Building links can be a head-aching process.

Finding blogs, doing outreach, negotiating rates; these are required steps not all business owners have time to do themselves.

As such, many turn to the help of blogger outreach services to streamline the process.

Affiliate marketers, brands, and even agencies use outreach services to invest more time into their business and to acquire links on sites that may not be able to secure themselves.

There are many places offering blogger outreach links - UpWork, SEOClerks, Fiverr, Facebook Groups - just to name a few.

But these aren't the safest of options.

Many of the sellers on these platforms offer low-quality links that can lead to negative impacts on a site's trust and rankings with Google.

Next, we have agencies, but this isn't the best of options either as many sell hacked links.

Purchasing a hacked link may occur without the knowledge of the purchaser and could lead to penalties for both the seller and buyer.  As such, purchasing from a trusted vendor is vital to the health of your site and its rankings.

The demand for quality outreach services is greater today than ever before.  As such, we've published this guide to share trusted agencies we've worked with so others can order assured.

This year alone, we've ordered from over twenty agencies - some not so good, some incredibly valuable.  

We did this to see which ones provided the quality that ourselves and clients have come to expect.

Today, we'll discuss what we look for in a service to help others carry out checks of their own.

Sit back, relax, and read through our guide to learn how to:

• Develop a Content Strategy

• Create Outreach Messages

• Connect with Prospects

• Choose a Trusted Outreach Service

Why you should use an Outreach Service

The benefits of using a trusted outreach service are plentiful, here are some:

You're unable to invest the time needed for learning to outreach yourself, or if you can, would rather spend your time scaling your business instead of building links.

The resources required for outreach and content creation can be draining to your wallet and schedule.

Saving money can be costly.  As such, it's usually best to hire a professional with a proven track record; a better option than hiring a low-experienced, outreach newcomer that can cost you unnecessary resources and weeks of waiting.

Established and aged agencies are often well-connected in the SEO space.  Leveraging the connections of trusted, long-established agencies means you'll have access to links not found from small, new-to-the-scene vendors.

Finally, strong links are essential to building trust with Google and driving traffic to your brand and products.  Trusted outreach services, such as the ones reviewed in this guide, will help you achieve both.

What do Blogger Outreach Agencies Provide?

Find You Qualified Prospects

Finding qualified websites; sites with strong metrics and traffic, isn't the easiest of tasks.  

Coming across ones that accept guest posts is even more challenging.  In some cases, webmasters spend upwards of forty hours per week searching for guest posting opportunities just to end up securing one link - if one at all.

Further into this guide, we'll discuss ways to determine if a site has legitimate traffic and metrics you should entrust linking to your site.

Connect you with Opportunities

Acquiring link placements require effective communication and negotiation; both of which outreach services handle for you.  Agencies need to provide compelling outreach messages to obtain links which may come in the form of offering links, products, or financial incentives.

They Create your Content Strategy

One of the great benefits of using an outreach service is that they help you create and fine-tune your content marketing strategy.  For example, if the service acquires you a link to your site, it's beneficial to your SEO.  If your link is placed within a review-type article, this helps your branding.

If you receive a post on your products or services and it ranks, this will not help with SEO and branding but will generate you referral traffic too.

Keep in mind, most blogger outreach services are designed to help with SEO.  Though, some of the brands we tested and reviewed below offer content for branding and referral traffic as well, however, these posts can range from two to five thousand dollars per post.  

If you have the resources, it's money well-spent; results are amazing and can provide massive ranking gains, traffic, and exposure for your brand, products, and services.

Provides Free Rank Tracking

The best outreach services provide free rank tracking for your campaigns and will even offer suggestions based on your niche.  We're not sure if every agency reviewed on our list does this, but the number-one contender does - one of the reasons it's ranked as such in our guide.

Now that you understand the basics of blogger outreach services, let's discuss the details that matter most; prospecting a quality site.

[How To] Judging Quality of a Blogger Outreach Service

This segment teaches the ways to assess sites like an SEO-savvy guru.  Here, you'll also learn the questions you should ask the agency in the event you don't have time to quality-assess sites yourself.

Keep in mind - it's not at all uncommon to churn through five or six agencies before finding one to collaborate with for the long-term.  

Fortunately, this guide will help you circumvent the trial-and-error process and save your time; we'll equip you with the knowledge needed to acquire sought-after link placements that will keep competitors trailing behind - let's get to it.

Does the website receive traffic?

First and foremost, you'll want to familiarize yourself with Ahrefs and Similarweb; today's gold-standard solution for viewing the traffic a website receives.  

This should be done first as if the site has no traffic it's one you'll want to pass on.

If the website shows over 250 visitors per month on Ahrefs it'll likely benefit your SEO.

Will the site provide SEO value to my site?

