I'm Shashikant Shah, a digital marketing expert in Kathmandu. Link building is the off page part of the search work on my SEO expert page, and I do it for businesses across Nepal whose site and content are already sound. It's the slowest part of SEO and the easiest to get wrong.

Short answer: link building in Nepal means earning links and mentions from news sites, tech press, colleges, suppliers, associations and directories that have a real reason to reference you, and never paying for a placement. Expect a handful of good links a month, not fifty, and expect them to take months to show in rankings.

When you need this

The usual moment is a plateau. The technical fixes are done, the pages are written, and the site sits on page two behind competitors whose domains are older and have been mentioned more. Nothing on the site is wrong. It just hasn't been cited yet.

The second moment is the offer. An agency or a freelancer promises a fixed number of links for a fixed monthly fee, usually from sites nobody in Nepal reads. Google's link spam policy calls that a link scheme.

The third is a new business with no history at all: a new clinic, a new college programme, a new export brand. Nobody links to a site nobody has heard of, so the first links have to come from the relationships you already have.

The problems I see most often:

  • A backlink profile made of directory spam and paid guest posts from sites with no readers.
  • Suppliers, dealers, partners and associations that already mention the business but never link to it.
  • Coverage in Nepali news or tech press that names the company and links to its Facebook page instead of the website.
  • Citations with three different phone numbers and an old address across directories.
  • No page on the site worth linking to: no data, no guide, no tool, just service pages.

What I actually do

  • Backlink profile review: what links to you today, what links to your competitors, and what's worth worrying about.
  • Something worth citing: a guide, a piece of local data, a comparison or a tool that a journalist or a college would plausibly link to. Usually this is content strategy work first, and I say so if the site has nothing linkable yet.
  • Local coverage: pitches to Nepali news sites, TechLekh style tech press, industry publications and college pages, with a real story, data or comment attached. You get the outreach list and the placements as they land.
  • Partnership links: suppliers, dealers, clients, associations and event sponsors who already have a reason to reference you, asked properly and linked to the right page.
  • Citations and directories: accurate, consistent listings on the directories that matter in Nepal, with the same name, address and phone everywhere. For a business with a shopfront this feeds straight into local SEO.
  • Internal linking: the links you control, so the pages that earn coverage pass it on to the pages that sell. My off page SEO guide covers how these pieces fit, and the technology companies page shows where it matters most.

How it works

First call and audit. The first thirty minutes are free. Send me the domain and I'll look at your backlink profile against your competitors and tell you whether links are your problem at all. If you go ahead, the audit covers the profile, your citations and what on the site could earn links, and you get a written 30 day plan with what's not included.

The work. Outreach runs over months, not weeks, in your name where possible, so the relationships stay yours. Citations and partner links go first because they're quickest. Then the linkable piece gets built and pitched. Every link earned is one you'd be happy to show Google's webspam team.

Reporting, and what you keep. Every month you get a plain language report from your own Search Console and a link tracking sheet: links earned, from where, to which page, and what moved in rankings. The relationships, the content and the listings stay yours if we stop.

Proof from ethical link building work

I haven't published a link building result with numbers yet, and I won't invent one. The nearest published result by mechanism is a Kathmandu ecommerce store whose organic sessions went from 2,300 to 13,500 a month over 12 months, up 487%, with organic led revenue roughly tripled. Links were part of that work alongside technical fixes and content, so I don't attribute it to links alone. Some of these came from engagements I worked on as part of an agency team, so read them as account totals rather than mine alone. The baseline and the timeframe are on the case studies page.

Nepal Airlines Corporation is the other relevant scope: removing impersonating pages and verifying the official presence, the defensive side of the same discipline.

What ethical link building costs

My prices are published. An audit of your backlink profile, your citations and what on your site could earn links with a 30 day action plan is USD 249, about NPR 34,000. A four week sprint is USD 899, about NPR 122,000. Ongoing work is USD 1,800 a month, about NPR 245,000. What each one leaves out is on the pricing page. The first thirty minute call is free. If the audit shows that links aren't your problem, I'll say so and point you at the page that is.

Questions about ethical link building

Do you buy links or use a private blog network?

No. Both break Google's link spam policy and put the whole site at risk of a manual action. Every link this work earns comes from real coverage, an accurate citation or a real partnership.

Can you promise a number of links a month?

No, and anyone who does is describing a link scheme. I commit to the outreach, the citations and the linkable content, and report honestly on what lands. Some months that's five good links, some months it's one.

How long before links show in rankings?

Citations and partner links are live within weeks. Coverage takes one to three months to land, and rankings move three to six months after that. I report links earned first and rankings second, and I don't guarantee either.

We already have spammy links. Do we need to disavow?

Usually not. Google ignores most bad links on its own. I review the profile, and if there's a real manual action or an obvious paid pattern, I disavow the narrow set that caused it.

What does it cost, and is the audit enough?

The audit is USD 249, about NPR 34,000, and for a site that mainly needs its citations fixed and its partners asked, the audit plus your own follow up is enough. Outreach and linkable content take the sprint or the retainer. The details are on the pricing page.

When are you not the right person?

If the site has technical problems or thin content, links won't fix it, and I'll send you to technical SEO or content first. If you want links from sites nobody reads, or a fixed number a month, I'll say no.

All services · Technical SEO · Content marketing strategy · SEO expert in Nepal · Off page SEO guide · Pricing.

Tell me about your backlink profile

Send me the domain. I'll look at who links to you and to your competitors and tell you the first thing I'd do, whether or not you hire me.

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