In 2010, I wrote about a strategy that combined two of the most common questions I received: how do I rank in Google, and how do I outsource work in my business? The answer at the time was to hire a virtual assistant to manually build backlinks from a checklist of 5,000 link sources. That specific approach is dead. But the underlying principles of SEO outsourcing are more relevant than ever.
What We Did in 2010
The strategy was straightforward. You purchased a product that gave you a list of places where you could create backlinks to your site, including directories, social bookmarking sites, and Web 2.0 platforms. Then you hired a virtual assistant, often offshore for $250 to $400 per month, and had them work through the list creating links to your pages.
It worked because Google's algorithm at the time was simpler. The quantity of backlinks mattered enormously. A site with thousands of directory and bookmark links could outrank competitors with fewer links, even if those competitors had better content.
Why Mass Link Building Stopped Working
Google's Penguin update in 2012 fundamentally changed the backlink game. The algorithm began penalizing sites with unnatural link profiles, meaning sites that had accumulated thousands of low-quality links from directories, bookmarks, and other sources that were obviously manufactured rather than earned.
Sites that had used mass link building strategies saw their rankings collapse overnight. Some never recovered. The lesson was clear: Google had gotten good enough to distinguish between genuine editorial links and manufactured ones, and it was willing to punish the difference.
What SEO Outsourcing Looks Like in 2026
The good news is that outsourcing SEO work is still both possible and smart. The tasks have just changed.
Content creation and optimization. The most effective SEO strategy in 2026 is creating comprehensive, high-quality content that genuinely serves the searcher. This is work you can absolutely outsource, provided you have systems for maintaining quality and accuracy. Hire writers who understand your niche, create detailed content briefs, and implement an editorial review process.
Technical SEO audits. Site speed optimization, structured data implementation, crawl error fixing, and mobile experience improvements are all technical tasks that can be delegated to specialized contractors or agencies.
Link outreach. Instead of mass link building, modern link acquisition involves identifying relevant sites in your niche, building relationships with their editors, and pitching genuinely valuable content or collaboration opportunities. This outreach can be systematized and delegated once you have established the process and templates.
Content promotion. Getting your content in front of the right audiences through social media management, email outreach, and community participation can all be outsourced with proper systems in place.
The Outsourcing Process Still Works
While the specific SEO tasks have changed, my general framework for hiring and managing virtual assistants remains sound. Here is the updated version.
Document your process first. Before you hire anyone, create a detailed procedure for the work you want done. Screen recordings, written steps, examples of good and bad work. The more detailed your documentation, the better your results.
Start with a paid trial. Give your top candidates a small paid test project. This lets you evaluate their work quality, communication, and reliability before committing to a longer engagement.
Require regular reporting. A brief daily or weekly status update keeps your contractor accountable and keeps you informed. This is not micromanagement. It is good management.
Start narrow, then expand. Begin with one specific task. Once your contractor has mastered it, add more responsibilities. Trying to delegate everything at once is a recipe for poor results.
The Bottom Line
Outsourcing SEO work is one of the highest-leverage activities a part-time entrepreneur can invest in. You are buying back your time by delegating tasks that are important but do not require your personal attention. The key is making sure the tasks you delegate align with current best practices rather than outdated tactics that could actually harm your rankings.
Focus your outsourcing budget on content quality, technical excellence, and genuine relationship building. Those are the SEO investments that compound over time and survive algorithm updates.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for a great post. After hearing all of the talk about offshore VA’s at NAMS, I have been considering contacting someone to get started. I love how you’ve broken this down into manageable steps for me :). Now I have no excuses! Thanks for a GREAT post!
You are very welcome. Outsourcing is probably the single most important thing that you can do to grow your business. Good luck!
Thanks for the tips, I’m ready to hire an outsourced employee but am having trouble making the leap. I’m using your post as the push I needed to do it today.
I was wondering if you know anything about Onlywire. It seems like a good thing, but I’m not completely clear on what it does. Maybe you could write a post on social media for us newbies.
Excellent Ken. Remember, you are not making a lifetime committment. You can always try it for a month or two and then decide what to do.