This is an important step - one where the value of your links weighs in the balance.

You need to find out if you're receiving a no-follow or do-follow link.  

For best results, you want a do-follow link; these pass authority -- or link juice - as some like to call it.

Next, you'll want to be sure the link is going to benefit your site.

How do I do that, you ask?  It's simple, really.

All you need to do is assess the backlink profile of the site to determine its authority.  You'll also need to review the number of Referring Domains and the quality of them (this is important).

Let's take the following as an example:

Taking a look at Canva, you will notice there are 152k referring domains - that's a significant sum.

Upon reviewing these links, many came from high-authority sources, such as Guardian, Entrepreneur, and Forbes.  Not to mention the many other businesses and online news outlets linking to them.

So, what does this mean to us webmasters and business owners seeking to become an authority?

Well, consider this - Canva is in the graphics niche.  

This means, if you had a graphic design agency whose website had an incoming link from Canva, you'd receive huge trust and traffic boosts while increasing authority too; a win-win-win.

Due to the important role link building plays in a site's success, SEO accounts for most of the monthly marketing budget of most brands and agencies.  This is because link building is an ongoing process and one that should be continual - if you want referral and organic traffic, that is.

However, acquiring a link from Canva isn't the easiest of tasks.

Below, we'll discuss how this can be used for not only brand recognition but ranking as well.  

Relevancy and the importance of it is also something we'll introduce readers to - it's an important part of the process.

Which Keywords does the site rank for?

A website's traffic is its selling point to those wanting to purchase guest posts.  This metric, among others, is used to sell sponsored posts, ad spaces, and niche-edit (insert) links.

For the sake of an example, let's consider Medium:

If reviewing Medium.com, you'll notice it's a high-authority site but also one in which anyone can post on.  This leads us to the question - is it a good option for SEO and brand recognition?

SEO:

On, Medium users receive UGC no-follow links, this means, if you want to increase rankings, Medium links will have no effect as they won't pass authority to your site.

Brand Recognition:

As you see, Medium is ranked for potentially detrimental keywords, search terms that include Twitch Affiliate, Kickass Proxy, and Calendar 2019.

This indicates that webmasters posted on Medium, not for SEO, but to leverage the platform to drive massive groves of traffic to their site.

The 'YouTube to WAV' post receives nearly eight-thousand visits monthly - not bad for a single post.  

Here's another example:

Home Business Mag exploded in popularity once SEMRUSH began selling links on their platform.  But it wasn't long before Google noticed them selling links, and when they did, called them out on Twitter.

Remember, Google doesn't want webmasters buying links as they know doing so is effective.  They can penalize not only the link buyer but the seller as well if they discover a paid-for link was built.

That said, you need links that will stay off the radar; links that won't trigger penalties or suspicion.  As such, always use a safe mixture of anchors and never acquire links from a website publicly advertising the sale of do-follow links.

Do-follow links for SEO:

Do-follow links are the holy grail of link types - these are the links that help your SEO and boost your rankings.  Link placement on SEMRUSH site would be great for startups or those with an agency wanting to improve organic positions.

Brand Recognition:

As you'll notice, many of these posts are related to starting a business so you could publish a guide on "How to Start an SEO Agency" or something similar in nature while within the content linking to your site that provides start-up consultancy services.

Traffic - Is it Stable, Decreasing, or Improving?

This isn't the only variable to consider but is an important one.

As demonstrated below, with AHREFS, you can see if organic traffic is declining or improving.

You'll see traffic is consistent throughout the year with an uptick following May's update.  As such, acquiring a link from the site would be helpful to your SEO as Google seems to be favoring it for many keywords.

This means the site can transfer trust to yours.

Pro Advice: Tier-2 links to your post can greatly increase power to your site.

Taking a look at the site below, it's obvious the site lost nearly all of their trust following the update:

If you acquired a link from this site, you wouldn't get much trust transferred to your site but could get power if its backlinks are strong.  These are the reasons PBN's can work - they don't have much trust but the links pointing to them are often from powerful, high-authority sources.

While they can transfer power to your site's authority, we don't recommend PBN links as too many could harm a site and may even lead to penalties - if Google discovers the network.  

Backlinks delivering trust is what we love.

Remember too, more traffic doesn't equate to better value, you must consider relevancy as well since non-targeted traffic won't provide much value, in terms of conversions.

If you get a link from a fashion blog for your eCom clothing store, that link will provide more power than a link coming from a website ranking for dining room tables.

AHREFS is only an estimation tool.  Their keyword and traffic figures are only estimates based on data they receive from crawling Google's index.

Last but Not Least, Quality-Check the Website's Content

Is the website posting twenty or thirty articles per day?  Is the content of good quality and providing value?  Do many of the articles contain outbound links to low-authority websites?

