Do you want to invest money to buy high-quality links? Follow this guide to ensure you’re investing money in SEO growth instead of wasting it.
Backlinks are an important SEO ranking factor. Having high-quality links boosts domain authority, SEO rankings, and drives targeted traffic to your website.
There are two primary ways to acquire links: earning links or purchasing links. Buying backlinks is the easiest way to consistent link building. You hire a link building agency and pay them to build links for your website. Earning links (building links) requires skills, resources, and time.
Getting paid links can be a useful strategy, but it carries risks like penalties or wasted budgets if not done correctly. In this guide, I’m sharing a safer approach to buying high-quality links and authentic ways & platforms to purchase them.
What is Link Buying?
Buying links refers to the practice of paying a website owner, publisher, or link building agency service to place a hyperlink on websites that points back to your website. The primary goal of purchasing backlinks is to enhance your website’s search engine ranking (SEO)
If you want to buy high-quality backlinks, it would typically involve:
- Relevant link insertions into existing blogs that charge money for each backlink.
- Paid or sponsored post submissions that contain backlinks to your website.
However, if you buy links from platforms like Fiverr, the professionals you hire may use various link-building tactics, and you won’t have quality control over their process.
In any case, it’s a questionable SEO strategy that aims to manipulate search rankings by buying backlinks instead of earning them. It can often involve tactics that scream “inauthentic” or “spammy” to Google algorithms.
Why High-Quality Links Matter
High-quality backlinks serve as a vote of confidence for your website. They inform Google that your site is trustworthy, relevant, and authoritative, which improves your rankings for target keywords. A single contextual link from a reputable site, such as Forbes or TechCrunch, can outweigh dozens of low-quality links. These links also drive targeted traffic, resulting in increased conversions. However, buying links without care can lead to penalties, wasted money, or reputational damage.
Why Do SEO Professionals Buy Links (And Why You Shouldn’t)?
The simplest reason why SEO professionals buy links is convenience. Why should I do all the work when I can pay someone to do it?
Buying backlinks allows them to:
Save time and effort: Buying links is quick and effortless due to their transactional nature. SEO professionals who do not want to work hard for months or years to get results often resort to such shortcuts.
Drive quick SEO gains: SEO professionals purchase backlinks with a targeted approach to achieve a rapid increase in backlinks pointing to specific pages. The goal is to improve the page’s PageRank and search rankings.
However, while you think that you’ll get away with buying backlinks if you do it sparingly, that’s not the case. These gains may often be temporary.
Google’s Stance on Paid Links
Google classifies all kinds of links bought for manipulating search algorithms as spammy links. This also includes links paid for in exchange for money or something else.
The search engine can (and will) penalize websites with unnatural link profiles, which is why link buying isn’t a sustainable practice in the long run. You should consider this:
- Link Schemes: Google penalizes links bought to artificially boost rankings, like those from PBNs or low-quality directories. Penalties include ranking drops or deindexing.
- Value vs. Manipulation: Buying links for advertising or exposure (e.g., sponsored posts) is acceptable if clearly labeled. Links meant to manipulate rankings without transparency violate guidelines.
- Risks: Google’s AI, including MUM and RankBrain 2.0, detects unnatural link patterns, like rapid link growth or over-optimized anchor text. Penalties can tank your rankings, and recovery takes months.
To stay safe, use “sponsored” or “nofollow” rel attributes for paid links and focus on editorial placements in high-quality content.
What Makes a Link “High-Quality”
A high-quality link comes from a reputable, relevant website and delivers SEO value. Here’s what defines one in 2025:
- Relevance: The linking site matches your niche. A fitness blog linking to a gym equipment store is more valuable than a random news site.
- Authority: Sites with high Domain Rating (DR > 50, via Ahrefs) or Trust Flow (TF > 30, via Majestic) pass strong “link juice.”
- Organic Traffic: Links from pages with high traffic (check via Ahrefs or SEMrush) drive referrals and signal quality.
- Placement: Links embedded in the main content (e.g., within a blog post) outperform those in footers or sidebars.
- Anchor Text Diversity: Varied, natural anchor text (e.g., “learn more about fitness” vs. “best gym equipment”) avoids penalties.
- Freshness: Recent content or updated pages signal relevance to Google’s algorithms.
- Click Depth: Links on pages close to the homepage (fewer clicks away) carry more weight.
- Context: Links surrounded by relevant, high-quality content align with Google’s E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) guidelines.
Low-quality links from spammy sites, link farms, or private blog networks (PBNs) harm your SEO. Focus on quality over quantity.
Where to Buy High-Quality Links?
Buying links ethically requires choosing reputable link-building agencies like Tanot Solutions. Here are safe options and their pros and cons:
Trusted SEO Agencies: Agencies like TanotSolutions offer transparent link-building services, securing placements on high-DR sites.
Pros: Professional vetting, high-quality placements, clear reporting.