Onlywire is really cool, and there is a blog plugin for wordpress as well. Basically, onlywire submits social bookmarks to 14 or so site simultaneously. Pretty cool stuff.
If I did write a post on social media, which I would be happy to do, what would you like to see covered?
I would like to know how much time and energy to devote to social media and the best ways to accomplish what needs to be done on them without taking a great deal of time. Also. which ones are most important to update regularly and what information to update with.
I’m personally not a big fan of Twitter, Facebook, etc., therefore I don’t know a great deal about them. I prefer to read blogs and surf around on sites. I know that I need to be involved with social media to be considered seriously online and am trying to get more involved. With all the things to be done to drive traffic, I just seem to avoid this area.
I found Onlywire and it seems like a good tool to bridge the gap and save a lot of time. I have a few Twitter plug-ins that I’m going to try. I have also been trying to do article marketing, Squidoo, Hubpages, Scribd, etc., thus found the need to hire someone. Maybe a post covering the basics is what I need, or a short ebook like The $5 Mini-Site Formula.
Here is my recommendation:
Use onlywire. For every 1 of your own posts that you submit to onlywire, submitt 4 posts from other sources that are really great on similar topics. By delivering great content to your social media channels, you will build a following.
I know these don’t fall into social media, but if you have any tips for pinging services such as Feed Shark, and feed services such as Rss Feeds Generator, it would help as well.
Dear Mark
Thank you so much for emphasizing “Philippine Job Boards”. For whatever reason you chose the Philippines, I am certain a lot of Pinoy SEO “experts” will be so happy and thankful that you did. As we say here in the Philippines, “Maraming Salamat !” (Thank You so much!)
Jaime Lim
Jaime — to be completely honest with you, I have worked with people from every corner of the globe. I fine people from the Philippines to be honest, hardworking, delightful and competent. I am sure there are some bad apples out there somewhere just like in any culture, but I have great luck with these people as a general rule.
Good article, Mark. Is cost the reason you go offshore rather than use a service in your own country?
Hey Nan — I actually do both. For repetitive tasks like SEO, I have found it difficult to find qualified help at a price I can afford in the US. For things like transcription and other skill tasks, I use people in the US. So, I don’t outsource offshore just because it is offshore — I try to make a good business decision in every case.
Mark, this is a killer article…. a similar recipe has worked to great success for me, so much so that I up and moved the Philippines for a while! John’s job board is pretty good, the most popular ones in country here are Jobstreet.com and JobsDB.com, they require a little upfront investment but if you want to build a team it can be worth it because you can save some salary bucks by targeting workers who aren’t used to working in a virtual arrangement. On the other hand, I have one “VA” who I’m pretty sure has 3-4 “accounts” and he manages to deliver on 40 hrs of work a week easily, maybe he’s outsourcing too! Lynn’s product looks great, be interested to hear a little more of your perspective about it to make sure it’s not redundant with our current strategy.
Thanks Dan. Glad to hear about your success. Basically, the product is a list of 5000 places to go put a link back to your site. It is an excellent collection. Straightforward brute force backlink creation.
Mark, I asked my guys in the Philippines today to take a look at your offer and to send their opinion. Here it goes:
“That’s really great value and I think [Mark] Mason isn’t sort of guy who wants to make quick affiliate sales.”
Looks like you have some new fans! Thanks, we’ll let you know how it goes.
Good to know, because I wouldn’t know where to begin. Currently have my own (literally) in-house “staff” (my 2 unemployed adult sons), but with any luck, that will change soon, so I’ll have to start looking for help – – there just aren’t enough hours in the week for one person to get everything done.
Hey Mark,
Great post here. As you know I am heavily considering hiring a VA… The biggest problem I have now if that I am not sure I have the spare money for a VA to be hired if they don’t make their cash back…. So I am considering part time if people are available and giving them tasks that will directly make me cash in the beginning…. So ideally the beginning of the month would be instant cash getting tasks and then the end of the month would be SEO and site building related.
Anyway thanks for the post.
Forest.