If the site is accepting twenty or more posts per day and links out to low-quality sites, you've likely found yourself a guest-farm site; move on to a better site.

It's worth taking the time to find the right opportunities.

With the tips and tools shared in this guide, you'll be able to assess a site like a pro to acquire links that bring you value instead of disappointment.  

You can build these links yourself but doing so could easily cost you a thousand dollars or more for just a single link - accounting for your time and subscription-related expenses on tools such as AHREFS.

Usually, to save time and money, it's just easier to use a service that handles the outreach for you.  In most cases, these services already have relationships in place with blogs in your niche/market which can save you weeks waiting and head-aching research.

If wanting to bypass the tedious process of scraping sites, reviewing metrics, and doing outreach, using a blogger outreach service is a great option.  

Here is our review and results from a couple of blogger outreach services we've used this year.

The Best Blogger Outreach Services of 2020

Outreach services play a vital role in gaining trust and credibility with Google.  This is why we're only reviewing outreaches services we've used - this way, others can experience positive results.

To be clear, this is not an affiliate marketing guide.  We ordered from these agencies to test their services to help you make an informed decision - one that will benefit your site.

#1 Pick Art of War SEO

This is an outreach service we've spent $60k on in the past nine months - around $200-$300 per link.

Currently, we order around a hundred links per month from this agency for ours and client sites as the quality and metrics of their links have always been superb.

One of our most recent orders was for our growing supplement brand, for which, we ordered five DR50+ links for $1,800, we'll let these figures speak for themselves:

Link #1

Link #2

Link #3

Link #4

Link #5

We were thrilled with the results and the links delivered by this service.

Over the years, we've tested countless outreach services and haven't received links of this quality.

On average, we spent around $200 per link and upwards of $300 depending on the authority, trust, and traffic volumes of the site.  Since we were able to derive targeted traffic from these posts, our conversions were phenomenal and provided an ROI that exceeded link costs many times over.

As recommended by the agency, and based on our own experience, we ordered links from sites with varying metrics for diversity and to appear as natural as possible.

They also go the extra mile to ensure you receive maximum value.  An example of this is a new campaign they recently launched for us - they're building links to our posts to help us receive more exposure.  Costing around $1,000-$1,500 per post, it's a worthwhile investment as we're already seeing an influx in traffic to our site.

Here's one of our sites they're building links to:

We launched this site in May and began ordering outreach links in July.  

Before using Art of War SEO, we only built pillow links to appear as natural as possible before targeting our anchor keywords.

We ordered twenty outreach links each month and saw results in less than ninety days - impressive, to say the least.  Since, the website has continued to grow, traffic is scaling, and revenue has been improving ever since.  Needless to say, our investment has already paid for itself.

Aside from high-authority links, I've been a repeat Art of War SEO user as they:

• Promise users at least a thousand visitors from their guest posts.

• Offer prompt, professional, and insightful support.

• Extend personalized recommendations made possible by their knowledgeable team of SEOs.

The Hoth (Not Recommended)

This is not a service we recommend.

We ordered ten DA30+ guest posts, as a test-run, and the quality was everything but exceptional.  

We invested over $2,000 with their service to end up with links on PBN-styled sites with little-to-none traffic and spammy link profiles.

We'll let this image speak for itself:

For the link rates charged by The Hoth you can purchase links of much better quality - don't waste resources with this service as we did.  Our reason for mentioning this service is to help others avoid wasting money on links that won't provide much value, trust, and traffic.

Who Should Use Blogger Outreach Services?

Affiliate Marketers should use outreach services to improve rankings in Google.  Reason being, it allows affiliates to improve traffic to their products which increases Amazon commissions or earnings from other networks.

Businesses and brands selling digital or physical products can benefit greatly from outreach services.  Whether for branding or ranking purposes, high-trust and solid-authority links can help brands grow sales and increase visibility.

SEO Agencies wanting to reach new clients can do so with ease with the help of an outreach service that delivers niche-relevant posts.  With incoming leads and traffic, agencies can spend less time marketing and more time fulfilling orders and growing their business.

Art of War SEO - Our Top Recommendation for Results

#1 First and foremost, their communication is among the best I've seen from any service.  Any time we had questions related they always responded the same day and went above and beyond to provide solutions to even our most pressing challenges.

#2 They are not in business only to sell links but to help clients grow and reach goals.  Honestly, they're the only agency we've worked with who seemed as enthused as we are about our business growth, and that's saying a lot.

#3 If pursuing links for SEO purposes, these links will give your site the traction needed to climb the ranks.  Since Art of War SEO delivers links from sites meeting the criteria shared in this guide.  This is great news for us affiliate marketers and agencies wanting to expand as these do-follow/contextual links move the needle quicker than any other service we've tried.