You Better Read This Before You Buy Backlinks In 2022

Link building is an integral part of an SEO strategy and I’ll admit it, it’s one of the most irritating and time-consuming too.

Things like…

• Finding worthy prospects
• Reaching out to them
• Getting a link approval
• Managing the operation in the backend

…is a pain in the ass.

No one wants to go through this pain and as a result, there’s always the temptation to buy backlinks.

Many people think, if they’re paying for them, surely they must be good quality, right?

The answer to this question isn’t straightforward and depends on a number of factors.

Buying high-quality backlinks may sometimes deliver the outcomes you want.

But there is always a danger that if Google recognizes this on their radar, they will penalize your site for employing this approach, which could result in a long-term SERP ranking decline.

But you need not worry because I’ll teach you how to fly under the Google radar and share all the insider information regarding:

• Should you really buy them,
• Problems with building natural/passive backlinks as per Google
• Reasons to buy backlinks
• Risks involved in this process,
• Ideal cost of a backlink
• How to safely buy them, and
• A few ways to buy genuine links

So, let’s start with:

#1: Should you really buy backlinks today?

Now, there are two sides to this argument.

On one side is Google and on the other is “you”.

Let’s start by listening to what Google has to say about buying backlinks in the 2020s.

Google’s stance on buying links

In a nutshell, Google is adamant about preventing you from buying/selling links.

Take a look below:

Considering the above post, they don’t want you to buy or sell links artificially at all.

If they detect that you’re a heavy participant in this link trading procedure, they may discount those links or penalize your site in the worst-case scenario.

Instead, they want you to build links naturally.

They say that links should appear natural and not like they’re bought.

But there are 2 huge downsides:

Google’s guidelines on building natural/passive backlinks

You tell me, is it feasible to build a large number of links in 2022, when more than 7.5 million blog posts are published every day, passively?

Not a chance.

Let me tell you what challenges we’ll face with this so-called “Natural/Passive link building”

Problem 1: Only the top-ranking post already on Google gets the max. amount of passive links.

Remember the last time you went on google to search for a stat you wanted to include in your blog post?

What happened?

I’ll tell you.

You went on Google -> Searched the stat -> Picked the top-ranking post for your keyword -> Included that post’s link in your blog post and done.

• Did you even care to look at the second or third post in the SERP?
• Did you even go to the second, third, or fourth page to find more info about that stat?
• Did you take a look at the 13th page? You could have found some more info. but you didn’t

And this is not only you, all of us do that.

And while everyone’s doing this, it gives max. passive links to the post ranking on the top but the others in the SERP starve.

So, the concept of building links passively is long gone.

The concept of: “You write the most amazing post and links will come naturally” is dead.

And if this was not already a burning problem, we also have another to face.

Problem 2: To make things worse, webmasters have now realized the importance of links and they don’t give them out for free at all.

Instead, just like money, links have become a form of value exchange/currency on the internet.

To obtain them, one has to give something valuable in return.

If you do link outreach, you’ll find that many webmasters will only provide a link if they’re paid in return.

The fact is that most of them are aware of the potential earnings from selling links, which makes obtaining links without offering money difficult these days.

Instead, selling links has also become the most lucrative source of income for bloggers and site owners.

Bloggers and site owners make around $2000-$10,000 per month with just sponsored posts.

Here’s a screenshot of the blog income report of The Better Blondie for March 2022.

You can easily see that she made $550 from sponsored posts alone in March 2022.

I’m imagining her year’s income with sponsored posts.

Also, for many bloggers, the rates per link depend on a number of factors like:

• Niche
• Authority of the site
• Industrial competition, etc.

In short, a single link in the finance/gambling niche from a DR 70+ site will easily cost you around $1000+

After looking at the above, I can say that even dreaming about getting free natural links as per Google is an act of stupidity in the 2020s if you want to rank high.

Where does all this leave us then?

We’re left in this vicious cycle forever.

Google wants links to be naturally/passively built -> Passive link building is only favorable to top ranking sites only -> Bloggers/webmasters won’t link to you for free -> As a result, you’ve poor search engine rankings.

And this cycle goes on forever for every post you publish.

So what now?

Here’s where your stance come in.

What should be your stance when it comes to buying backlinks?

As you’ve seen above, Google has left us no option but to buy backlinks if we want to rank fast.

But don’t you feel it’s contradicting Google’s guidelines?

