Short answer: most problems with outsourced link building come from the buying process, not from the links. The agency bought on a number, skipped a pilot or never checked the work. Each of these is fixable before a contract is signed.
1. Buying by link count
A proposal that says "twenty links a month" tells you nothing about quality. Twenty relevant placements and twenty links from unrelated pages are very different things. Ask what kinds of sites the links come from, ask for real examples, and judge the scope by the standard of the sources, not the headline number.
2. Skipping the pilot
Signing a retainer across all your clients on day one is a large bet on an unknown. Start with one client or one location. A pilot shows you how the provider communicates, how fast approvals move and what a real report looks like. If something is wrong, you learn it cheaply.
3. Never opening the placements
Many agencies file the report and never click the links. Open a sample every month. Does the page read like a real page for real readers? Does the link sit inside useful content? Is the page indexed? Five minutes of checking tells you more than any summary. If the vendor objects to you checking, that is information too.
4. Letting anchors run on autopilot
If nobody owns the anchor plan, the vendor will drift toward whatever is easiest, and that is often repetition of one commercial phrase. Approve a general approach before work starts, and keep a record of what has already been used for each client. Our post on planning anchor text goes into the detail.
5. Ignoring the site the links point to
Links do not repair a weak site. If the location page is thin, the profile is incomplete or the listings disagree with each other, outside links will not help much, and the money is better spent on fixing those first. A sound provider will tell you this during scoping, even if it reduces the size of the project.
6. Reselling a promise you cannot keep
The riskiest mistake is passing a vendor's optimism straight to your client. If you tell a client that links will lift them into the map pack by a date, you own that sentence. Instead, describe the work, the pace and the limits. Links are one signal among many, and results depend on the client's site, competition and category.
7. Not asking what happens when a link disappears
Hosts redesign sites, sell domains and delete old pages. Some links will vanish within a year, whoever placed them. Ask before you sign how removals are handled: whether the vendor tells you, whether it asks the host to restore the link, and whether a replacement is part of the scope. Silence on this point in a proposal usually means nobody has thought about it.
What a safer process looks like
- Ask for the scope in writing, including what is excluded.
- Start with a pilot.
- Ask for real examples of the kinds of hosts used.
- Receive a dated, row-level report each month.
- Open a sample of placements yourself.
- Agree a single contact on each side.
The risk you cannot outsource
Buying or exchanging links for ranking purposes can go against Google's spam policies on link schemes. That is true for any vendor, including us. Relevant, editorial-style placements reduce the risk but do not remove it, and the decision to take that risk belongs to you and your client. If you want to see how a managed provider should handle these points, read the local link building service guide or see how a partnership starts on the agency and reseller program page.
Search guidelines and tactics change, and Google can revalue or ignore links at any time. Nothing here is a promise of rankings, traffic or leads, and results are never assured.