Let's say you have a website that has 500 pages, is 3 years old, home page is a PR6, and has a few keyword phrases on the first page of Google search results. (But none of your big traffic keywords are on page 1.) Your research says you need more links in general and certainly more using your top keyword phrases. You want to do a link building campaign and have two proposals in front of you that cost the SAME PER MONTH. Both SEM firms seem to understand how to build links, the importance of anchor text, etc. Which one would you choose? A or B? A- 5 to 7 links per month from authority sites. The links would come from minimum PR6 pages and content related to your site. Examples might be About.com, sub page on CNN.com, Adweek.com and a Green Day blog. B- 15 submissions per month to good, related directories PR3 or better 4 or 5 articles & press releases per month, written & distributed to quality directories 10-20 bookmarks on a few social media sites every month (Digg, Delicious, Furl, Netscape, etc.) 20-30 intelligent comments or posts on blogs every month 2 or 3 new links per month from .edu or .gov sites 2 or 3 new links per month from authority blogs or sites where home page is PR5 or better Which would you choose? Thanks for playing!
I highly doubt that they will be the SAME PER MONTH in price Also not all clients "have a website that has 500 pages, is 3 years old, home page is a PR6, and has a few keyword phrases on the first page of Google search results" That is main trouble.
Well when it comes to link building you would have to ask yourself, if I place a link on this site will it drive qualified buyers to my site. It is very much like traditional advertising and knowing your target audience. Option B Directories - (Will they drive any visitors to the site, probably not) All the rest of the points are fine. Option B would encourage more natural linking in the long term so I beleive it would be a better long term strategy to go with, considering the site already has a fair amount of trust. Option A is a good choice if you had a lower ranked site, and was untrusted. As the authority sites would be giving you trust. So the correct answer would be to get 50% of each proposal!
I'd choose a, though I'd suppliment this woth my own article writing, link building, social networking etc. Most of the targets in campaign B seem to easily achievable so you could do it yourself. Campaign A seems to be much harder to pull off.
I would say B, just because of the greater amount of links and variation in where you're getting linked from.