I recently attended an SEO networking meeting in London, where one SEO said about another guy, promoted recently to Account Manager, “you know, he used to be just a link builder”.

It had been a long time since I last got so furies as I did with this comment!

So what does he mean by that? That link builder is a ‘worse category’ that an all round SEO person?! I don’t think so! I do all, on-page and off-page seo, and to be honest I have a full respect to great Link Builders. It is sooo difficult to find a good one! Additionally, having someone as an Account Manager (and what does “Account Manager mean? everything and nothing!) that actually have DONE some link building in the past and KNOWS how to do it and how DIFFICULT it can be, it is a big advantage, as we can actually have a decent conversation about link building itself!

This subject is really personal to me, I do lots of link building for my clients and It is great to see how strongly some of those links influence rankings. For me personally, link building is all about competition and I love to win in those races:) lol. Obviously, I do not win every time, but I LOVE when I do, when my clients reach top of the rankings! What a joy!:)

So what really makes a link builder, a GREAT Link Builder? There were so many articles and discussions about it (on Sphinn and SEO moz to name a couple), and I completely agreed with them. But I also think that there are 2 important ingredients that can make you a great link builder:

  • PASSIONATE- you must love it! You must feel that joy when you check rankings and the pages going nicely up. I check rankings every day (obviously the rankings don’t change every day, but I had a feeling that I am in some of kind control (how mistakenly:) and when I get THAT link, so valuable, it just makes my day:)
  • SOCIAL & FRIENDLY- it is all about creating great relationships. It is shocking when I hear from some agencies that they mostly buy links and that is normal. Paaaaalease! IT IS NOT NORMAL! The real link builder knows how to choose and approach bloggers or webmasters! Being able to create that relationships with a blogger, a relationship where you can always get back to the blogger and have a nice discussion about new project, is completely different to a short-term “fix”. Believe me, you can actually get a link from a website with PR7 for free! It is doable!

    • OK, so that’s it. I am afraid I’ve shown a little too much passion in this post but I really had to get it off my chest. I feel better now:) thank you!