Best SEO Backlinking Services

The best SEO backlinking services are: Siege Media and Victorious, according to our latest round of research. With thousands of delighted customer reviews between them, we can recommend these agencies as trustworthy PR machines for your business’ online presence.

Read on to discover more of the best providers for increasing the number of high-quality URL links to your website(s). In an age of online scams, it’s never been more important to choose your business partners with caution. Thankfully, we’ve scoured client testimonials to sift the neat from the trash – so you know you won’t be throwing your money away.

We’re going to make it easy for you to choose an SEO agency for backlinking according to your: industry, budget, locality, and how involved your team can be.

Or, you can skip the hard work and answer a quick quiz about your SEO needs for us to match you with the perfect SEO provider.

Quick Comparison: Best Backlinking Services

Here’s an Example of a Backlink:

First, let’s make sure we’re on the same page about the basics. A backlink is simply a reference to your webpage with a URL link on another website. This directs human readers to your website and it signals to search engines that this website endorses yours.

Now we’ll take a look at the reviews for each SEO agency:

1. Siege Media 4.9/5

Best for: Ecommerce backlinks

If you can afford it, Siege Media has the capability to enhance your company’s backlink profile like no other agency on the market. Its unique selling points (USPs) include: dozens of in-house content writers, graphic designers, and video producers working alongside SEO specialists. Delighted customer reviews detail how Siege Media’s custom assets drew many quality backlinks that boosted the organic traffic and revenue of their business websites.

We recommend Siege Media for ecommerce businesses in particular. This is because its portfolio centers on big online retailers, such as Audible (Amazon), Gifts.com, and Shutterfly. Unlike Straight North, Siege Media has a specialist financial writer on staff. This means the agency excels at creating expert content that instils confidence in your brand.

As it’s critical not to get stuck in a tunnel vision perspective of ‘how can I get more backlinks?’, while ignoring your company’s total online presence, Siege Media is a safe bet due to the huge variety of marketing services it offers. In addition to content marketing, the agency can lead your entire SEO strategy, carry out keyword research, optimize your websites’ user experience, and run A/B testing for a data-driven way to improve sales conversions.

2. Victorious 4.9/5

Best for: Transparency

A common difficulty companies can face when hiring link building services is staying in the dark about the quality of the backlinks earned. This is not so with Victorious. The agency uses the project management tool, Asana, to keep clients updated on target progress. The daily updating dashboard provides transparency into SEO projects. This will better prepare you for catch-ups with your account manager, who’s likely to be easily contactable – according to online customer reviews. A plus is that you’ll always know what results you’re getting for your money.

Now, it’s vital you’re aware of the differences between an agency like Victorious, Web FX, or Boostability. While the latter two are agencies you can fully outsource your SEO workload to, clients who worked with Victorious said they had to actively participate in the execution of SEO strategy. This is not a negative in and of itself, provided your team has the capacity to carry out the necessary work suggested. However, if your team is already extremely busy, Victorious is not the right agency for you.

3. WebFX 4.8/5

Best for: Content Creation

Web FX is the only agency on our list to feature a set of distinct price packages. Though we’d normally advise business leaders to give such fixed SEO offerings a wide berth, we’ve read enough positive customer reviews on this agency to change our minds in this case. While set price packages can give agencies an easy pass to regular income and low accountability, Web FX seems to buck this trend.

This agency actually offers a far wider range of marketing and SEO services than Victorious or Boostability. Custom price plans are an option if you’re reluctant to confine your partnership to the set menu of Web FX’s set SEO price packages (listed below). This means you can take advantage of online sales consultancy, and not just SEO services. This agency has the largest team of any we’ve reviewed, with a roster of over 500 digital marketing experts on staff. That’s a standout marker of the breadth of expertise available at this agency.

In terms of backlinking, Web FX incorporates our preferred method of custom content creation to secure digital votes of confidence from other domains. You’ll see the number of assets scale according to your monthly payment.

We recommend the Silver Plan to SMBs that are looking to boost their backlink profile on a low budget. Web FX has delivered successful campaigns in industries such as agriculture, automotive, software as a service, and medical.

4. Straight North 4.4/5

Best for: Project Management

Backlinking is never a guaranteed success, but what Straight North gets right is its robust project management. Clients mention a high level of accountability, very frequent communication, and a monitoring dashboard for added transparency. Thanks to its strategic planning, Straight North has delivered return on investment for reams of clients, according to online reviews.

