Link building services with no bought links.

Link building is earning links from other websites, which Google treats as evidence that your site is worth ranking when they come from relevant, trusted sites. It’s one part of organic SEO. For a home-service company the links that count come from organizations you really deal with.

What I won’t do

Buying links is out, and so are the networks built to fake them. That rules out paid link schemes, where you pay a site or a broker for a link meant to pass ranking credit. It rules out link farms, which are sites that exist only to link out to whoever pays or trades, and private blog networks (PBNs), groups of websites built or bought for the sole purpose of linking to client sites. Bulk exchanges and automated links go the same way: mass link swaps, and software that posts links in comments and forums.

Google’s spam policies cover all of these. One outcome is a manual action, a penalty applied by a Google reviewer that can push pages down or out of the results until the links are dealt with. The other is quieter and, from what Google has said, more usual: the links are ignored, and the money bought nothing.

How a home-service company earns real links

I start with the relationships you already have. If you’re an authorized dealer or installer, many manufacturers list those companies on a locator page. Some of the suppliers and distributors you buy from list their contractor customers. Trade associations and chambers of commerce you belong to have member directories.

Local press is another source: a reporter covering a heat wave or a storm needs a contractor to quote. A page worth citing brings links too: a plain guide to water heater permit rules across San Diego County cities is the sort of page other sites reference.

Links from schools, youth leagues and neighborhood groups mostly support the map pack, so they count as local link building.

Links you already earned and lost

The least expensive links are ones you already have a claim to. A site names your company without linking, and a polite request fixes that. Or a page other sites linked to was deleted in a redesign, so those links now reach an error page. Redirecting the old address to the right current page recovers them. Redesigns are a common place for these losses, which is why a site migration needs a redirect plan.

Sponsorships and paid memberships

Paying for something real that happens to include a link is different from buying a link, though the line needs care. A chamber membership or a Little League sponsorship is worth doing when it’s worth doing for the business. Google asks that links given in return for payment be marked as sponsored, and how an organization marks its sponsor page is its own decision. I won’t collect sponsorships in bulk for the links alone, since that is the paid scheme described above.

Tracking what a link did

Whether another site links to you is that site’s choice, so I can’t promise a number of links. Earned links arrive slowly and unevenly. They are also harder to test than a title change: I can’t control when Google finds a new link, and other things shift in the meantime. I record which page each link points to and watch that page’s positions, then tell you plainly whether I can see an effect.

Links also do little for a page that fails to answer its search, so on-page work usually comes first.