u/Copyranker

Hey r/agency. I’m wondering for larger local SEO agencies, how do you handle a local link building budget when there is a direct cost for the link?

Take local sponsorships as an example, one of the more commonly “recommended” local link building strategies.

Let’s say the client has not historically sponsored a local nonprofit/event etc.

You do outreach to local organizations to see what their sponsorship options are - there is of course operational cost to that, baked into your retainer.

You coordinate/negotiate with any positive replies to understand the pricing, link placement (ie logo on sponsor page, etc), and then you get a price.

Are you then taking that to the client and saying “we recommend you sponsor this org for (x dollar amount) so you can get a link?” - I’ve tried this and historically its gone nowhere with the client.

The other alternative is baking in the sponsorship costs into your retainers, so you pre-allocate a certain amount of spend for links. But then what happens if a link opportunity exceeds the spend? Or alternatively, if you don’t have the opportunity to spend that earmarked dollar amount that month, do you roll it into the next month and possibly go for a more expensive link?

Also, how are you assessing/calculating the ROI on that link? There’s a chance IMO that even with “real links” that they don’t ultimately move the needle in a way that results in business outcomes.

Everyone always throws around local sponsorships as a great link local link building method, but to date, I have never actually seen a breakdown of how larger agencies handle this type of thing at scale.

I'd be very curious what folks like Darren Shaw and Joy Hawkins have to say (if either of you read this and can share your insights, that would be amazing!)

Curious to hear from folks who managed an optimized multiple HVAC Google business profile profiles. Specific question is there anywhere from 4 to 6 categories relevant to hVaC contractors, like HVAC contractor, Heating contractor, air-conditioning contractor, air-conditioning repair service, etc.

It looks like most high-ranking businesses have multiple of those categories, my question is there are a lot of duplicate default services that end up being possible, so having the same service multiple times under multiple categories when you go into optimize services.

What is the right approach here? Do you add all relevant categories and all relevant services under the secondary categories even if they are duplicates, do you stick to empty secondary categories in terms of services listed, or do you pick a single category and not add the others?

I’ve recently started creating some simple project sites with Astro and I absolutely love it compared to WordPress. Sites are all local business sites, using GitHub and cloud flair pages, R2 storage for images, and a web hook behind a cloud flare secret variable to send form submissions.

I’m considering moving away from WordPress entirely, but because I don’t have a developer background, I am unsure of the pitfalls I may run into and I rely on Claude Code to troubleshoot.

My main question is, what are the pitfalls if I’m going to run into using Astro with this set up, most of the feedback I’ve gotten is that it’s probably fine and low risk since I’m just running static sites.

My choices are basically, one - stick with WordPress, two - move to Astro and rely on Claude code to build and troubleshoot, or three - hire a developer for my team who can handle the infrastructure, but I don’t know if that’s overkill for what I need.

Those experienced with Astro - is it a must to have a developer for this when building local business sites on Astro? Ultimately I probably will, but I want to figure out ahead of time what I “don’t know” and how big of an issue it will be if i delay sourcing a dev for my team.

Thanks in advance!