Link building is something that we all have to do if we have a website. Otherwise, you're going to struggle to rank on the search engines. All those links that come to your site are seen as a vote of confidence by Google and the other search engines. The more you have, the more reputation your site has, and the better it ranks overall. You might have heard some people say that you need to add some good content, which will naturally attract links. But if you've ever run a website and you publish good content, you'll know that it's not always as easy as that.
The harsh truth about the link-building process
You do need to get your content out there somehow. You do need to start the ball rolling by creating a few links yourself. But the problem is that link building it's not very easy. It's not easy at all. Of course, people say we do some outreach. They advise you to do some outreach. To get in touch with other sites, offer them a guest post, and that's a good way of building links. Again, it's not as easy as that. You have to reach out to hundreds of sites to get one or two links. Then you need to write some content, and sometimes the sites want money for the guest post. It's just a long, laborious process, and you get no guarantee of getting any links from anyway.
Other techniques I've heard are that you go on Google and search for sites in your niche that have a “write for us” page. This is something that I've done in the past, and it was a long process. And I ended up having to pay for that link anyway. I've also heard from some experts in this area that Google devalues links from sites with a “Write for Us” page. That means those links might not even be worth the effort anyway. So, what's the solution?
Outsourcing Link building
One very appealing solution is to outsource the entire process. Pay another company to build the links for you. But that also has its risks. You don't want to pay for some dodgy links from a Private Blog Network (PBN) or something like that. That's just going to harm your site. It may benefit your site in the short term. But it's certainly not a long term strategy. You also don't want to buy text links off random sites in the sidebar, or maybe they've got some page where they sell links. You don't want any of that either. The only thing you want is a guest posting service. In that case, a company creates content for you, and then they offer other sites content and hopefully, you get some links.
SEO link building company – Stan Ventures
Stan Ventures is an SEO company. I've been talking to them quite a bit. And because they're in India, they are very well priced. Also, they are very efficient and deliver everything they say they're going to deliver on time and budget. I'd heard about Stan Ventures from Doug Cunnington, the friend of the channel Doug.
We were talking one evening, and he mentioned that he'd been doing some stuff with them and that he thought the links were pretty good. They offered me some links to try out, and after I test them, they wanted a video about them. I said that's fine. I let them know that I'm very honest about the stuff that I review. And if they're no good, then that's what I'll make a video about. Of course, if they're good, then I'll also make a video about that. They were confident that their links would be good. And here it is. I'm going to explain what they did for me. I'll show you the links that they created. I'm going to show you the content they created and what happened to the site after building the links. They also built links to wheelalong.co.uk, one of my other affiliate marketing case study sites.
More about the acquired links
Let me go into the details on precisely what Stan Ventures did for me. As I said, they offered me these services for free, but that has not skewed my opinion of them. I'm completely honest in terms of what happened and the effect that it had on my site. Back in November, they built three links for me. And they promised me one link, which was Domain Authority 30. As you know, the higher the number, the more powerful website is. In theory, the more effect a link from that domain would have on a site. They offered me one DA 30, one DA 40, and they offered me one DA 50.
I asked them to build links to the post about powered wheelbarrows. I thought that would be a good one to do because the products are very high value. You only need to sell one or two powered wheelbarrows, and you're going to earn quite a nice commission from Amazon. Before they did any link building, I wasn't ranking for any powered wheelbarrow related terms. That article wasn't getting any traffic. It was from a standing start, and I thought it'd be a good thing to test.
Here are the links they have built for me:
- ccr-mag.com (DR 59)
- thehomesteadsurvival.com (DR 34)
- home-dzine.co.za (DR 53)
They over delivered on what they said they were going to do. However, I am comparing DA and DR, which are different numbers. But it felt like I got more because two of them had a DR of over 50. When I look at Ahrefs for wheel along, I can see that my Ahrefs rank for the site jumped up shortly after them doing those guest posts.
You can see that on the graph. I was pretty pleased with that. Also, my rankings had started to move. I think I hit around page two for terms powered wheelbarrow. I had another chat with Stan Ventures, and they were pleased with what they've done. But they said maybe you need a few more to give it that extra push. It was around November 22nd, and they built me some more links. They said they would do two DA 30 and two DA 40 and one DA 50. That sounded pretty good. Now, I should probably tell you how much these links would cost if you were looking to buy them.
Here is what I got:
- handymantips.org (DR 49)
- mydecorative.com (DR 53)
- urdesignmag.com (DR 60)
- livinator.com (DR 37)
- designlike.com (DR 58)
We've got a total of eight links there. And that did have an effect on the rankings for that article. For keywords “powered wheelbarrows” and “best powered wheelbarrow”, the post jumped to the first spot on Google search for the UK. And for the term “motorized wheelbarrow”, we're halfway down page one. I'm pleased with those rankings. When I look at the ranking history in Ahrefs, I saw that the movement happened quickly. It wasn't long after they built the links that the site moved up.
What about traffic – is it up?
That's impressive. But are those rankings turning into any traffic? Well, yes, they are. If we look at analytics for the last 30 days, I can see I had 139 visits. That might not sound like many, but that's quite a lot to an article that's niche. There aren't many people that are looking for powered wheelbarrows. There's probably not many people who know that you can even get a powered wheelbarrow. That's a really good number. And it's up 30% on the previous 30 days.
Anyway, here's where the story gets fascinating. On January 12th, I got a sale registered within my Amazon UK affiliates dashboard. It was for the Smartwiel Battery-powered wheelbarrow, which is one that's mentioned within the article. It's an £850 wheelbarrow, so it was all very, very exciting. I was over the moon. But there is a slight twist in this story. A couple of days later, I logged in to my Amazon dashboard to check my commissions, and it had gone. For whatever reason, they'd cancelled their order. Maybe they thought that spending £850 on a wheelbarrow was a little bit excessive. I don't know what happened, but anyway, it's a good story. I'm confident that I'm going to sell another power wheelbarrow anytime soon.
Final word
I would undoubtedly recommend Stan Ventures if you're looking to give your website a bit of a boost. If you're struggling to do link building yourself, let them take care of it. Buy a couple of DA 30, DA 40 or maybe even a couple of DA 50 links. Point them to one of your more important articles on your site, and yeah, you should start to gain some rank. Remember to check out the special landing page they've created for you guys. Don't forget to let me know your experiences with Stan Ventures. I'd love to know any feedback from you.
