Skip to content

White-Label Link Building: A Complete Guide

Corey Batt

Do you run a search engine optimization (SEO) or marketing agency?

Do you want to be able to offer link-building services but don’t know where to start? Perhaps you don’t have the resources available?

White-label link building could be the answer.

This guide explains what white-label link-building services are and how to find a good agency to provide them.

What Is White-Label Link Building?

White-label link building is when you subcontract your link-building services to another agency.

However, the work they produce is presented as if it came from your business. In other words, from your clients’ perspectives, YOU are delivering the link-building services, which means: 

😄 Your team still manages client relationships.

😄 Reports, strategies, and any other documentation is delivered with your branding on.

😄 You get all the credit for boosting your client’s rankings.

The model is relatively straightforward. You charge your clients a fee for link-building services and the white-label link-building agency charges you. You’ll probably charge the client slightly more than you’d pay the agency so that you make some profit. 

Usually, you’ll agree on a price for a set amount of work per month. The agreement will differ depending on:

💸 The industry you and your client work in.

💸 The white-label link-building company.

💸 The types of links you would like delivered.

What kinds of businesses suit white-label link building?

White-label link-building services are usually suitable for anyone who provides their clients with sales and marketing or website design services. 

Examples include:

✔️ Digital marketing agencies.

✔️ SEO agencies. 

✔️ Web design and development agencies.

This is because link building crosses over with their core business and it’s likely that their clients would want these services.

White-label link building may also set up entrepreneurial salespeople who want to resell a service. 

Why Use a White-Label Link-Building Service?

There are many reasons why businesses choose to outsource link building.

They are:

You don’t want to deliver link building in-house

Setting up a whole new service offering isn’t easy. It involves:

💼 Hiring people.

🛠️ Buying the right tools.

⚙️ Setting up new processes.

📢 Marketing and selling your service.

💰 Having enough clients to make it profitable. 

For example, it’s common for SEO agencies to see a client’s rankings struggle to rise above a certain level. They know that building links is the likely solution.

But they don’t have the in-house skills to do a good job. They could try a freelancer, but the quality of freelance link builders varies. Also, they may struggle to build high-quality links in large numbers. 

Hiring someone full time is also not a viable option, as you typically only need to build links for a few clients. A better solution is to hire a white-label link-building agency to support you.

You do want to provide link-building services but you can’t right now

One of the key challenges mentioned above is having enough clients to make a new service profitable and to keep anyone you might hire busy.

White-label link building is a low-risk way to build up a roster of link-building clients without having to invest too much money.

And because these agencies are link-building experts, you’ll deliver a professional service and high-quality backlinks—this will help build your reputation as a link builder.

Eventually, you may decide to employ your own team and start building links in-house.

You already provide link-building services but you need additional resources to scale/manage demand

If you work for an agency, then you’ll know the challenge of having more work than you can possibly do. It can lead to you turning work away or being so busy that you produce poor-quality work. Either way, it can lead to clients leaving you.

White-label link-building agencies give you access to additional resources during busy periods, while also delivering the same level of professionalism that you would offer your clients.

It’s also useful if you are growing your business but you’re still in the process of gauging your increased client base to determine your hiring requirements. 

What Are the Benefits of Using a White-Label Link-Building Service?

Let’s look at some of the other benefits of using a white-label link-building service:

It’s cost-effective: As mentioned above, using a white-label link-building agency means you don’t have to hire and train an in-house team. Furthermore, link-building companies often offer fixed pricing per link or campaign, which makes budgeting easier.

Quicker campaign turnaround: White-label services often have established processes and resources, allowing them to execute a link-building campaign quicker than an in-house team. 

Freed-up resources: Outsourcing link-building services frees up internal resources, allowing agencies to focus on strategy, client management, and other core services. It gives you spare capacity for larger projects. 

They build quality links: Link-building agencies are associated with high levels of professionalism and they provide high-quality backlinks. That’s because they care deeply about their reputation. You’re more likely to see your clients’ rankings increase and reduce the risk of penalties than if you worked with a freelancer.

Up-to-date practices: Professional link builders stay updated on the latest SEO trends and algorithm changes, ensuring compliance with best practices and achieving optimal results.

Improve your reputation: Clients will see you as the provider of a high-quality, professional service, enhancing your agency’s credibility.

Focus on core competencies: A white-label link-building service allows you to focus on what you do best. You can concentrate on high-level strategy and client management while the agency handles the link building. 

What to Look For in a White-Label Link-Building Agency

It’s critical to get link building right. The wrong approach can have a negative impact on your clients’ rankings. 

It’s therefore important to work with a professional, reputable link-building provider. Here are some of the characteristics of a good link-building agency:

Use of white-hat techniques

One of the biggest issues with outsourcing link building is the number of scams and poor-quality link-building techniques used. 

Just take a look at freelance link builders on Fiverr and you’ll see lots of link builders offering to deliver hundreds of backlinks for a very low price. 

The truth, however, is that these links are often poor quality or built with black hat techniques.

A black-hat link-building technique is one that doesn’t aim to deliver value to users of the website it is posted on. Instead, it exists solely to help the sites they point to, rank higher.

If search engines like Google suspect you are using black-hat techniques, then they will either ignore your links or worse—issue your client’s site with a penalty. This could lead to reduced rankings or the site being removed from Google’s search results altogether.    

White-hat techniques, on the other hand, are more natural and offer value to users. They tend to result in more powerful, high-quality links. 

Before you agree to work with a white-label link-building agency, ask them how they build links. If they mention any black-hat techniques, then steer well clear of them.

Here’s a quick overview of common black-hat and white-hat link-building techniques:

Black hat White hat
Link farms: A group of websites created solely for the purpose of generating links to each other, often with low-quality content.