Outreach Services: Services like Pitchbox or BuzzStream secure guest posts or PR placements on niche sites.
Pros: Tailored outreach, relevant links, editorial focus.
Cons: Time-intensive, variable success rates, expensive.
Reputable Link Marketplaces: Platforms like Hoth and Fiverr offer curated link opportunities on vetted sites.
Pros: Streamlined process, faster
Cons: low-quality options, high costs.
Avoid platforms like Fiverr offering “hundreds of links” for $20, these often deliver spammy, toxic links.
How Much Do High-Quality Backlinks Cost?
The price of buying backlinks varies significantly from company to company. You can expect to pay anywhere between $50 and $2,500 to buy high-quality backlinks. According to Ahrefs, the average price for a link insertion in a blog post is $361.
Setting a Link-Buying Budget
Various factors affect the cost of buying each link, including:
- Domain authority: Getting a backlink from high DA and DR websites will cost a lot more than those from low authority websites.
- Type of website: If you want links from specific niche websites, the agency will need to put in more outreach efforts and the link will cost you more. If you’re satisfied with getting a backlink from any relevant website within the agency’s network, it will cost you less.
- Industry or niche: Links from authoritative websites in competitive industries like finance and real estate will cost more than those from websites in relatively less competitive niches like education and charities.
- Quality of backlinks: Backlinks from blog comments or online forums will cost less, while those from guest posting on authoritative websites will cost more. The link building tactic used, anchor text, and link placement all affect the cost of buying links.
- Agency pricing: Different agencies or link building service providers use different pricing models. So the price per link will vary depending on the agency you choose.
5 Risks of and Warnings Against Buying Backlinks
Though some may successfully manipulate their SERP rankings by buying links, the risks outweigh the benefits, making this a high-risk strategy.
Given that link buying is against Google Search Central (formerly Google Webmasters) policy, you should avoid it. But if you’re still not convinced, let’s discuss some more reasons why you shouldn’t buy backlinks.
It may cause your website to incur Google penalties
Search engines like Google are continually improving their ability to detect unnatural link profiles. If you’re caught buying backlinks either by Google algorithms or a manual reviewer, it could lead to penalties, pushing your website down in search rankings instead of up.
In the best-case scenario, Google will ignore link spam and won’t count the link juice from those backlinks while deciding your search rankings. In the worst case, your website may get deindexed or devalued for a long time.
Recovering from these penalties is extremely challenging, and even if you do, it takes a considerable amount of time to rebuild your website’s authority and reputation.
You may end up wasting money on low-impact backlinks
Backlinks are valuable because they pass on “link juice,” which signals authority and relevance to search engines.
However, buying backlinks often involves irrelevant websites with low domain authority. This weak link juice does little to improve your SEO and might even dilute your existing link profile.
For example, if you want to build links for your email marketing platform page, you should not buy backlinks from random news and magazine websites like this:
Even though this website has high DR and monthly traffic, it doesn’t attract visitors who would want to use an email marketing platform.
None of the pages on this news website ranks or drives good traffic on “email marketing” or related keywords.
If you build a backlink from this article, it will be equivalent to wasting your money on buying low-impact links that drive no targeted traffic or conversions.
You could become a victim of a link scam
Have you ever hired freelancers from Fiverr and UpWork who promise you hundreds of backlinks for less than $100? Buying backlinks from such link builders often involves questionable practices, such as link farms or private blog networks (PBNs) explicitly created for backlink manipulation.
Associating your website with such link-building practices can be disastrous for your SEO health. For example, check out the Fiverr Gig below that claims to provide 200 high-quality links for just $20 in just three days.
Seems too good to be true, right? It surely is.
Unrealistic claims like these are clear signs of link scams and if you get caught in one, you’ll end up with spammy and toxic links that destroy your link profile.
It may hurt your website’s authority and reputation
When your website’s reputation is damaged, it becomes challenging to recover it. Even your good link building efforts don’t reap results for a long time due to reduced credibility. You struggle to improve your rankings and organic traffic for months.
Buying links will inevitably hurt your website’s authority, irrespective of whether you’re caught or not.
If you get caught, it will lead to penalties, loss of trust and credibility, and reduced SERP visibility and rankings.
Even if you don’t get caught, buying backlinks is likely to get you low-quality backlinks that weaken your link profile, thereby negatively impacting your search rankings.
It can be an expensive and risky strategy
If you ignore the low-cost, low-quality link schemes, link buying is not cheap. Legit link-building companies charge hundreds of dollars for a single authoritative backlink, which is often not worth it.
Even if you find a reasonably priced, legit link building agency, there’s still no guarantee that every single link you buy is of high quality. Most companies rely on tactics like blog commenting or link building through online forums, which doesn’t make much difference to your website’s SEO.
So, it’s either too expensive or too unpredictable, with no guarantees of quality. Given the risks and high costs involved, it is rarely worth it.
Types of Paid Links to Avoid
Not all paid links are safe. Steer clear of these risky options:
- PBN Links: Links from private blog networks are designed to manipulate rankings.