The agency undertakes content writing in-house, which is largely beneficial to increasing lead volumes and quality for its clients. Unfortunately, one Chicago marketing director faced a frustrating lack of quality in Straight North’s written content between 2020-21. The agency replaced the client’s account manager during their engagement, though the reason was not entirely clear to the client. However, that same director nevertheless appreciated the centralized platform for easy access to performance metrics.

Smaller businesses with a lower marketing budget would benefit from hiring Straight North. However, our caution would be to provide as much clarity on your business’ needs as possible, with the possibility of sending written content back for edits.

5. Boostability 4.2/5

Best for: Customer Service

For companies looking to fully outsource link building, Boostability is a decent fit. While firms with a long-established team may benefit from the training and development offered by agencies like Victorious, younger businesses and startups may be looking to get one more set of tasks off the to-do list. This, and its smaller size, is why we recommend Boostability for smaller businesses.

Happy clients saw increased web traffic and improved cost per lead since hiring Boostability. However, you should understand the scope of work Boostability will carry out for you, and make sure you’re clear on your expectations before beginning a partnership. Michael G, a Boostability customer, said in a November 2021 review that he was disappointed the agency didn’t carry out an SEO audit. However, that same customer praised Boostability’s ‘great customer service’ and prompt response time.

If you want a full SEO audit of your website, you’re better off hiring Web FX or Victorious SEO rather than Boostability. In terms of ranking for target keywords, Boostability customers were pleased to see their websites ranking in the top 10 and, sometimes, the first position on search engine results pages.

Link Building Services to Avoid

Google has made several significant updates to its ranking rules in the past 15 years. Because of these, certain link building practices that used to be effective are now a total waste of money. However, there are still a few bad actors in the SEO industry that are still profiting off the lack of knowledge business consumers have about these algorithm updates. We’re here to make sure you don’t get ripped off.

Here are some link building services to say “no thanks” to:

🚩 Private Blog Networks (PBNs)

An SEO outfit will explain to you that they can get your website dozens or hundreds of links, guaranteed. How? Well they own lots of websites, and regularly publish content on them with links back to clients’ sites.

Red flag: This used to work really well until Google’s 2017 Penguin update. But now, if the search engine detects suspicious mass linking activity, it will make sure that entire network vanishes from search results pages.

🚩 Payment for Links, Not Content

If you approach a link building service that doesn’t have content writers or editorial managers, you should be wary. How is that company going to foster links back to your website without creating quality content? Agencies that can’t or won’t explain their strategies should be avoided.

Red flag: Google penalizes “link farming” that generates links at scale without leading users to high quality content. Since the 2011 Panda update, Google has taken a harsh view on “thin content” that’s poorly written and adds no value to the reader.

Are Link Building Services Still Worth It?

We don’t recommend you pay for links to try and boost your company’s search engine rankings. While you may see favorable results, these are likely to be short-lived given the increasing measures Google is taking to nullify links from paid sources. The best SEO companies won’t use shady tactics like this.

Moreover, buying spam links is unethical business practice because it’s bad for the internet as a whole. If your company values integrity – and wants to avoid penalties from Google – you should hire a reputable SEO agency that carries out quality backlinking work. This means content marketing plus full-service SEO.

Quality SEO services will include backlinking as a strategy for growth. For example, the best SEO for photographers wouldn’t only fix broken internal links and target commercial keywords, but would include some content marketing and PR outreach too.

Why is Link Building Getting Harder?

In the early 2000s, when search engine rankings were fairly predictable systems with basic rules, it was pretty easy to manipulate them.

But these days, link building is getting harder as Google cracks down on phoney pay-per-link tricks that don’t help users. Ultimately, search engines are designed for users to find the best content that’s genuinely helpful – not just the webpage with the most paid backlinks. It makes sense then that ethical industry players are moving in the direction of quality content creation rather than get-links-quick schemes.

Nowadays, the skillset involved in link building involves more creativity, patience, and relationship-building than it used to. It now takes a lot of audience focus to craft the right content plan, as well as a more nuanced understanding of SEO.

If you’re looking to boost traffic to your website for reliable, long-term growth, check out our guide to the best SEO companies for small businesses.