Private blog networks (PBNs): A network of websites used to build links to a single site to manipulate search engine rankings. These sites often have thin content and exist only for link-building purposes.

Guest posts: Writing high-quality content for other websites in your industry in exchange for a backlink. Ensure the content is valuable and relevant.
Cloaking: Displaying different content or URLs to users and search engines with the intent to deceive search engines. Content marketing: Sometimes known as “linkable assets”, this involves creating high-quality, shareable content (e.g., blogs, infographics, videos) that naturally attracts backlinks over time.
Comment spam: Posting links in the comment sections of blogs or forums with the sole purpose of gaining backlinks, often with no regard for the relevance of the content. Broken link building: Finding broken links on other websites and suggesting your content as a replacement. This helps website owners fix their broken links while earning you a backlink.
Automated link building: Using software or bots to generate links automatically, usually resulting in low-quality or irrelevant links. Outreach and relationship building: Reaching out to bloggers, influencers, and industry leaders to share your content or collaborate on content, often resulting in natural backlinks.
Article spinning: Slightly altering an article (often with software) to create “new” content and publishing it on different sites with backlinks to manipulate search rankings. Resource link building: Creating or curating a valuable resource (e.g., a guide or tool) and reaching out to relevant websites to include it in their resource lists.
Hidden links: Inserting links into a website’s content in a way that they are not visible to users (e.g., by using white text on a white background) but the “invisible” text is still picked up by search engines. Press releases and PR: Issuing press releases or working with journalists and media outlets to get coverage, which often results in high authority backlinks from news websites.

A focus on strategy

Once you’ve paid your money to one of those cheap link-building freelancers we mentioned earlier, they’ll immediately start placing links to your site all over the Internet.

A decent white-label link-building service, however, will need some time to develop a bespoke strategy. 

They’ll seek to understand:

🔍 Your client’s business and industry.

🔍 Why they want to build links and how that aligns with their wider marketing strategy.

🔍 Which websites would make good link-building opportunities.

🔍 What their service expectations are.

The subsequent link-building strategy may include:

✔️ A list of relevant websites to build links with.

✔️ A list of URLs on your client’s website that would benefit from link building.

✔️ A content strategy, including keywords to target and potential titles. 

✔️ Anchor text suggestions for each link. 

What is anchor text?

Anchor text is the readable text that you click on to follow a link to another page. It is often colored blue and underlined.

Anchor text is important because it helps users and search engines understand what content to expect when it follows the link. If the content that the link leads to doesn’t match the anchor text, then users could get frustrated. 

As a result, search engines are more likely to ignore a link with misleading anchor text, which means the target website won’t get any ranking benefit. 

A clear process

A good white-label link-building agency should follow a clear process, so you know how often you need to arrange meetings with its consultants and what you’ll need to have ready. 

This not only minimizes the time you’ll need to spend working on link building (which is the whole point!), but also means you’ll know what they are doing in between meetings. This helps you keep your client updated on the stage their campaign is at.

A typical link-building process will be something like this:

  1. Strategy meeting: As mentioned above, the agency should seek to understand your client and their link-building aims.
  2. Research: The agency will then research your client’s industry, looking at competitors and determining the best link-building opportunities.
  3. Create a strategy: As mentioned above, the white-label link-building agency develops your link-building strategy.
  4. Prospecting: The agency creates a shortlist of suitable quality websites. They then send a personalized outreach message to each to offer your valuable content. 
  5. Content creation: Once websites begin to accept the agency’s link-building proposals, the agency will start creating any new content that is required. This might involve you gaining approval from your client first.
  6. Submit content and record results: Once the link has been published, the white-label link-building agency updates its live reporting dashboard. The next section explains this in greater detail.   

Performance tracking

Good link-building services offer detailed reports, which make it easy to monitor progress and demonstrate value to clients.

Some even provide this in real time, so you can get live data on your clients’ link-building campaigns whenever you please. 

The reports provided to you should include:

📊 Total number of links. 

📊 Total number of new links.

📊 Total number of referring domains.

📊 Total number of new referring domains.

📊 Organic traffic change.

📊 Details of any issues—for example, broken links.

You should also get the following information on each new backlink:

📊 The URL where the backlink was built, i.e., the address of the page where the link now features.

📊 The date the link was published.

📊 The website’s authority score: This is a measure of how well regarded a website is by online users. It is mainly calculated based on the number and quality of backlinks and linking domains pointing at a site. This is sometimes known as domain rating (DR) or domain authority (DA).

📊 Pagerank score: This is essentially an authority score for the individual page.

📊 The anchor text used. 

📊Organic traffic: The number of monthly visitors who arrive at the page through search, clicking a link, or directly. 

Thorough reporting allows you to provide your clients with informed feedback on their campaigns at any time.

Confidentiality and NDA compliance

Before agreeing to work with a white-label link-building agency, ensure that your client relationships are protected through nondisclosure agreements. Many agencies regard NDAs as standard practice, but it’s good to check just in case.

Work with the Best White-Label Link-Building Agency

Over the years, we’ve received more and more requests to provide outsourced link-building services. 

The reason is clear—clients and agencies alike know the role that backlinks play in helping websites rank higher on search engines. 

That’s why we created our own white-label link-building service. We provide each client with a custom strategy that includes:

✅ Comprehensive competitor link analysis.

✅ Authority diagnosis.

✅ Advice on what types of links to build and how fast.

✅ An anchor text roadmap.

✅ Transparent monthly reporting.

Our service is affordable and delivers genuine high-quality links—you’ll be proud to share our link-building efforts with your clients!

Schedule a call to find out more about our white-label link-building services.

👋🏻

Need help?