Every backlink service sells “high quality links”, yet the prices different wildly.
Anywhere from $50 to $1500 per link.
Link building already has a reputation for being risky, so it can be hard to know which of these you can trust.
Tip: It certainly isn’t the cheapest option.
So in this article I’ll help you choose the right backlinks for your situation…
We’ll break them into 3 tiers:
- Junk links (less than $250)
- Impactful links ($250-$500)
- Premium links ($500+)
We’re talking about prices from agencies and platforms in this article, not DIY costs.
Let’s start!
Junk links (less than $250)
Typical link farm websites that are accessible in pretty much every database.
These sites sell cheap to anyone who asks, and tend to be very spammy and low quality.
In my opinion Google is smart enough to identify such obvious link farms, and doesn’t reward your website for a link from them.
Even many sites with decent DR and traffic fall into this category.
Because these links are literally useless, you should literally never use them.
Impactful links ($250-$500)
Alright, you gotta pay a bit more here.
But you know what? It’s bloody worth it…
These links cost more because they’re harder to build.
No over-used databases of useless links here.
It takes a painstaking process of finding good websites and negotiating deals.
These sites have a good reputation with Google, and links from them will move the needle for your site.
They’ll have good DR and traffic, and be relevant and clean.
Most businesses should use these links. It’s the sweet spot of getting impactful links without a ridiculously high price.
Premium links ($500+)
It’s possible to get links from major media sites and some of the biggest websites in the world.
You do that with stuff like PR campaigns and HARO.
These links are massively impactful but also very costly to secure – Meaning a higher price for you.
Take PR campaigns for example.
You can expect a price of $15-20k per campaign, and usually get no guarantee of the minimum number of links you’ll get.
You’ll often pay $1000+ per link.
And while they’re usually great links, this approach has a number of downsides:
- Overkill for most businesses
- Very costly (lower value to cost ratio vs “impactful links” tier)
- Inconsistent and unpredictable
- Can’t target specific pages on your website
My opinion is that most websites don’t need such premium links.
You should consider them only when your website is already very well established with hundreds of impactful links, or if you’re in a very competitive industry.
Warning: Dig deeper
These price ranges are just a rough rule of thumb.
Anything less than $250-ish, you can easily ignore as 99% of them are trash.
The $250-500 range is harder to judge. Some agencies will still provide crap links for this price.
You might use something like our quality framework to do a deeper check on your links: https://www.weoutreach.com/link-quality/
The premium range can also be tricky. Sometimes you’ll get bangin’ links, and sometimes they’ll build crap just to have something to show (as often happens in the case of failed PR campaigns).
Point is: Always dig deeper and understand how a service defines link quality and what you should expect.
We Outreach is in the “impactful links” tier
We build solid links, predictably.
And they all match our strict quality framework.
Clients use us because we deliver on our promises, unlike most other agencies out there.
