Today is a very special day for the community – Link Builder Awareness Day #LBAD is something very close to our hearts, if you have any spare change or links to go towards this excellent cause then please give where you can.
I’ve recently asked the community some tough questions about link building and where we are at in today’s harsh climate. It brings me great pleasure to present to you the horrific truth.
In this faultless survey I asked a group of over 38 link builders the following questions:
1 – As a link builder do you feel that your job has become more difficult over the last 12/18 months?
That looks pretty conclusive. Looks like our link building buddies have been overworked! Google/Business owners, we are watching you…
2 – Do you feel that this has been reflected in your current salary?
Not only are these guys over worked but they are also underpaid?! You animals!
3 – Do you feel that this increase in salary represents your skillset or worth to your employer?
There was a wage increase question but the data I got back was pretty shit. Basically 70% of link builders (or ‘people’) have had a mixed range of wage increases over the last year or so (for the mathematicians out there 30% of the link builders received no pay rise, bastards!) So back to the graph above… Basically link builders are feeling undervalued to their company. If you are a business owner reading this pay your link builders more!
4 – Have you received training from your employer to do this content led approach?
This is an interesting chart. Only 33% of all link builders have received training over the last 12-18 months to help them improve. Want to have better staff who waste less time? Maybe show them how to do things properly?
5 – What do you enjoy about your current role?
- Learning new skills from experts
- Developing internet branding and traffic
- not much
- The creative side of link building is fun
- creative freedom: in the past, we were confined to “proven” tactics. now I get to put on the thinking cap and figure out a better way.
- Freedom, Variety, Great atmosphere
- I’m an SEO who is involved in ALL elements of the SEO process from strategy to execution. I like the variety, and love who I work with.
- Promoting great content
- Writing quality articles
- Research, Brain storming about different ideas and writing.
- I’m always learning
- the variety the creativity the opportunity to learn new outreach
- It´s so dinamic and it´s a continue improvemet, search and invention of technics. It´s not a monoton job and you learn everyday something new to apply
- Consultancy and onsite autits
- I enjoy the community feel to the whole industry, and love using problem solving in a creative way.
- Challenging. Fucked up. Weird industry.
- Recently I have been given large content budgets, it’s a lot easier to link build when I can hire writers and graphic designers!
- co-workers, relaxed office
- Daily challenges
- The success
- The fact I recently moved away from link building!!!
- That it works
6 – What is frustrating about your current role?
- Technology tends to stunt growth.
- difficulty in creating great links
- bad teamwork
- It’s taken for granted
- budgets and the fear of “what google’s gonna do”.
- Link Building isn’t as easy as it once was!
- I hate the lack of support I have and the narrow perception of what “SEO” entails from the general public and our clients. I’m also time starved and trying to direct the company to more content initiatives.
- Traditional link building without content is extremely difficult, time consuming and drives little results in terms of increased rankings for competitive terms
- Same high number of clients but a higher quality of work means that there is never enough hours in the day.
- No or Negative reply of emails (I hate it, Although this is the part of the Job!)
- I find it difficult to delegate internally (employees resist), and difficult to find the right people externally. Results in me being responsible for EVERYTHING.
- the restrictions from clients
- You spen so many time trying to reach to an agrement with bloggers and people but nowadays everybody wants money, not a reciprocal link..
- Internal procedures that cause road blocks
- The lack of appreciation for what I do on a regular basis
- No guidelines. Can’t switch off. Accountability. Responsibility. My fault if google is in a bad mood.
- My employers don’t always realize how difficult and time consuming fostering a realationship is.
- no insurance
- Clients of course!
- To many clients to handle
- (I was link building until about a month ago so) Finding good quality sites to approach in relevant niches
- Time, effort & creativity
7 – Have you done any of the following over the last 6 months?
YESSSS There are graphs there is not much text HOORAY!
To be honest, I had a feeling these would be the results – except the ‘looking for new work’ part – that’s interesting!
Nice round up!
Haha, agreed! Graphs > Text
Yeah I didn’t expect so many people would be looking for work. Over 30% have been to an interview?!
Agree. SEO has become difficult especially after Panda and Penguin update. Recently, I have started getting many requests to do link clean up thing, which speaks that people are running away from traditional SEO.
SEO has changed a lot over the year.
P.S: I see a naked code right above the Submit button. You might want to fix it up.
just checked some rankings for a client and have noticed competitors link profiles are starting to resemble my client’s link profile. Basically I make a link , they discover it and make the same link. As if linkbuilding wasn’t getting squeezed enough now I am getting copied too . Had a little moan , feel better now, time to find some more links for my competitors 🙂