The directory
Link building agencies, compared on what they will not tell you
Everyone publishes a Domain Rating floor. Almost nobody publishes what a link costs, who the publisher is, or whether money changed hands. This is what 38 specialists actually say, read off their own sites.
- 38
- Link building specialists, checked one by one
- 20
- Publish a price at all. The other 18 do not
- 22
- Will not say whether they pay publishers
- 15
- Let you see the sites before you buy
The question nobody answers
The marketplaces will tell you a placement is paid for. The agencies will not.
Google's link spam policy treats a link that passes ranking signals in exchange for money as a violation. So the single most useful thing a buyer can know about a supplier is which side of that line it says it sits on. We checked all 38 of them.
Of the 25 agencies here, 16 publish nothing at all about whether they pay publishers. Not a denial, not a policy, nothing. Several of those run forceful copy about quality and refuse to run private blog networks, which is a different question answered loudly.
Every one of the 6 marketplaces states it plainly. All of them publish the publisher's own fee alongside their cut, and one prints per listing whether the post will carry a sponsored label.
That is not the shape most buyers expect, and it is worth sitting with. The businesses treated as the disreputable end of this market are the ones being straight about the transaction.
What each kind of business says
| Says no | Sells them | Silent | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 25 agencies | 9 | 0 | 16 |
| 7 productised services | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 6 marketplaces | 0 | 6 | 0 |
Counted from what each company publishes on its own site, read in September 2026. This records what they say, not what they do. We make no claim about any agency's actual practice, and a published denial is not proof of one either.
Four different businesses share one name
Before price, before authority, before anything else: decide which of these you are actually buying. They differ by an order of magnitude in cost and completely in risk.
Most link building services are sold under one label and delivered in four incompatible ways. A journalist pitch and a paid insertion into somebody else's old blog post are both described as earning a link, and the gap between them is the single largest variable in what you will pay and what you will get.
Guest posts
29Writes an article that carries your link
Digital PR
25Pitches journalists. Slowest, dearest, hardest to fake
Niche edits
22Adds your link to a page that already exists
Linkable assets
15Builds research others cite on their own
Expert quotes
12Answers journalist source requests as you
Unlinked mentions
11Turns existing name-drops into links
Resource pages
7Gets you onto curated link lists
Broken link building
5Finds dead links and offers yours instead
The counts above are how many of the 38 run each tactic, not how good any of them is at it. Most sell several. Where a supplier sells seo link building services across five or six tactics at once, the useful question is which one it actually staffs for, and the team page usually answers that faster than the services page does.
The directory
Filters are on the left. Start with tactic, then with what kind of business you want on the other end of the engagement.
Every one of the link building agencies below was checked against its own site rather than a comparison post, and each card carries the two answers that matter most: what the company says about paying publishers, and whether you get to see the sites. A dash means it publishes nothing on that point.
Showing 33 of 38 specialists
Editorial.Link
FeaturedAgency · The most binding published commitments in the directory
Link-building-only agency selling editorial backlinks priced per link, with a published DR 60 floor, client approval of every target site before outreach, and a guarantee that runs past the end of the engagement.
- Guest posts
- Digital PR
- Expert quotes
- Broken link building
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Publishes every client link it wins, in public
London agency running data-led digital PR campaigns, and the only one in this directory publishing a live public feed of every client link it wins, with the client named.
- Digital PR
- Linkable assets
- Resource pages
- Expert quotes
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- You see the sites after placement
Also sells seo, geo.
Productised service · Its own card proves why a from-price means nothing
Agency-facing supplier with the most granular published rate card in this directory, letting the buyer choose which authority or traffic metric the price is banded against.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Marketplace · Shows the publisher's fee and its own cut, separately
Self-serve placement marketplace showing the publisher's price and the platform fee separately before checkout, and publishing the markup problem the rest of the category leaves unstated.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- On paying publishers
- Openly sells paid placements
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Answerable to a press regulator, not a marketing standard
London studio building original research and data visualisation campaigns that earn coverage, and the only entry here holding itself to a press regulator's editorial code.
- Linkable assets
- Digital PR
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Productised service · Its cheapest link is banded by referring domains, not DR
Shrewsbury supplier selling individual placements rather than retainers, and the only entry here pricing one product by referring domains while pricing another by Moz DA.
- Niche edits
- Guest posts
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells press releases.
Productised service · You approve every site before a pitch goes out
India-based supplier selling all-inclusive per-placement guest posts and link insertions banded by Domain Rating, with client approval of every site and a six-month replacement guarantee.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Publishes a per-link price floor, then prices under it
Denver link building and digital PR agency selling monthly authority-link retainers tiered by Domain Rating, with published per-link bands and a stated three-month initial term.
- Guest posts
- Digital PR
- Niche edits
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells aeo and ai seo, content writing, enterprise seo.
