Best service to build backlinks? Or a VA maybe?

Freelance sites are often not the best ones to find a good SEO provider, many of the people with tons of reviews have been doing the same old stuff for years, back then it might have worked but nowadays it brings your site in dangour so the reviews are worth totally nothing.

Now that also counts for forums of course. The best thing is to educate your self a bit and then decide to invest in your own network or outsource it to someone who knows what he's doing.

So read your self into the topic and start asking providers detailed questions about how they setup their network and such. If they don't have a network then just skip them, you're not waiting for someone to only build links at web2.0 and other platforms, those links are way too weak to make a difference so no network is a no go.

Some questions that you can ask about their network:

- Where is it hosted (SEO-hosting or real unique IP's)

- Is the content spun or not (in case of 400 blog posts for $50 or anything like that then it's clear that the content is not unique

- Ask stats about their network sites like DA/PA/Citation-Trust Flow and ask them if they agree with a refund when the stats are real poor

- What do the sites look like? Are they themed in a certain way? I mean if you just get random sites with some free WP theme and 1000's of different articles then it looks pretty unnatural, this in combo with SEO hosting is a recipe for failure. What we do is set them up as review, bookmark, web directory, news, social sites so that it still makes a bit sense when there are 100's of different topics. Most don't take that little extra effort.

Some other things that are a sign to avoid a service:

Tier 1 links:

- 100s of article directory submissions
- 100s of web directory submissions
- 100s of blog comments
- 100s of forum links
- 100s of social bookmarks
- 100s of web2.0's

Actually anything that comes in large amounts based on 1 link type.

Tier 2 links to avoid:

- 1000s of blog comments
- 1000s of xrumer/forum links

The theory is simple, if it hurts your money site then it also hurts your back links.

There is nothing wrong with tier 2 linking when you do it in a responsible way though, if you have 100 tier 1 links and you point 1000 links at that then it's only 10 links per link, which is pretty normal. But blasting 10 links with 10.000 blog comments is definitely not normal and will hurt your site right through the tier.

Maybe you should read this post a few times as most of the crappy services are covered in it, you'll be surprised how many of the offers that you see won't qualify, probably 90%+ of what is offered in the WSO section and at Freelance sites and then I'm pretty mild.

Post-penguin, for SEO, I would do what I control really well. I would not want people to build runawat links to my site.

So for that, do whichever you choose to be more appropriate. If you feel you have found a VA that you can instruct clearly and get the exact work you want to be done then that's great. If you find a great service provider that you know does exactly what you want to then that's great too.

Your real question is not whether you want a service or a VA. IF you look at it carefully, you are probably asking whether you should trust the quality/reliability/experiences of a service versus your own experience/intelligence that drives the project.

The ones in my signature