Link Building Agencies and Marketplaces: Which One Is Right For Your Company?

A link building agency is a specialized marketing firm that helps businesses earn external backlinks. 

Agencies help companies in need of higher rankings on search engines by providing them with high-quality backlinks from relevant and authoritative websites within the client’s niche. They do this by employing a myriad of outreach strategies which work within search engine guidelines.

A link building agency does:

• Outreach: Agencies contact real webmasters and site editors on relevant, trustworthy and authoritative pages in order to add links.
• Content Creation: For guest posting purposes, link building agencies are adept content producers who can cover any industry. They write articles tailored to host website needs in exchange for backlinks. 
• Competitor Analysis: Agencies do research on a client’s industry and its competitor backlinks in order to maximize success. They find and fill gaps to make sure their clients stay ahead of the game. 
• Reporting & Tracking: Agencies pay attention to a backlink’s status even after a placement is done (as long as they’re still collaborating with the client). This ensures that even if a link is lost for whatever reason, a client is insured. 

A link building marketplace is a vendor website that connects sites offering backlinks to users wishing to purchase them. 

Link marketplaces provide catalogues of websites that are willing to sell backlinks. When purchasing a link, all a customer needs to do is provide their page url and desired anchor text. Shortly after, the backlink is live and placed on the desired website. 

A link marketplace does: 

• Cataloguing: A marketplace acts as an intermediary for sites wanting to sell links and people that want to buy them. They gather websites with links for sale, and form a list of them.
• Filtering: Marketplaces usually have filters which specify specific metrics for the sites in their databases. Often, they cover technical metrics such as traffic and authority, but they do also have the ability to sort by topic and niche. 
• Direct Insertions: The host websites swiftly add the requested link with its anchor text shortly after purchase on their pages.

The key differences between link building agencies and link marketplaces have to do with quality, convenience, safety and price. 

Now that you know what exactly each is, it’s time to understand what sets them apart. Of course, you could easily say that a backlink is a backlink regardless of where it came from. Nevertheless, the process in which you get that backlink and the link itself see some changes depending on whether it was provided by an agency or a marketplace. The following are the key differences between the two.

Guarantees

No one can guarantee certain traffic or authority metrics for any backlink. However, link building agencies and link marketplaces are separated by their delivery and maintenance guarantees.

• Link Building Agency: Agencies are almost always bound by contract to meet certain requirements and deadlines. This means that once the two parties come to an agreement, it’s the agency’s duty to complete the requirements of that agreement, guaranteeing that you’ll get the exact quality, count and timing of backlinks that you want. Furthermore, agencies like GoPeak also provide insurance on lost links, meaning that in the scenario where a backlink becomes broken (i.e. is unexpectedly removed from its host website), a replacement will be deployed soon after. 
• Link Marketplace: Link marketplaces provide you with access, leaving the responsibilities of checking on a website and backlink’s quality and safety on your shoulders. While that may not be an issue for a backlink purchase here or there, it can be difficult to have to juggle auditing websites and link placements to ensure that they fulfill your needs specifically.

Pricing 

Link building agencies are notably much more expensive to hire than buying links from a marketplace. However, the reasons behind those prices are more than meets the eye.

• Link Building Agency: Predominantly, agencies offer link building packages for their links instead of individual payments, requiring recurring payments in the form of monthly and annual plans. Furthermore, due to their level of expertise as professionals, the prices for these plans increase accordingly. However, these packages have fixed/unchanging prices, and often contain benefits surrounding maintenance and quality assurance which help beyond the link placement itself.
• Link Marketplace: Marketplaces provide much cheaper backlink placements which help with picking and choosing individual links. It is key to note though, that marketplace sites can range wildly in terms of the cost of a backlink, and are subject to constant change. This means that the site you bought a link from one day may not cost the same the next.

Speed

Link building agencies conduct full outreach to get you your links, leading to longer wait times, whereas link marketplaces place the link swiftly after you make your purchase. 

• Link Building Agency: Agencies go through the hassle of auditing your website, analyzing competitors and paying close attention to overall quality. While this does increase the likelihood of a backlink being profitable, it takes a while for a link to be placed. 
• Link Marketplace: Marketplaces operate on a quick and easy formula which allows for quick and easy placements of links. Since all that websites have to do is add your link to their pages with your requested anchor text on it, the only factor in potentially delaying the placement of your link is dependent on the website’s editors themselves. At most, barring any complications, it’ll take a day or two till your backlink is live.

Control Over Workload 

Link building agencies outline the schedule, planning, strategies and conditions of the process, leaving you as an overseer: accepting or guiding the choices of the agency. In contrast, outside of the placement, the process with marketplaces is completely hands-on.

• Link Building Agency: While the extent of your list of requirements for links varies from agency to agency, most of the time you’ll be able to only make demands surrounding your backlink count, anchor text and industry. Outside of that, an agency creates their own roadmap for the outreach process, and allows you to either accept or reject placements before going forward with the procedures of link building manually. 
• Link Marketplace: With link marketplaces, you can hand pick the specific websites you’d like your link on that have all the desirable metrics. Though this increases your list of responsibilities, it does allow you to filter through a marketplace’s site inventory and select sites that are right for you. 

