Service · Link Building

Earn links Google trusts — and AI cites first.

We don’t buy links and we don’t blast HARO. We pitch editorial placements, run real digital PR, and earn citations in the sources that compound for SEO and that LLMs already lift quotes from. Slower. Safer. Worth more per link.

Two link strategies · one winsAI-WEIGHTED
Most agencies
120 links / mo
linkdir.example
techbloghub.io
pbn-cluster-04
haro-pickup-spam
guest-post-mill.co
directory-99.net
AI citations: 0
Geology
6–10 placements / mo
Industry trade pub12
Major business outlet9
Niche newsletter (15k subs)7
Top podcast in category5
Reddit · cited thread11
AI citations: 44 · per link earned
Volume isn’t the metricCitation-weighted authority is
8.2
median DR of placements (last 12 months)
Ahrefs
44%
of placements re-cited by an AI platform
Within 60 days
0
PBNs, paid links, or HARO blasts in the toolkit
Ever
6 wks
average from kickoff to first earned placement
Median timeline
§01 — Why most link building doesn’t move ranking

Volume is a vanity metric.
Authority is the actual job.

§01.01

“Links per month” is the wrong unit.

Buying 120 links a month from low-trust directories looks great in a Looker dashboard and does nothing for ranking — and worse than nothing for AI citations. The unit that compounds is editorial placement in a source AI considers authoritative.

§01.02

HARO at scale is a spray-and-pray treadmill.

Mass HARO submissions occasionally land. They almost never land in the publications you’d be proud to be quoted in, and the 1% hit rate hides how much senior time the other 99% costs you. We pitch fewer outlets, more thoroughly.

§01.03

PBN networks get devalued in waves.

Every two years a PBN network you’re paying into gets neutered overnight by a Google update. Your link count drops, your rankings drop, and you’re back at zero — only now with a deindex risk attached. We don’t go near them.

§02 — How we run a campaign

Five moves,
every quarter.

  1. §02.01

    Identify the placements that matter.

    We pull the citation graph for your category — the publications, podcasts, newsletters, and Reddit threads AI and Google both reference for buyer-stage queries. That’s the target list. Usually 60–120 outlets, ranked by citation weight.

  2. §02.02

    Build an asset worth pitching.

    An original survey, a proprietary dataset, a contrarian analysis, a benchmark report — something a reporter or editor actually wants to cover. We won’t pitch outlets with “check out our blog post”. The asset is half the job.

  3. §02.03

    Pitch with relationships, not databases.

    Personal outreach to a small list of named editors and creators. Offers calibrated to the publication’s actual coverage pattern. Follow-ups that aren’t templated. Slower, but the response rate is 10–30× a HARO blast.

  4. §02.04

    Place and instrument.

    Once placed, we tag the URL, monitor link velocity, watch for follow-on citations from secondary outlets, and feed the placement back into the AI citation graph (the off-site-content engine picks it up from there).

  5. §02.05

    Track citation-weighted authority, not link counts.

    Monthly report: placements live, AI re-citations earned, branded-search lift, downstream pipeline. If you want a 200-link spreadsheet, we’re the wrong partner.

§03 — What we run, what we don’t

Six tactics on.
Five tactics off.

In our toolkit
01

Original-data digital PR

Survey, dataset, benchmark — pitched to category-defining outlets.

02

Expert quote placements

Founders + senior team featured in trade pubs and major business press.

03

Niche newsletter sponsorships (when it earns a link)

Targeted, named, audience-aligned.

04

Broken-link recovery

Industry resources that 404; we pitch the upgraded asset.

05

Unlinked brand-mention reclamation

We find them, we pitch the link.

06

Podcast guesting (the deliverable is the link, not the audio)

Founder-led, on shows your buyers actually listen to.

Not in our toolkit
PBNs, link networks, blog farms
Devaluation risk.
HARO mass submissions
1% hit rate on outlets that don’t move ranking.
Paid placements on guest-post mills
Google now treats these as paid links.
Mass directory submissions
Worthless since 2014.
Comment-link spam, forum signature links
Embarrassing.
§04 — Common questions

What CMOs
actually ask.

How many links per month should I expect?
6–10 placements per month is the steady-state target after the first 60 days. That sounds low compared to a HARO-style agency promising 50/month — but the citation weight per placement is meaningfully higher and the placements compound. We’d rather ship 8 placements that AI re-cites than 50 that nobody reads.
What kinds of outlets do you actually land?
Depends on category. For B2B SaaS that’s usually one or two trade publications per quarter, a major business outlet quote a couple of times a year, niche newsletters with 5–30k engaged subscribers, and 1–2 podcast guest spots a quarter. For consumer brands it’s lifestyle press, category review sites, and creator partnerships. We share the actual target list before kickoff.
Do you do guest posts?
Sometimes — when the publication has real editorial standards and a real audience. Not when it’s a guest-post mill. A useful rule: if they reply within 6 hours and quote a price, we pass. If they reply slowly, push back on the angle, and ask for a real draft, that’s the kind of placement that moves the needle.
How does this differ from off-site content?
Different scopes that overlap. Link Building is the editorial-and-authority side — pitching publications, earning placements, building digital PR campaigns. Off-site Content is the broader content-distribution program — Reddit, FB groups, communities, paid editorials too. Most clients run both; some only need one. The two share infrastructure where it makes sense.
Do you guarantee a specific number of links?
No. Anyone who guarantees a fixed number of editorial placements is either lying or buying them. We commit to the inputs (target list, asset built, pitches sent, follow-ups run) and report the outputs (placements landed, citation weight, branded-search lift, AI re-citations). The first 60 days are typically slower; placements compound from month three.
What about toxic links our previous agency built — can you clean those up?
Yes, included on most engagements. We pull the backlink profile, identify and document the toxic patterns, and ship a disavow file plus a remediation note for Google. We don’t expect the disavow to be a magic-bullet ranking event — but it removes a downside that keeps showing up in your audit.
Get started

Earned authority compounds. Bought links don't.

Book a 30-minute call. We'll pull your current backlink profile, identify the placements that would actually move ranking and AI citation share for your category, and walk through what a 90-day campaign looks like.