply links on directory websites - the yellow pages is one of the most common examples of this. On these types of sites, you list your company name, address, details, website (this is where the link usually comes in), and so on.
A lot of these are free, and the more premium options with higher traffic tend to be paid.
These are super easy to replicate and very common for local websites. In fact, directory links are one of the key components of a local SEO strategy.
Types Of Hyperlinks (Dofollow/Nofollow, Sponsored)
A 'normal' link is dofollow - these type of links pass authority (link equity or juice) to the target website.
Nofollow links are hyperlinks that include a rel="nofollow" attribute in their HTML code, and these do not pass on link equity or juice.
Sponsored links include a rel="sponsored" attribute in their HTML code, and are used to indidicate if the target page has sponsored you to link to them.
In the link building world, dofollow links are the gold standard.
As we mentioned with digital PR-type links, lots of these tend to be nofollow, which is not ideal. Guest posts and link insertions, however, should always be dofollow, especially if you are paying for the link and negotiating the placement with the webmaster.
Benefits Of Link Building
Every single day there are likely tens of thousands of paid links being built between websites, all of which are either paid for or exchanged between websites - but why is this the case?
Rankings & Increased Traffic
The whole point of building links is to increase your keyword rankings, traffic, and ultimately lead gen/sales for your business.
When done correctly, link building facilitates all of this. Whether you run an ecommerce site and want to rank for your top products, or you run an SEO agency and want to generate leads, the theory is the same.
Of course, this also means when done incorrectly link building can lead to disastrous results for you or your clients sites, but more on the risks shortly.
Brand Recognition
Another benefit of link building, especially digital PR-type links, is brand recognition.
Getting your brand covered positively on large websites that receive hundreds of thousands or even millions of traffic per month is very underrated.
What Are The Risks Of Link Building?
Link building can be very risky if you don't know what you're doing.
Google Penalities
The most common risk of link building is being penalized by Google, either through a manual penalty or algorithmically.
Manual Penalties
There are many Google manual penalties which you can find here, and the one we're talking about here is 'unnatural links to your site.
This happens when Google notices a trend of unnatural links pointing to your site, which are very often paid links that are built in an unnatural way.
In my experience, these tend to be when exact anchor text is overused, and when very low-quality websites are used to link.
Algorithmic Penalties
Every few months, Google releases core updates or smaller updates to their algorithm.
These updates shift the ranking position of most websites, and can lead to either gains or losses of traffic across industries.
When these updates occur, some sites can be hit by an algorithmic penalty due to spammy links. This is not as serious as a manual penalty, but it can still lead to a 20-80% drop in traffic overnight.
You can see when the next core update will hit by checking this page on Google.
What Is A 'Good Quality' Link?
A 'good quality link' can vary depending on who you're talking with, as some SEOs are a lot more aggressive than others when it comes to building backlinks.
We build hundreds of links per month for clients, so we have a pretty good idea of some metrics to use to identify a high quality link:
- Consistent organic traffic from a tier one country (US, UK, Can, Aus, etc)
- Target website ranks for valuable keywords
- Niche relevancy
- No casino/adult/CBD/etc outbound anchors
- Not openly selling links
All of these can be taken as a solid starting point.
From there, it's all about analyzing each website on a one-to-one basis.
Bear in mind that the majority of digital PR links easily meet the 'high quality' requirement, but they also mostly build links to the home page (with a lot of no follow attributes), so they are not as effective on smaller-scale SEO campaigns.
What Is White Label Link Building?
Okay, now we're up to speed on link building, let's see how white label link building works.
White label link building is simply where a third party - this could be a freelancer, white label SEO agency like GrubSEO, or another vendor - builds links and you/your agency takes credit.
Let's drive this home with a real example.
An Example Of White Label SEO Link Building
Imagine you run a digital marketing agency and provide paid ads for clients.
One of your clients gets in touch about their SEO and wants to invest in their organic traffic. At this stage you have a few options:
- Fulfill the service yourself
- Hire a white label partner to handle it for you
- Refer them to a partner
If you decide option 2, you'll work under a white label agreement where the third party does the SEO (a big part of this is typically link building) and you deliver the work to them as your own, and profit the difference.
Link building is very often a deliverable here, as it's a big part of SEO.
At GrubSEO, we deliver dozens of white label link building projects every month, but how does this process actually work?
How Does White Label Link Building Work?
The process of white label link building can be complicated, depending on the type of links being built and the goals for the client in question.
At GrubSEO, we typically offer guest posts, link insertions, and citations.
White Label Guest Posts & Link Insertions
White label guest posts and link insertions are the bread and butter of our off-page white label SEO offerings.
We work with thousands of webmasters to secure links for your clients that actually move the needle based on our insight into managing hundreds of links every month.
These are priced very competitively, so they can be built for your clients at a good margin.
White Label Citations
We also do white label citation building.
These links are super cheap, but they are a foundation for any local SEO project or client. The secret to these links is maintaining consistency with NAP, and making sure that all platforms are covered by doing competitor and niche analysis.
Get In Touch
If you have clients who could benefit from white label SEO, then check out our white label SEO services page.
You can also book a call with our team directly via our contact page.