Awesome post here. Outsourcing is really one of the best ways to scale your business up. Once you become proficient at something, think of ways to outsource whatever, content creation, link building, landing page creation, etc, and focus on the critical conversion points in your business.
Kurt
Thanks Kurt — really appreciate the nice comments.
you know how you know if you have a great daughter?? if she goes on your website and leaves a comment even if she has no idea what her dad is talking about 🙂
love ya dad…peace
Shouldn’t you be doing some math or something? LOL
me? math? whats math? 😛
no math…freedom from math hw!!
love you…put more mj in your posts!!!
Michael Jackson?
Yep Michael Jackson. Alley is referring to this post:
http://www.masonworld.com/internet-marketing/michael-jackson-and-internet-marketing/
How adorable and sweet! I love it!!!! 😀
My girls are awesome. Thanks!
Now I remember that MJ post! That was pretty darn cool you had Alley ‘bugging’ you here and Pam ‘bugging’ you on Buzz! Sweet kiddos! 🙂
I have to agree with Alley, that makes her pretty awesome 😉
I agree Loretta. The fact that you agree with her makes her even more wonderful.
This is a great post Mark. very helpful to those who are struggling.
Mark, thanks for laying out a strategy for how to hire a VA to do the backlinks. I also bought Lynn’s 5,000 Backlinks and am looking forward to putting them into action.
Great stuff Mark, thanks alot for this article!
I like the idea of a one-time payment. I will probably do it. I did want you to know that at least while viewing this in FF, each time a reply is nested the font gets smaller and smaller.
If you have people you trust, you should consider sharing them (assuming they have more time). It is always hard to find good people. Recommendations go a long way. I wouldn’t suggest publishing it on the blog, but maybe to your faithful subscribers and occasional affiliate product purchasers.
Thanks for the great post (and the reminder)
Thanks for pointing out the shrinking comments. Fixed now, I think.
I don’t have any people for backlinks that I can share at the moment. I do have a killer transcriptionist and an awesome wordpress/html/php guru that I can recommend. My backlinks person is full time working for me at the moment.
Very glad you liked the post (and the content-rich reminder). LOL I figure if you are going to get nagged by me, you should get some content for your trouble.
One other comment. If you have children you can teach them the above methods, pay them what you would have paid an outsourcer, and still get a write-off (check that with your tax accountant).
I bought the product Mark, it better be good. jk, I know it will be.
Well, in all seriousness, if you are not completely satisfied let me know.
Patricia posted this on the wrong post — so I am moving it here. I would love to get your feedback on her position about outsourcing.
————————————-
Well, congratulations. If you or yours run into any problems due to the horrific economy, you can thank yourself and all those other entrepreneurs big and small who have, through outsourcing of exactly this type, helped that happen. You’re just the latest in a long line, though. For years now — starting in the 90s thanks to Bill Clinton and accelerating through the entire first decade of the new millennium — I watched as our once vaunted middle class got ripped to shreds as high tech jobs, and jobs of this type, were sent off shore with abandon, while the wages for those jobs that did remain here were bought (and are being brought) down to 3rd world level.
Now, ultimately I’m an optimist — I think there will be a great awakening that will cause a lot of things to change, but I don’t think the middle class will ever come back nor do I think the U.S. itself will ever again be the world power it once was. You can’t destroy a segment of society — or the economy — and not reap the results. Given what I’ve seen up close and personal, I’ve been utterly amazed at how resilient our economy has been, up until the time the banksters got ultra greedy and nearly brought the whole world economy down last Fall.
But here’s a tip for you: you don’t have to go to all the trouble of going to Phillipine job boards. There are job boards here (Elance, for example), where you can get all sorts of freelance services for pennies on the dollar. Some folks here in the U.S. are desperate enough that they will work for well under minimum wage, and then there are all those in all those 3rd world countries for whom $3 an hour or even less is a small fortune. If you look around a bit on these U.S.sites, you might also see some of the job listings themselves now include this requirement: “Native English speakers only, please.”
Patricia, thanks for your comment. I know that offshore outsourcing is a hot button issue for a lot of people, and I appreciate you taking the time to comment.