Host Site Quality

Link building agencies place backlinks on real, relevant and reputable websites through manual outreach. Link marketplaces have a large catalogue of websites, but most if not all of them are designed specifically for links.

• Link Building Agency: Agencies like GoPeak spend a considerable amount of time on researching client industries and analyzing competitor profiles in order to form a list of potential host websites. These websites are all actual domains which operate on their own. What this does is ensure that your backlink is on a page which is actually reputable and trustworthy.
• Link Marketplace: Websites on link marketplaces are mostly sites which exist solely to sell links. It’s rare to find true pages from real websites since most editors and owners simply don’t want to provide links to external sites. As such, though your pages will be getting backlinks, it’s unlikely that those backlinks will be coming from actual sites.

Customization

Link building agencies allow for plans and campaigns which are tailored to your website/industry’s needs and necessities specifically, while the customization for link marketplaces is limited to filters for specific metrics. 

• Link Building Agency: Agencies hold meetings and calls before the start of a campaign to gauge a client’s goals and areas in need of improvement. During this process, they understand and outline specific benchmarks crucial for success in your niche based on your gaps compared to competitors who are already topping the rankings. Those benchmarks expand beyond metrics, as agencies also keep timing, content and count standards in your industry in mind when making placements. 
• Link Marketplace: Marketplaces do provide options when it comes to choosing host websites, but the scope of your choices is restricted to filtering a marketplace’s inventory of sites. These filters do cover key metrics such as traffic and authority, but the responsibility of ensuring a fit falls solely on your shoulders.

Backlink Profile Strength

Link building agencies obtain backlinks from reputable and authoritative websites which don’t easily provide links to external sites,

• Link Building Agency: A link building agency reaches out to a large amount of different websites within an industry for link insertions. Due to the variance in success rate and the guaranteed reputation/quality of these sites, backlinks provided by an agency create a backlink portfolio which stands out and appears natural. This is a positive sign to search engines, leading to better rankings. 
• Link Marketplace: Sites that sell links on marketplaces are open to everyone and quite often used by everyone. The effect this ends up having is a decreased value/individual benefit that comes from the backlink from that website. This is due to the fact that the authority that a given website can pass on is capped, and with each link a site gets, individual value is decreased. 

Search Engine Intervention

Link building agencies deploy white-hat methods that ensure the safety of your website, while backlinks purchased from link marketplaces range from falling in the gray area in terms of ethics to potentially being considered attained through black hat methods.

• Link Building Agency: Link building agencies like GoPeak always work within search engine guidelines. Otherwise, potential punishments from search engines would do a number on business. This means that every single link is obtained through genuine outreach, which entails that each link can be considered a genuine editorial recommendation by the host website. 
• Link Marketplace: Marketplaces sell links directly, which is already a negative for search engines unless the backlink is tagged with “sponsored” or “nofollow,” in which case the authoritative value of the link is either decreased or nullified. However, the main issue lies in the fact that these links come primarily from lower quality websites, necessitating that you compensate that lower quality by purchasing a higher volume of links. This directly violates Google’s spam policies, as these links are attempts at manipulating their ranking system instead of real signs of trust and quality.

Now, what you’re left with is the choice between an agency and a marketplace. However, it’s less about a binary choice between the two, and more so recognizing when one may be more appropriate over the other.

When To Choose a Link Building Agency

You should choose a link building agency for your company when:

• You’re in a competitive market: Organizations in niches that are constantly competing for every inch of spotlight need high-quality backlinks in order to stand tall next to other top ranking companies.
• You can’t afford to focus on link building: As a company leader with roles dispersed across your team, it may be hard to add on the additional load of needing to keep track of a link purchased from a marketplace. Instead, it’s preferable to entrust that work to an agency.
• You have long term business plans: A hefty amount of links from marketplaces will hurt you, and if you’re planning on going all the way with your business, then those individual link purchases will compound to create a very weak backlink portfolio. You’ll need an agency eventually anyways, may as well get it started. 
• You want custom tailored campaigns: If you have specific needs which complicate the link building process, an agency is equipped with the knowledge and abilities which can help with customizing their plans in order to fit your requirements. 

When To Choose a Link Marketplace

• You’re comfortable with taking risks: Like it or not, marketplace links aren’t as likely to bring you success as those from an agency. Furthermore, they’re all the more likely to potentially hurt your pages if you’re not careful. When buying links from marketplaces, it’s important to know that anything is on the table.
• You’re on a tighter budget: If your organization is struggling to make ends meet or simply doesn’t want to pay a heft sum for an agency campaign, marketplaces can provide short-term services.
• You need speed: If for whatever reason you need authority for your website on a very short notice, links from marketplaces are easy and quick enough to fulfill that need. 
• You already have an SEO strategy: If you already have an established plan created specifically for your site with marketplace links in mind, buying these links is the logical next step since you’ve already got things planned out.

Link building agencies and link marketplaces are both third party entities you can contact to get backlinks for your website. Nevertheless, they’re separated by the quality of their links and the convenience of their process. While there are times where a marketplace can be an appropriate source for your links, it’s best to keep your investments into them limited beyond the extra link here or there. Instead, if you’ve got long term goals, collaborating with a link building agency will pay dividends given the quality of their link, the ethical nature of their methods and the customizability of their packages.