How to Outsource Link Building in 6 Easy Steps (2025 Guide)

If link-building were easy, every brand would be outranking its competitors. But the reality is that it’s one of the most challenging parts of SEO to execute consistently.

You might have tried building links in-house and run into the following challenges:

• Struggling to secure high-quality links that move rankings.
• Lack of link-building expertise on your team.
• High charges of link-building agencies that are not worth their price.

If these challenges sound familiar, outsourcing link-building services to reputed agencies could be the perfect solution. But how do you hire the best link-building agency, secure quality links, and stay within budget?

In this blog, we will share 6 practical steps to effectively outsource link building and the costs involved in doing that.

What is Outsourcing Backlink Building?

Outsourcing link building means hiring a freelancer or an SEO agency to secure high-quality backlinks from other websites that point to yours. These link-building agencies specialize in identifying niche-relevant sites and managing outreach to build links that improve your website’s authority and search engine rankings.

Backlink agencies typically have hands-on experience, proven processes, and access to the right SaaS SEO tools. Instead of handling everything in-house, businesses can offload link building to experts, freeing time to focus on core growth priorities while getting measurable SEO results.

Why do Companies Prefer Outsourcing Link Building?

Link building is necessary for long-term SEO growth, but most companies struggle to do it consistently in-house.
Here's why outsourcing has become the more practical and preferred option:

1. Save time on outreach and content coordination

Manual outreach, researching websites, writing guest post content, following up with editors—it’s all time-consuming. For a small marketing team, landing 3–5 good monthly links can take up dozens of hours. Outsourcing removes that burden. Agencies already have the workflows and staff to handle it, freeing internal teams to focus on strategy and growth.

2. Lower costs compared to building an in-house team

To build a link-building team internally, you need to hire link builders, train them, invest in outreach tools like Pitchbox or Respona, and wait months for ROI. Outsourcing skips this ramp-up. You work with a team that’s already trained, equipped, and only paid for what you need—no overhead or internal management.

3. Quick access to quality sites that matter

New teams often start with cold outreach, which means slow responses and low acceptance rates. Agencies, on the other hand, have pre-established relationships with site owners, bloggers, and industry publishers. Your links land faster—and on better sites.

4. Reduce the risk of bad backlinks and penalties

Not all links help your rankings. Poor outreach or spammy placements can do more harm than good. Experienced agencies follow Google-compliant practices, focus on relevancy, and help you avoid penalties or wasted spending.

Outsourcing link-building is a broader aspect of outsourcing digital marketing services that build your online presence and increase organic growth.

6 Proven Steps to Outsource Link Building

Source

Here is a six-step guide to outsourcing link-building and expecting positive results.

Step 1: Define your link-building goals

Before picking a suitable SaaS link-building agency that could simplify link building for you, determine what goals you want to accomplish by outsourcing link building. Some of the goals that you need to decide before outsourcing link-building include:

• Decide if your main objective is to increase organic traffic, enhance domain authority, or improve keyword rankings.
• Decide whether you want backlinks through HARO, guest posts, niche edits, resource pages, or a mix.
• Ensure that your backlinks originate from high Domain Authority (DA) or Domain Rating (DR) sites or the ones that retain high traffic.

These are just a few goals to consider before you choose to outsource link building. Once you have set up the foundation for link building by choosing what goals you are targeting, the rest of the process becomes much easier and more convenient. 

Step 2: Determine your backlink budget per month

The next step is to ensure that your budget aligns with your link-building needs. Your budget is responsible for the different qualities, quantities, and relevancy of the links that you will acquire. Make sure that you target high-quality links without overspending too much on them. 

Before reaching out to providers, decide:

• How many links do you want per month?
• What level of domain authority or relevance are you targeting?
• Are you focused on traffic-driving links or just SEO signals?

Here’s a general breakdown of typical backlink pricing:

High-authority websites charge more for editorial links, as shown in the table above. Although expensive, these links will offer your website equally great results.  