My personal opinion is that the problems facing the US economy extend far beyond this sort of outsourcing, but I understand your point.
From my perspective, the issue is not really greedy entrepreneurs that are trying to make as much money as possible. Rather, the issue is just that business people are struggling to find a way to compete in a global economy. Faced with a choice of domestic labor with high cost versus foreign labor with competitive cost, CEOs are simply making a choice about survival.
I know in my own case, some of the work I am outsourcing would be cost-prohibitive with United States labor. Rather than pay domestic rates, I would simply not do the task because I could not afford it.
Now your last point confuses me greatly. Are you actually advocating that we pay US labor below minimum wage? Isn’t that just another way to rip the vaunted middle class to shreds?
For what it is worth, I do more dollars worth of US outsourcing than offshore many months.
Thanks again for your comment.
Thanks for moving the post, Mark. And goodness, don’t I sound bitter…and angry? Perhaps because I am: it’s part of the deep mourning I’ve been going through every time I’ve been forced to come face to face with this subject. Mourning for what we had and I truly believe will never have again. Mourning for the very, very good times now past.
BUT, I know in my heart that other/better things will evolve out of it (eventually), and to be honest, what you’re promoting has an inevitability about it, so it would be pointless to be mad at you.
I still hate watching it happen, though, seeing people respond to your ideas as if no one is hurt by them in the short term, remembering again just how many people in this country have no awareness whatsoever of the suffering going on with so very many of your neighbors. For example: in this day and age in the United States of America, 1 out of 8 people have issues of not enough food to eat. More people are on food stamps than at any other time in our history (well, the history of food stamps) and many of them are selling their food stamps so they can buy their medication or health insurance.
So, yeah, that brings me right back to angry and bitter to see money sent elsewhere by people who honestly — though no doubt inaccurately — believe they “can’t afford” to do otherwise.
Otherwise, looks like a great blog.
Hi Mark,
Happy to read your content again after discovering the benefits of Micre-Niche-Finder in video.
;o)
To be honest I am not sure this 5000 backlinks package is a good investment for my site.
Why?
’cause I own a French site so I assume most if not all those 5k urls are from US/UK websites no French Canadian nor French web 2.0 properties.
Even if 10 % of those 5,000 links will meet my criteria, I guess it will be very hard to find a VA speaking & understanding French to be able to create accurate backlinks.
Not sure either making backlinks on US websites to a French site well help a lot my Google ranking.
So I am currently considering using either blogcommentdemon or bookmarkingdemon
http://blogcommentdemon.com
http://bookmarkingdemon.com
Mark, I may be wrong but I suppose this way I will get the opportunity to create more related backlinks in the same language than the site I own.
Of course Mark, I am anxious to read your answer to my 2 cents.
Alan.
PS: I am not a big fan of your Black & White picture at the left of your header.
I dont know how to explain it but it makes me feel uncomfortable. ;o(
Thats a pity because of the rest of teh header is really good.
Yes, outsourcing is a hot button. However, don’t folks in other countries also have dreams, desires, bills, needs? Outsourcing allows them to make an income and help their families. So are the US needy the only ones you are interested in helping?
I so many people complain about outsourcing, complain about cheap labor, complain about lost jobs and then I see those same people shopping at Walmart. Why? Because they want cheap goods. You can’t have your cake and eat it too.
So be careful where you point.
Mark,
Found your site today by way of James Jones Friday goodies message. Since I am also a big fan of MNF and since James featured you in his email, I pinged over here and had a look around.
I’ve been looking for something like your AdSense Themes offer for awhile now, so its my good luck to have had the common sense to click thru to your AdSense offer. Even signed on to the mini-course you promote.
– Neil
PS: by the way, I also like this theme here you picked up from from Gary Conn
Hi Mark
I followed your advice to a “T” on this post, and my VA seems to be having some trouble with the 5000 backlinks package. I have her doing a lot of other work for me, too, and it seems that she’s able to follow instructions well. However, in many cases she’s having trouble finding where exactly she can get links from some of the sites listed in the 5k links package. I even followed up, and agree that some of them are difficult to spot. As a quick example, wired.com doesn’t seem to allow backlinks in the comments below articles, nor could I find a forum. I also was unable to find a user profile page that might have a spot for a link. This is just one example; there are others.