- Link Farms: Sites with thousands of unrelated links, offering no SEO value.
- Low-Quality Directories: Generic directories with no traffic or relevance.
- Blog Comments or Forum Spam: Automated, low-value links that scream “spam” to Google.
- Mass Link Packages: Cheap bundles promising hundreds of links, often from irrelevant or spammy sites.
These links waste money and risk penalties. Always prioritize quality and relevance.
Link Buying Checklist: How to Evaluate a Link Opportunity
Before buying or pursuing a link, assess its quality using these metrics:
- Domain Authority or Domain Rating (DR): Aim for DA/DR > 50 (use Moz, Ahrefs, or Majestic).
- Referring Domains Profile: Check the site’s backlink profile with Ahrefs. A diverse, high-quality link profile signals authority.
- Spam Score (Moz): Avoid sites with a spam score > 5%. High scores indicate toxic links or poor quality.
- Organic Traffic: Use Ahrefs or SEMrush to confirm the site drives at least 10K monthly organic visits.
- Indexation Status: Run a Google “site:domain.com” search to ensure the site is indexed. Non-indexed sites offer no SEO value.
- Content Quality: Read the site’s content. Does it provide valuable, original information? Avoid sites with thin or duplicated content.
- Link Profile: Analyze the site’s outbound links. Too many links to low-quality sites dilute value.
For example, a DR 60 fitness blog with 20K monthly visitors and original workout guides is a great opportunity. A DR 80 site with spammy links and thin content is not.
Best Practices When Buying Links
Follow these practices to buy links safely and effectively:
Ensure Relevance: Choose sites in your niche. A tech blog is ideal for a SaaS company, not a travel site.
Place Links Naturally: Embed links in the body of high-quality content, like guest posts or sponsored articles.
Limit Exact-Match Anchor Text: Use varied, natural anchors (e.g., “learn more about CRM” instead of “best CRM software”). Over-optimization triggers penalties.
Diversify Link Sources: Mix paid links with organic ones from blogs, news sites, and communities. Follow a 70-20-10 rule (70% editorial, 20% sponsored, 10% experimental).
Build Links Slowly: Add 2–5 links monthly to mimic natural growth and avoid Google’s scrutiny.
These practices keep your link profile safe and effective.
Red Flags When Buying Links
Watch for these warning signs to avoid bad deals:
Unrelated or Low-Quality Sites: Links from irrelevant or spammy sites offer no value.
Guaranteed Rankings: No vendor can promise specific rankings. This signals black-hat tactics.
Lack of Transparency: Avoid vendors who won’t share sample placements or metrics.
No Organic Traffic or Poor Content: Sites with low traffic or thin content dilute your link profile.
Overuse of Same Anchor Text: Repeated exact-match anchors raise red flags with Google.
For example, a vendor offering “500 links for $50” with no traffic data or sample sites is a scam. Stick with transparent, reputable providers.
Alternatives to Buying Links
Buying links carries risks, so consider these safer, organic strategies:
Digital PR: Pitch stories to journalists via HARO (Help a Reporter Out) to earn links from news sites. For example, a fitness brand could share workout tips for a Forbes article.
Guest Posts: Write high-quality articles for niche blogs. Offer value to their audience, like a SaaS company writing about productivity hacks for a tech site.
Link-Worthy Content: Create assets like infographics, research reports, or free tools. A “2025 Industry Trends Report” can attract links naturally.
Partnerships and Collaborations: Partner with influencers, brands, or communities for co-branded content or event sponsorships that include links.
Use Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console to monitor earned links and identify new opportunities.
These methods build sustainable, penalty-free link profiles.
How to Disavow Bad Links
If you acquire toxic links (e.g., from spammy paid deals), disavow them to protect your site. Steps:
- Audit Your Link Profile: Use Ahrefs or Moz to identify low-DR or high-spam-score links.
- Create a Disavow File: List toxic URLs in a .txt file (format: “domain:example.com”).
- Submit to Google: Upload the file via Google’s Disavow Tool in Search Console.
- Monitor Recovery: Track ranking changes with SEMrush or Rank Tracker. Submit a reconsideration request if penalized.
For example, a site hit by a manual penalty disavowed 200 PBN links and regained rankings in three months after submitting a detailed reconsideration request.
Conclusion: What Should You Do Instead of Buying Backlinks?
Buying links does more harm than good to your link profile, SEO, and website credibility.
You should instead build high-quality contextual backlinks naturally, through quality content and organic manual outreach. It offers sustainable results in the long run.
Look for websites with a relevant audience base and get your links placed in relevant articles on their website.
You can also choose to outsource link building to verified agency experts with proven track records. For instance, we are trusted by 150+ brands for our premium link building services.
Speak to our experts today to get started!
P.S. We only deliver conversion-focused, high-quality backlinks that drive targeted traffic to your website and strengthen your link profile.