• Businesses tend to prefer quality over quantity when acquiring backlinks, but make sure you choose based on your business’s requirements. 
• Industries with highly competitive markets also demand a higher link-building package for backlink acquisition to outrank your competitors.

Setting up a realistic budget aligned with your business goals is the optimal way to outsource backlinks so you can make sustainable investments without exceeding your financial limits. 

Step 3: Pick the right link-building provider

The next step is to decide on the right link-building partner to fulfill your backlinking needs. This partner can be an in-house link builder, a freelancer, or an agency. 

Instead of focusing on the services offered, select the service provider with the expertise, experience, and approach that aligns with your business strategies. Some of the factors to look out for while picking a provider include:

• Track Record and Reputation: Choose reputable and successful providers in your industry. Confirm their expertise through case studies, client testimonials, and references.
• White-Hat Practices Only: Your provider must use ethical methods and avoid risky tactics like link farms or other black hat techniques. Inquire about the process of the links acquired and whether they are natural and compliant with the search engine.
• Established Industry Connections: Ensure your provider has established relationships with high-authority websites that can quickly secure high-quality backlinks. These networks work to your advantage in competitive industries. 

Small businesses and startups with a limited budget hire freelancers as their outsourcing partners because they charge minimally. On the other hand, medium—to large companies end up hiring link-building agencies that charge much higher and offer better quality than freelancers.

If you are on a shoestring budget, hiring freelancers is better; if you can spare higher revenue, agencies are the perfect fit for you. 

Step 4: Set the backlink quality criteria you need

Some backlinks can improve your website’s performance, while others can harm it. They can easily elevate your website’s position in SERP but are challenging to acquire. So, how to understand that you are aiming for high-quality backlinks? This is where setting clear backlink quality criteria steps in.

Your website can benefit from the relevance, authority, and natural links. Some of the factors to look for in a high-quality backlink include:

1. Domain Rating and Domain Authority (DR/DA)

Acquiring backlinks from websites with a DR and DA of more than 30 is considered a high-quality backlink as it provides strong credibility. At the same time, make sure that you avoid a low-authority link from a spammy site that could damage your SEO profile. 

2. Website & niche relevance 

The acquired backlinks must be coming from the websites of the same industry. For instance, ‘tech links’ for a SaaS business will qualify the criteria for a good backlink since they are similar topics about the same industry. Besides this, you must avoid links from unrelated or random websites that fail to provide contextual SEO value.

3. Organic traffic & website Interaction

Backlink acquisition from websites with more than 3000 monthly organic visitors has better SEO than those without organic traffic. The higher the organic traffic, the better the quality of the backlink. Furthermore, make sure you contact websites with consistent organic traffic growth.

4. Context and link placement

Experienced content writers and link builders understand the relevance of links and how they must be naturally placed within the content and not forced into sidebars or footnotes. The main content body must include editorial links as they highlight stronger link equity (the value of the backlink that is passed from one webpage to another). 

5. Anchor text strategy

Picking an anchor text for your backlink is one of the most crucial parts of link building. Some of the types of anchor texts include:

Placing your link on the right anchor text and making it seem natural can improve your content's search rankings without triggering any Google penalties.

6. DoFollow and NoFollow links

A DoFollow link passes link juice to your website and positively impacts SEO. A NoFollow link rarely provides SEO value but increases brand visibility and referral traffic. Make sure to implement both these links to maintain a healthy and credible backlink profile. 

7. Link acquiring velocity and natural growth

Make sure that you build links at a steady rate. Building high-quality links too fast can seem unnatural and violate Google’s guidelines for ranking better on SERP. Maintaining rankings on SERP demands consistent backlink acquisition.

Step 5: Monitor and review the impact of backlinks created

Link-building outsourcing is incomplete without tracking the impact of your created backlinks. You must follow the right practices to check whether your link-building tasks deliver the desired results. Let us look at a few points to see how to monitor your backlinks.

