What is a Link Building Agency And How to Start One?

Starting a link building agency might sound challenging, and honestly, it can be. There’s a lot to learn, but the good news is you don’t have to figure it all yourself.

In this blog, our CEO shares insights and tips from his own journey of building a link building agency. It’s not easy, but with the right guidance, you can make it happen.

Ready to learn from the real experience and take the first steps?

What is a Link Building Agency?

A link building agency specializes in helping businesses improve their site’s search engine rankings by getting relevant backlinks from reputable and trusted sources.

These agencies are behind the scenes of many successful backlink campaigns. But what does it really take to run one, and why should you consider starting your own?

Let’s find out together!

Why Start a Link Building Agency?

Starting a link building agency is a smart move if you are looking for a simple and manageable business. 

Unlike other SEO agencies, where things can get complicated, link building is much more straightforward. You offer one clear product which is backlinks for your clients.

We promise valuable SaaS backlinks and we deliver them. That’s it. No confusion. We focus on doing one thing well, and our clients see the results—improved DR and rankings. 

If you want to achieve similar results, you can simply contact us for more information!

Startup Essentials: What Do You Need to Get Started?

How to start a link building agency? It is simpler than you might expect. 

At the beginning, you don’t need much. All you really need is a few clients and remote work to keep costs low, especially when you are just getting started and will need that initial income to pay salaries for a small team.

As for the tools, you’ll need some basic ones, but the most important part is automating your processes using spreadsheets for link building just like we did. This helped us stay organized and save resources.

Once your agency starts getting enough profit, you can think about upgrading. 

Georgi Mamajanyan, CEO at SayNine, shares a simple approach in his LinkedIn post:

“Find a small, cheap office. Hire people willing to learn. Productize your service. Automate when possible. Repeat the process.”

But let’s go deeper. Here are some extra things you might want to consider:

• Buying all the necessary office equipment like computers and furniture
• Getting legal structure (e.g. LLC)
• Building a proper system for handling payments

After you’ve got the basics down, you can move to the fun stuff: creating a website, designing a logo, growing your social media presence, starting a cold outreach, and launching a referral program to attract more clients.

Pricing Strategies: How to Charge for Link Building

When it comes to link building cost, we’ve learned that finding the right balance is key. 

You don’t want to price your services too low so it drives away potential clients. At the same time, pricing too high can make it difficult to compete with others in the market.

What we’ve found works best is keeping our link building prices reasonable—enough to cover costs and keep things profitable. This allows us to offer great service without sacrificing quality.

How to Get Your First Clients

Getting your first clients can be a bit unpredictable in the early days of your link building agency. There’s no set rule for when it will happen, but there are a few ways to increase your chances of landing them.

We focused on building our personal brand on LinkedIn, making connections, and growing our network.

Offering your services to link exchange partners can also spark an interest. Maybe they are looking for exactly what you offer!

One thing we wouldn’t recommend, though, is jumping into cold email outreach right away. If no one knows about your agency yet, it doesn’t make sense to spend your time and resources on it.

Start by building relationships and brand reputation, and the clients will follow.

Early Challenges and How We Overcame Them

As we built our link building agency, we faced a few challenges. Here’s how we dealt with two of them:

• Task Management: At first, task management was difficult. It wasn’t just about telling people what to do but was making sure they understood exactly what was needed. However, over time we got better at communicating clearly and trusting our team to get things done.
  
• Scaling: As our team got bigger, we realized that the way we worked when there were just a few of us wasn’t going to work as we expanded. Instead of just hiring more people, we improved our processes to handle the heavy workload more efficiently without overloading the team.

For example, at first, all of our link building specialists handled all clients’ backlinks. However, as the workload expanded, this approach was not working anymore. To fix it, we divided into smaller teams.

Even that was not the best solution for the long-term, as we kept growing. So, we changed our strategy again.

Now, link exchange collaboration is managed differently. Each link builder manages communication with a small number of link partners. This change has made everything run much more smoothly and, most importantly, helped us stop spamming people.

So, scaling isn’t just about hiring more people but improving the way we work as we grow.

The Biggest Mistakes New Agencies Make

Many new link building agencies try to think and act like the big ones, but that’s definitely not the best approach. 

New agencies should not stress over things like redesigning their website or hiring an HR specialist or project manager right away. You don’t need all those unnecessary expenses at the very beginning. 

Another mistake we’ve seen is ignoring personal branding. New agencies focus so much on growing the business that they miss the fact that a strong brand image is what really drives, builds trust, attracts clients, and keeps the agency moving forward.

Our Best Tips for New Link Building Agency Owners

Starting a link building agency can be overwhelming, but with the right approach, you can achieve success. Here are our best tips:

• Don’t be shy: This industry is competitive and if you want to build a reputation as a trusted link building agency, you have to be bold and confident in your offers.
• Be ready to take risks: Link building is quite risky, as you always depend on your employees, and they, in turn, depend on link exchange partners. If you’re not comfortable with this level of uncertainty, it may not be the right fit.
• Sales are tough, so stand out: Link building isn’t the easiest thing to sell. To grab attention, you’ll need to come up with unique ways to differentiate yourself from competitors. We’ve had success by using Loom for cold sales outreach, which helped us build trust with potential customers and boost email engagement. To further explore this, read our blog about our experiment of neuromarketing in sales where we share how it helped us improve our sales approach.
• Keep your packages simple: Offer just one package for backlinks. No custom solutions. It keeps things clear and easy for everyone.

Wrapping Up

Building a link building agency is a path full of trial and error, which is normal when starting any kind of business. 

Without challenges and mistakes, we would not stand where we are now. So, don’t give up if you don’t achieve success right away. 

So, our last very important piece of advice is to stay patient and keep improving your strategies, the clients and the success will follow. 

Good luck! You’ve got it!

FAQ about starting a link building agency