When it comes to link building, most would-be optimizers come to the inevitable decision-making point when they must decide whether they want to hire a link building service or do it themselves.

There are arguments for both sides, and I'll let you know my opinion in a minute. The pros of hiring a "good" link building service is speed. It's time consuming to build links that are actually worth your time. Indeed, finding "do follow" links that have high enough page rank and/or relevance for your website can be very time consuming. So, why not just hire a service if that's the case?

Because it's risky. Adding too many links (especially ones that are not relevant to your site) at one time can damage your reputation on Google and other search engines. Your site could end up getting penalized or even banned. Even if they are relevant links, too many a day can look fishy. Google has gotten pretty good at seeing through all kinds of schemes like this.

Another con is that link building can be expensive. Horribly expensive. Just to get enough links to make a difference can bankrupt the average Joe if they're not careful to tell the link building service to only create x amount of links in x amount of days.

The alternative is to simply build traffic and popularity the normal way - organically and through useful and relative content. Honestly, this takes a bunch more time. However, the links you'll get pointed to your site will be real, natural, and people will be more likely to actually click on them. What good is 6 billion links if no one clicks on them because they aren't relevant? This can take months and even years. To get a good naturally building website, it can take 3+ years for enough organic and natural links to take hold and jettison your website to a permanent spot on page one of Google, Yahoo, or Bing. And that's if you just sit back and watch things happen. If you actively link build by linking back to your website in relevant forums, other websites, etc - then your results will come a whole lot faster.

Link building is just one facet of successful search engine optimizing. You can learn a whole lot more about what's required to be successful online through search engine optimization and everything it entails with my SEO guide.