Yes, it is and also there are chances for your site to get penalized too if you get caught.

But what if I told you there’s a way:

• You could make those bought links appear natural?
• You could fly under Google’s radar and never get caught?

After all, theft isn’t a theft unless it’s caught.

I see that ray of hope on your face.

But before we discuss all this, let me discuss a few:

#2: Reasons to buy backlinks

A few reasons to buy backlinks apart from everyone else is doing it include:

Get faster results

Who wants to wait months doing outreach and take the hassle of building networks when these link builders have already built for us?

With every process managed and refined to the last point, link builders can deliver results faster than the speed of 5G.

Link builders can give the same results in days while it can take you weeks and months.

Outsource the headache

Thankfully by leveraging the already built network and processes of link builders, you don’t have to hit your head in managing and refining your outreach process.

Things like outreach, follow-ups, negotiation, and other mundane tasks can be outsourced to them so you can sleep in peace.

Additionally, a few high-profile link-building agencies also provide you with a dashboard where you can track everything like:

• which link went live,
• lost links,
• upcoming links,
• how much have your DR and traffic increased, etc?

Save yourself from link fraud

Now, this might sound contradicting as frauds can happen even with professional link builders.

But think, the chances of getting scammed if you’re outreaching yourself (if you’re a newbie) are much higher than these professional link builders.

That’s another story to discuss if you hired a link-building scammer who ran away with your money.

#3: Risks of buying backlinks

There are a few risks to take care of before you start buying high-quality backlinks.

Those are:

Poor link profile

Some sites that extensively accept paid links are said to have a poor link profile.

More than a single link from them can hurt your link profile too.

Wasting Money

Buying links on directories or forums is unlikely to have a detrimental impact on your site, but it will have little to zero influence on your search engine rankings.

Manual Action

If Google and other search engines detect a pattern that you’re buying links extensively, it can impose a penalty on your site which can cause your rankings to go down.

Now we know a few risks and reasons to buy backlinks, it’s time to discover the:

#4: Ideal cost of buying high-quality backlinks?

You’re a real risk-taker and I salute the courage you made this far.

Because you’ve decided to purchase backlinks, let me explain to you the associated expenses.

The right cost per link depends on your needs.

While there are cheap backlinks available that aren’t harmful, data suggests that high-quality backlinks start at $500 per link.

Below this point, there’s a high chance you might hit PBNs.

Also, there are a lot of factors on which the cost/link depends. Some of them include:

Industry competition

If you’re building links in a highly competitive space like finance, costs/link are going to be higher than average.

The popularity of any industry can be determined by its traffic potential and variety of money-making opportunities.

The more traffic and money there is in a sector like credit cards in finance, where banks pay up to $40 per lead for credit card lead creation, the more costs per link rise.

DA/DR of the linking site

Sites having higher domain authority (Moz) or domain rating (Ahrefs), tend to charge higher.

In fact, some link builders also charge money on the basis of these metrics only.

Recently, my friend Palash at The Mistaken Man reached out to the company for a quote for link-building services, and here’s what he received.

You can see how this agency charges per link based on the link profile metrics of the site they provide.

Brand strength

Brand recognition and strength are also major factors in determining link costs.

A backlink from apple will definitely be more expensive than from Logitech.

#5: How to safely buy quality backlinks?

Nothing will disappoint you more than investing thousands of dollars into paid link building yet receiving no improvement in SERP rankings.

To avoid this, there are three criteria you should keep in mind while requesting a link from a particular site.

Starting with the first one which is:

Quantitative criteria

Always try to aim for sites having:

1. HTTPS enabled
2. Referring Domains >50
3. >10 pages at least
4. Frequent content updates + uploads
5. DR and DA >20-30
6. Organic Traffic > 500/Mo
7. No A records in their DNS
8. How many pages are indexed or not?
9. The brand name appears when you look for it on Google and other search engines
10. No hyphens in the domain name
11. TLD type (.com is more authoritative than any other TLDs)

Qualitative criteria

Aim for these few benchmarks as well

1. Organic website traffic graph going up
2. Check the quality of referring domains
3. Limited anchor abuse
4. No. of outbound links
5. High-quality content
6. Write for us is a negative sign – the risk of link farming site
7. Are authors real people and findable on social media?