• Tools like Ahrefs, Google Search Console, and Majestic SEO can help you monitor your outsourced links. Always use a combination of these tools to get the best results possible. For instance, GSC will offer you an overview of the linked profile, and Ahrefs and Majestic can help check the quality of these links. Sometimes, a link flagged as ‘live’ in one tool may be broken or removed if checked elsewhere. 
• Making a schedule to check backlinks frequently helps since they can disappear overnight, and new toxic or spammy links can take their place. Your backlink software can help identify sudden drops in high-value and spammy links that could harm your rankings. 
• Analyzing your competitor’s backlink profile is a great way to monitor the impact of your links. Competitive benchmarking is a part of the SEO strategy that tracks your competitor’s backlink strategy so you can find the gaps in your plan and improve them. This is how you can identify issues with your backlinks.  

Step 6: Scale and optimize your link-building strategy

The final step in this process is to scale your quality link-building services. For a healthy backlink score, you need to balance the quantity and quality of backlinks. Scaling and optimizing your link-building strategy is all about improving the efficiency of your SEO.

Some methods to expand link-building outsourcing include:

• Building long-lasting relationships with trusted sources is one way to scale your efforts. You can scale your backlinks by interacting with the owners of niche websites that align with your industry and industry bloggers or journalists for frequent press mentions.
• Make sure that the quality of your links is intact. Eliminate low-quality links from link farms or private blog networks (PBN) that can negatively affect a healthy backlink profile. Focus on the ones that improve your organic traffic and domain authority.
• Earn better high-quality links through scalable strategies like digital PR campaigns. Content partnerships with industry influencers and linkable assets like case studies and research papers that naturally attract backlinks can help you optimize and scale your links.

Following the above-mentioned steps, you can easily outsource your link-building process without compromising quality. Improving your backlinks, even at micro levels, is essential since they can lead to macro changes in your SaaS SEO. This is how you can outsource link-building, which will improve your SaaS SEO strategy.

How Much Does Outsourcing Backlink Building Services Cost?

Outsourcing link building to an agency may cost $500-$2500 per link, while freelancers can charge from $300-$1200, influenced by domain rating (DR), outreach strategy, and industry.

For instance, 50+ DR in SaaS implies $700-$1500, while 70+ in finance charges $1000-$2000.

The table below provides a detailed account of professional link-building services.

Freelancers usually charge $50-$100 hourly; however, these price ranges can be much higher depending on the industry. They also cannot guarantee the long-term quality of links, while an agency, on the other hand, can promise the longevity of the link. 

Additionally, there are three ranges of DR based on which we can categorize a high-quality website for link-building:

• DR 30-50 (Low Tier): These are more budget-friendly and can build a versatile profile at a lower cost (gaming and education websites).
• DR 50-70 (Mid Tier): These websites have a balanced cost-to-quality ratio and deliver a combination of traffic and authority (technology and healthcare websites).
• DR 70+ (High Authority): Websites with high authority charge premium pricing due to their benefits (finance and casino websites).

The above table denotes the average backlink prices in different industries. These prices can also be customized based on the website’s existing status and organic traffic.

Difference Between In-House and Outsourcing Backlinks

Even minor differences in link-building approaches can significantly impact search rankings. This is why it is essential to understand the difference between outsourcing and in-house link building. The table below compares the difference between hiring an in-house team, a freelancer, or an agency.

Businesses hire in-house teams for large-scale projects with a long-term SEO strategy. Small businesses and startups that are new to link building hire freelancers. Lastly, agencies are hired by mid- to large businesses that prioritize high-quality white-hat links.

Want to Outsource Backlink Building for Your SaaS Website?

LabsMedia is a one-stop solution for all your link-building campaigns. We secure high-quality links that quickly enhance the SEO score of your website. As one of the best link-building agencies, we have helped many clients rank better on the search engine results pages. 

Zipy, HyperVerge, and Supanote are some of the companies we have helped with their past backlink profiles and custom strategies for backlink acquisition. Our primary focus is to provide you with results-driven link-building solutions that have a lasting impact on your website so it can rank better on SERPs.