I guess what I’m wondering is whether you followed your own “outsourced backlinks” recipe, and how it’s working for you and your VA. I still think Lynn’s product is a great one, and your blog is great (I bought through your aff. link); it’s just that this portion of my outsourcing experiment isn’t going quite as smoothly as I’d hoped. Do you have any thoughts on this?
Patrick;
Thanks for this comment.
To summarize, you have a competent VA that is having trouble implementing 5000 backlinks. After taking the time to verify her troubles, you are asking the very reasonable questions:
1) Is this to be expected and
2) What’s my experience (did I really do this myself)
So, here are my thoughts —
I have been outsourcing backlinks like this for a long time (I still maintain a subscription to Angela’s Links). I have seen lots of problems over time with VAs being unable to get links at particular sites. Lot’s of times this is because by the time that you get around to using the link instructions, the site has changed. Sometimes (particularly in the case of Angela’s links) the site has changed particularly to prevent link-seekers from using it that way.
The problem is slightly worse with 5000 backlinks. While Angela’s links is an “instruction manual” — 5000 backlinks is more like a (really huge) list. So, there are not generally instructions to help with the tricky stuff, and I am sure some links are out of date.
I am not sure, but I think this may be part of the reason that Paul and Lynn offer monthly “updates” containing additional sites. This adds value, but also helps offsets sites that change to prevent linking.
Note that I am not sure that “change” is what happened in your case with Wired.com — I am just speaking in general.
So, here is what I do.
I tell my VAs to work from the list, and I ask them to note sites where they are successful and sites where they are not successful. Since there are 5000 links, I never worry too much about the unsuccessful ones.
On the next site they try, I ask them to avoid the sites that were unsuccessful last time.
So, my instructions are: Do the best you can, and let me know how it goes.
Since I use 5000 backlinks as one of several “backlink tools” — this works pretty well for me.
Hope that helps!
Regards,
Mark
Here is a comment from Lynn that she sent my via email —
Hi Patrick,
Wired did go through a recent change, so you’re correct on that one. Paul and I are about to release a complete overhaul to the main package, and send that out to everyone – so you should receive that by email shortly.
Our goal is to offer a wide variety and large number of link opps, for an entire year, at an affordable price. This package is best suited to more experienced marketers that are used to scouting out link opps in every nook ‘n cranny – and this organized list & action plan simply makes it heaps easier. No more having to locate the top sources!
Mark is right in that some options will change, and also some assistants will not be as savvy about link opps as others. It would be hard to find a VA that is an experienced “SEO” that is willing to work on anything else but their own SEO. That said, there’s no rocket science to it. And as Mark said, they can make notes as they go and improve their time and success rate with experience.
Keep an eye out for that update 😉
Best,
Lynn Terry
Hi Mark and Lynn
Thank you so much to both of you for the response. Both of you already had earned a huge amount of trust as a result of the work you’ve already done; the fact that you both took the time to respond boosts you to the very top of the heap of IM Gurus as far as I’m concerned!
I’ll have the VA proceed as you suggested, making notes on what works and what doesn’t. I’m still a little worried that it’s taking a little longer than it should, but we’ve only been working together a week and her other work demonstrates satisfactory competence, so we’ll keep moving forward.
Thanks again, you guys are the best! I love hearing both of you on your respective podcasts- Masonworld podcast and IMTW. Mark, congrats on the baby girl!
Best,
Patrick
Nicely laid out development plan for gaining backlinks but a VA is a bit of a luxury if you’re just starting out in blogging
What has been your expeience with retention of outsources? Do you still use the same people you started with for backlinks (or whatever) a year or more ago?
Yes, I do. I may be making some changes in the near future, but for now I have everyone.
Being a stay at home Dad and a night time infopreneur has really got me almost to the tipping point on outsourcing some of the things that I need to get done.
Thanks for this post Mark. And I can’t wait until my kids get old enough to do fly by blog comments on my sites.