Interrogation criteria

These are a few things you need to directly ask the site owners:

1. Will your links be marked as No-follow, sponsored, or dofollow?
2. Can they offer link placement first and then ask for money?
3. To how many people they’ve sold links earlier?
4. What about a link guarantee or a contract?
5. If the page gets redirected/deleted, what about your links?
6. The link won’t be removed in the future?
7. What about the TAT, refund policy, etc?
8. What’s their relationship with their site? Are they brokers, owners, managers, etc?
9. Will the links come from author bios, blog comments, within the content body, about pages, etc?

Defining some personalized criteria beforehand will also help a lot in filtering a ton of spammy sites on your list.

If you’ll ask me how I define mine, I’d like to have links from high authority sites having DA/DR greater than mine.

In short, dofollow links from high authority and niche relevant sites are what you should always aim for.

Moreover, to simplify your website filtering process, you can also use this free tool here

Make a copy of the above tool and follow the steps below:

1. Run the backlink report through ahrefs batch analysis and import the data into the ahrefs-input tab in the tool above.
2. Similarly, import Moz and Majestic data to the moz-majestic-input tab in the above tool.
3. If you don’t have access to the above tools, try this free one here
4. Play with the controls and adjust the metrics that suit your needs and get the filtered data.

By now, you must have got a filtered list of sites fit for your link-building strategies. Now we need:

#6: A few ways to buy quality backlinks

Since you’ve got a filtered list of sites you want to pitch for links, the ideal way is to diversify your link acquisition as much as you can.

If search engines like Google find a pattern that most of your links are from guest posts, chances are, a google penalty will be imposed.

In order to avoid that, you should try the below methods for link building.

Starting with my favorite which is:

Link insertions/ Niche edits

Link inserts is a technique in which you contact website owners and request that they link to a relevant page on your site.

Normally, the website owner will want money to do this.

It’s a smart idea to buy quality backlinks since you can:

1. Get links from such pages that are getting max. traffic
2. Select your preferred anchor text
3. Acquire links fast
4. Select sites you want to partner with
5. Build backlinks to such pages that hardly attract links

This type of backlink is also difficult for Google algorithms to detect as it’s difficult to tell the difference between a niche edit link and an organic one.

The major disadvantage is that you must be careful of the websites to which you pay for links.

Consider this: how many other websites does a website owner have an agreement with if they are willing to link to you for money?

Sponsored Posts

You must be thinking that sponsored links are useless.

To be true, they aren’t.

Though they hardly pass PageRank, they still are worthy.

You must be thinking why?

Here’s the reason: I would definitely love to buy a post on Forbes or Business Insider even if they add rel=sponsored or rel=nofollow to my links.

After all, I’m getting placed on a site that attracts a ton of visitors each day.

I can definitely:

• Drive a ton of traffic
• Get a huge PR for me
• If links are to a service page, I can drive business too

Paid Guest Posts

Paid guest posts are articles that you pay for to be published on a website.

This is also quite similar to niche edits except for two things:

You need to create the article yourself which might add up to your costs and time.

If you’re lucky, some sites will accept guest posts and offer you links for FREE if your content is great or you have a good writing portfolio.

The only downside!

Place a guest post on the wrong site, and get ready to be punished by the Google Gods.

Hiring an agency that provides link-building services

Hiring a link-building agency like us can be a great way to improve the ranking of your website.

However, it is important to make sure that you select an agency that has a good reputation and that can provide you with quality services.

When looking for a link-building agency, it is important to consider the following factors:

• Their link-building process? Especially their methods to find legit sites
• Their experience and expertise in this field
• Price of their services
• Company’s track record and reputation
• How long they’ve been in business?
• Have they got any certification?
• Do they have case studies to prove their work?
• Do they have client testimonials?
• Refund policies, compensation for dead/removed links, etc.

By considering these factors, you can be sure that you are selecting an agency that will be able to provide you with quality services and help improve the ranking of your website.

At Getmentioned, we have lots of client testimonials and case studies to prove that our methods are not only legit but drive results too.

Check out our case study here on ???? How we helped E-learning project to grow organic traffic from 16,000 to 50,000 monthly visitors in just 1 year ????

#7: Over to you: Would you ever buy backlinks?

Buying backlinks may seem like a quick and easy way to get links.

But in reality, it can be risky and could lead to penalties from Google if not done with caution.

If you’re considering buying quality links, it’s important to do your research first and make sure the seller is reputable.

At Getmentioned, we offer Done-For-You link-building services that are effective and safe.

Why not give us a try?