Every business wants to improve the volume and quality of traffic to its web site, so it’s no surprise that many of our clients want to know what they can realistically expect from SEO link building services. This is important no matter what website platform or service you use; a CMS such as WordPress, a service such as Kutenda or Pronto Marketing or a template and content from Robin Robin’s Technology Marketing Toolkit.

One SEO service, for example, recently promised a client the following daily results for just $1,500 per month:

• Four to five confirmed back links from blog postings, forum posting and relative web sites
• Ten directory postings
• Five social bookmarkings
• Two article or press release submissions

We have our own opinion about this, but we always like to get different perspectives, so we spoke to Jane Copland, an expert in the field. Until 2009, Jane worked at SEOMoz, which provides expert advisory services as well as SEO tools. She now works for Ayima, a London-based SEO consultancy.

Jane told us the aforementioned SEO company pitch isn’t the worst she’s seen, as the numbers are low enough to be somewhat genuine-but that doesn’t mean our client should hire this SEO company.

The real test, says Jane, isn’t in the numbers or even in the price; it’s in the quality of the links and the content. So, if all the links and all this content are of a high standard, this is good deal.

Unfortunately, Jane doesn’t think the SEO company can achieve high-quality of links and content given the amount of daily work required. To explain why, she broke each promise down for us.

Back links

Jane says it’s tough to hit a target such as five high-quality links a day-with the emphasis on “high-quality.”

“It’s always a warning when someone guarantees link numbers,” says Jane, who oversees several large link-building campaigns. “When we do link-building, we have link targets, but we in no way guarantee we’ll hit them every month. Why? Because if we can’t find enough quality links to meet our number, we’re not going to resort to getting poor links to make up the numbers.”

She thus thinks the SEO company, when it refers to “four to five confirmed back links from blog postings, forum posting and relative web sites,” actual means blog comments-and that’s not good. “Many links like this are not followed, and thus contribute nothing to your SEO,” Jane says.

According to Jane, the promised volume, if it were of high quality, would get expensive, with the manpower to follow up on leads alone would requiring a budget of more than $1,500.

As a side note, Jane adds that you shouldn’t be taken in by the idea that 50 links on one blog or site in the sidebar/footer (which is referred to as a site-wide link) is the same as 50 links from completely unrelated sites around the web. “Fifty site-wide links from one site, and thus one IP address, are not 50 separate ‘votes’ for your site,” Jane says. “Site-wide links have their place in a natural backlink profile, but I would not want to see link-building companies passing these all off as unique links that count toward the overall link numbers they’re going for.”

Directory postings

According to Jane, the ten directory listings per day is realistic because the SEO company could submit the site to ten directories a day. But this, she notes, doesn’t take into account the quality of the directories-or even if the site is included. Directories, she notes, have an editorial process whereby sites that are reviewed can take a long time to get through the queue. “You want to be included in directories like this, where a person looks over submissions, to avoid being listed in directories that also link to spam,” she says. “This keeps you from being associated with so-called ‘bad neighborhoods.’

Social bookmarkings

According to Jane, the promise of five social bookmarkings is vague. “This could mean just about anything.,” she says.

Article or press release submissions

According to Jane, the quality of the two articles or press releases promised is a concern.

“Who writes these, and what PR firms do they use?” she asks. “If they submit a piece for syndication, how many good sources actually pick it up? If the piece is good, it should get picked up in a lot of places.”

As a reference point, Jane notes that if you use PRWeb and choose the option friendliest for SEO, it will cost $200 per release.

How to do SEO right

We agree with Jane, as well as her advice when evaluating an SEO company that makes promises like these: Request examples of previous work-i.e., case studies. “Most companies have studies that they can show to prove that their work is good,” says Jane.

Then, once you hire an SEO company, insist on monthly or weekly reporting that shows every link built, every page bookmarked and every article or press release written. “You have a right to see how your site is being marketed and how your money is being spent,” says Jane, who adds that if you request reporting, it will “become immediately obvious if the company is getting no-followed links or is putting out poor content.”