"How many links do we need" is almost always the wrong question. The right one is "which links, and from where". We have seen a site buy 300 links for $2,000 and halve its traffic within four months, and another reach the top on twelve placements. Below: the criteria we use to reject a donor site before paying, a workable anchor distribution, current prices, and what to do when the junk links are already in place.

What still works in 2026

Google has spent a decade learning to ignore paid links, and it mostly has. But "ignore" is not the same as "penalise": most junk links simply do nothing. The problem is that you paid for them. Here is how we grade the main types.

Vetting a donor site in 15 minutes

Sellers will show you attractive numbers from paid tools. Those numbers can be inflated. We look at something else — the signs that a site is alive and read by humans.

1. 1

   Organic traffic, not domain rating

   A DR 60 domain with 200 monthly visits is an empty shell stuffed with links. Our floor is roughly 3,000 organic visits a month by any tool’s estimate. A domain with no organic search presence passes nothing.

2. 2

   Topical proximity

   A link from a home-renovation blog to a law firm means nothing to the algorithm and looks staged to a human. The donor should cover an adjacent field consistently, not once, for your order.

3. 3

   Outbound link ratio

   Open the last 5–10 articles. If each one carries two or three commercial links into unrelated niches, it is a link farm with a nice template, and its authority is spread across hundreds of buyers.

4. 4

   Evidence of a real editorial team

   Named authors, a publication history that predates the "sponsored" section, comments, social accounts with a live audience. A domain created three months ago that already sells placements will not be around long.

5. 5

   Search history of the domain

   Look at the two-year traffic chart. A sharp collapse in the past means the site has already been filtered once. That donor can take your page down with it at the next algorithm update.

Anchors: where people give themselves away

Most trouble comes from anchors rather than from links themselves. A natural profile looks messy: brand names, bare URLs, "here", "this article". A profile where 40% of anchors read "order website development london" has never occurred naturally in the history of the web.

The practical rule: across ten placements, use an exact commercial anchor once at most. Everything else goes to brand, URL and descriptive phrases. And do not point everything at the homepage — service pages and your strongest blog articles need authority too, otherwise the pattern reads as purchased.

The tactics we actually use, and what they cost

The order below is by return per unit of effort. Start at the top, not at a marketplace.

1. 1Clients, partners and suppliers. The cheapest links that exist: write the case study, get it approved, ask for a mention with a link. Cost is a few hours of work, and roughly 30–50% of requests are accepted.
2. 2Content people link to on their own. A cost calculator, a comparison table, a market breakdown with your own numbers. Slow to build, but one such page can attract links for years — the mechanics are in our guide to content marketing for SEO.
3. 3Guest articles in trade publications. $80–400 per placement in niche regional media, $200–1,200 in international industry titles. You write it, an editor reviews it, and the link looks natural because it is.
4. 4Local directories and industry registers. Business profiles, associations, moderated listings. The ranking effect is modest, but it is the baseline for local visibility — covered in our guide to local SEO for service businesses.
5. 5Unlinked mentions worth chasing. Find places where your name already appears in text and ask for the link to be added. The cheapest tactic of all, converting above 40%, and almost nobody does it.

When the junk is already there

The classic scenario: a previous contractor bought a "1,000 links for $300" package, traffic rose for a month and then dropped below where it started. There is usually no manual action in Search Console — this is algorithmic devaluation, and no reconsideration request will fix it.

• Confirm the links are actually the cause. In six cases out of ten the drop lines up with a migration or a core update rather than with link building. Compare the date of the drop against the update timeline and your last deployment.
• Remove what can be removed. Email the sites you have contact with. It is free and carries no downside.
• Disavow is a last resort, not routine hygiene. The file is for manual actions or an obviously toxic profile. Disavowing legitimate donors by mistake does more harm than the junk did.
• Dilute the profile. The most reliable recovery is not deletion but adding genuine links until the junk share falls from 80% to 20%. Expect 6–12 months of work.
• Close the technical gaps in parallel. Walk through the SEO checklist: contractors who bought bad links usually also left duplicate pages, broken canonicals and junk URLs in the index.

Frequently asked questions about link building

In short

• Judge a donor by organic traffic and topical fit, not by a domain rating from a paid tool.
• Keep exact commercial anchors under 5% of the profile; the rest goes to brand, URL and descriptive phrases.
• The cheapest and safest links come from clients, partners and unlinked mentions you simply ask to be linked.
• A budget under $200 a month is better spent on content than on placements.
• A toxic profile is repaired by dilution with genuine links, not by mass disavow.