Link building and digital PR
Links you earn, not links you rent.
Off page SEO built on digital PR and manual outreach. It is slower than buying placements and it costs more per link, and it is the only version that still counts in three years when the network selling the cheap ones has been deindexed.
The position
Two ways to get a backlink.
Most agencies are quietly doing the second and describing it as the first. It is worth knowing which you are buying.
Earned, what we do
- Someone links because the thing you gave them was worth linking to
- Slower, lower volume, higher cost per placement
- Survives algorithm updates because there is nothing to detect
- Sends real referral traffic as well as authority
- Cannot be guaranteed as a fixed monthly count
Bought, what we refuse
- Someone links because they were paid to, on a site that exists to sell links
- Fast, high volume, cheap per placement
- Works until the network is deindexed, then stops working retroactively
- No referral traffic, because nobody reads those sites
- Can be guaranteed by the month, which is exactly the tell
Worth knowing
We have audited profiles where bought links were already in place, and the cleanup cost more than the links did. We have also had paid link and PBN networks approach a client directly and advised turning them down. That judgement is part of what you are hiring, and it is why the answer here is a flat no rather than a negotiable one.
The work
What off page SEO actually involves.
Not every site needs all of it, and a few need none of it. The first job is working out which.
Backlink audit
What you already have, what is helping, what is doing nothing and what is a liability. Disavow decisions made deliberately rather than by dumping every low DR domain into a file, which is how people accidentally disavow links that were working.
Competitor gap analysis
Who links to the sites beating you, and whether those links are earnable or just old. Sometimes the honest finding is that a competitor's profile is fifteen years of accumulated coverage and cannot be caught by outreach alone.
Digital PR campaigns
Something worth covering, then the outreach to place it. Usually built on data you already hold or data we can gather, because journalists respond to numbers far more reliably than to opinions.
Manual outreach
Researched, individual, and sent to people who have a genuine reason to care. Low volume by design. Mass templated outreach burns the domains it touches and gets you a spam folder reputation you keep.
Linkable assets
Sometimes the reason nobody links to you is that there is nothing to link to. We build the asset as well as pitching it, which is where the development side earns its place. See custom tools.
Anchor and velocity control
Anchor text diversity that looks like it happened naturally, because it did, and a pace that does not spike. Both are easy to get wrong when you are trying to hit a number.
The advantage
We can build the thing worth linking to.
Most link building agencies can pitch, but they cannot build. So the asset is whatever the client already has, usually a blog post, and the outreach has to work much harder to place something unremarkable.
We write the code as well. That means a campaign can be built around a calculator, a comparison tool, an interactive map or a data set with a real interface, rather than another list article.
We have built exactly this kind of thing already. A location search tool with distance sorting, radius filtering and a self maintaining geocoding layer, built server rendered so it stays crawlable. A three way comparison feature with real relationship data, SVG connector graphics and location aware pricing. Neither was built as a link asset, but both are the sort of thing that earns coverage, and both prove the capability is real rather than a slide in a pitch deck.
The honest caveat: a tool is a bigger up front cost than a blog post, and it is the right call only when the topic genuinely supports one. We will tell you when it does not.
Reporting
What we report, and what we refuse to.
You get
- Every placement, with the live URL so you can check it yourself
- Referring domain growth, and DR as a secondary measure
- Rankings and traffic on the pages the campaign was meant to help
- Outreach volume and reply rate, including the campaigns that did not land
- Hours logged as spent, including work that was scrapped
You will not get
- A guaranteed monthly link count, because that is only possible if links are bought
- A "DR 50 plus" promise, because DR is not ours to award
- Placements on sites we would not let you check
- Credit for links that were already there
- A vanity dashboard with impressions on it
Cost
What it costs.
Off page work is billed at the SEO rate of £90 to £110 an hour, quoted as a fixed scope per campaign once we know the sector and the asset.
Backlink audit
From £900
What you have, what is a liability, what to disavow and whether links are actually your constraint. A sensible first step, and occasionally the last one you need.
Campaign
Scoped
One digital PR push. Asset production, research, outreach and reporting. Priced per campaign because the asset drives the cost.
Retained outreach
Monthly
Ongoing campaigns against a roadmap, usually alongside the on page work so the links point at pages that can convert them.
Minimum engagement is four hours. Full breakdown on the rates page.
FAQ
Questions worth asking any link builder
Do you buy links?
No. Not private blog networks, not link farms, and not the packages that arrive in your inbox promising fifty DA 50 backlinks for a few hundred pounds.
This is not squeamishness. We have audited backlink profiles where exactly that had been bought, and the cleanup costs more than the links did. We have also identified paid link and PBN networks approaching a client and advised turning them down.
Everything we build is earned through outreach. It is slower and it costs more per link, and it is the only version that is still working for you in three years.
How many links will I get?
We will give you a realistic range once we have seen your site and your sector, and it will be a smaller number than a link seller would quote. Earned placements land at a much lower volume than bought ones.
Be wary of anyone guaranteeing a fixed count before looking at what you do. A guaranteed number is only possible when the links are bought, because that is the one method where supply is under the seller's control.
How long until DR moves?
Domain Rating is a lagging indicator. It moves after the links land, after Ahrefs recrawls, and it moves in steps rather than smoothly. Expect a few months before it is worth looking at, and longer on an established profile where each new link is a smaller proportion of the total.
Worth saying plainly: DR is a third party metric, not a Google ranking factor. It is a useful proxy and a convenient way to report progress, but the thing that actually matters is whether the pages you care about rank. We report on both.
Do I even need links?
Often less than you have been told, and this is the first thing we check rather than the last.
On one project a DR 72 domain was ranking for zero keywords on a target page and the assumed fix was links. The competitors on page one were sitting at DR 16 to 32, far below the client. Authority was not the constraint, so a link campaign would have been an expensive way to change nothing. The real causes were a canonical pointing at a redirect, two pages competing for the same intent, and spun copy.
If your problem is on the page, we will say so and sell you the smaller job.
What does a link cost?
Campaigns are quoted per project because the work is outreach hours and creative production rather than a per unit product. The underlying rate is £90 to £110 an hour for SEO and strategy.
If you divide the total by the placements you will get a figure that looks high next to a link seller's price list. That gap is the difference between a link someone earned and a link someone invoiced for.
Will this get my site penalised?
Earned coverage carries effectively no manual action risk, because it is the thing link schemes are imitating. The risk sits with bought links, and it is why we do not touch them.
If you have already bought links and are worried, that is a backlink audit rather than a campaign. We assess the profile, decide what genuinely needs disavowing and what is harmless, and tell you honestly if the answer is that nothing needs doing.
Keep reading
Related
Book me
Not sure links are your problem?
Send us the page that will not rank. We will tell you whether it is an authority problem or an on page one before anybody suggests a campaign.