Agency · The longest-running specialist here, trading since 2010
Boise link building agency running custom manual outreach campaigns since 2010, across the widest published tactic range in this directory, with pricing released only through a gated sheet.
- Guest posts
- Digital PR
- Niche edits
- Broken link building
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells content marketing, technical seo.
Agency · Publishes the authority mix, not just the link count
United States link building agency publishing the exact authority composition of each retainer, so a buyer sees how many links land in each band rather than a single average.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Sells guaranteed press pickups, which others warn against
Edinburgh and Florida agency publishing its whole retainer ladder including the enterprise tier, with committed monthly link counts and a fixed six-month term.
- Guest posts
- Digital PR
- Expert quotes
- Broken link building
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells earned media, priced separately.
Agency · Prices regulatory difficulty openly rather than case by case
London agency publishing a full per-placement rate card banded by Domain Rating, with a second and higher price column for regulated and sensitive niches.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells geo and ai search optimisation, seo, content strategy.
Agency · Vertical PR sub-brands rather than one generic offer
Manchester and London digital PR agency running data-led campaigns and a reactive newsroom, with vertical sub-brands for beauty, personal finance and healthcare.
- Digital PR
- Linkable assets
- Expert quotes
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells traditional pr, seo, cro.
Agency · Argues against the metric its own category sells on
Kendal and Manchester agency that built its own relevance-measurement framework and gates every campaign on whether the coverage would help the client get found in a buying search.
- Digital PR
- Linkable assets
- Expert quotes
- Unlinked mentions
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells seo, technical seo, content, geo.
Agency · Publishes a price and refuses to publish a DR floor
Founder-led B2B SaaS link building shop selling editorial placements and brand mentions on a published monthly floor, with an explicit refusal to guarantee a Domain Rating or a link count.
- Digital PR
- Unlinked mentions
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells llm seo and ai visibility.
Agency · Price on application
Miami and Dubai agency built around journalist source platforms, running Qwoted as a separately named service line rather than folding it into a generic expert-quote offer.
- Expert quotes
- Digital PR
- Guest posts
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Pay only when a placement lands
Journalist-outreach agency billing only when a mention or backlink is published, and monitoring four source platforms by name rather than relying on the retired HARO feed.
- Expert quotes
- Niche edits
- Guest posts
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · The per-link price falls as you buy more, not less
Auckland boutique doing one thing only, pitching client spokespeople to journalist source requests, and billing per dofollow backlink earned in packages of five, ten or twenty.
- Expert quotes
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · From $250 per placement
Editorial placement shop selling listicle inclusions, guest posts and expert quotes either one at a time with no contract or through a managed monthly plan, under a twelve-month live guarantee.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Expert quotes
- Digital PR
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Productised service · Guarantees the host site's traffic, not its DR
Link supplier whose headline commitment is the host site's organic traffic rather than its authority score, with a refund remedy that lets the buyer keep the post.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Price on application
Manchester digital PR agency selling four packaged tiers of creative and reactive campaign work, and arguing on its own services page that links are not the right measure of it.
- Digital PR
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells content strategy and production.
Agency · The one price you can actually divide by a link count
London digital PR agency selling flat-price campaigns against a promised average link count and a named delivery window, which makes its unit cost derivable rather than quoted.
- Digital PR
- Linkable assets
- On paying publishers
- Says it does not pay for placements
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells content marketing, influencer marketing, reputation management.
Agency · Says out loud that the cheaper tier drops your veto
Derby link building agency selling two graded per-link products where the cheaper tier explicitly withholds site pre-approval, which is unusually candid about what a discount buys.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Also sells ai and geo visibility, blog content writing.
Agency · Free pre-approval of every link before it goes live
London agency publishing its whole rate card in three currencies, pricing an unlinked brand mention separately from a linked placement, and letting clients pre-approve every link free.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- Unlinked mentions
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Also sells content.
Agency · Promotes pages you already have, rather than new articles
London consultancy working only with B2B SaaS, promoting the client's existing pages through manual outreach instead of writing new guest-post articles.
- Guest posts
- Broken link building
- Resource pages
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Nothing upfront, invoiced after delivery
Ukraine-based link building agency for B2B and SaaS brands that takes nothing upfront and invoices only after the month's agreed backlink quota has been delivered.
- Guest posts
- Unlinked mentions
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Publishes exactly where its own guarantee stops
Digital PR agency selling two priced products, and publishing plainly that it guarantees delivery on one of them and expressly does not on the other.
- Digital PR
- Expert quotes
- Unlinked mentions
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Agency · Price on application
New York link building agency running monthly and enterprise programmes across several tactics, with a parallel training arm and no published rate card, by argument rather than omission.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Broken link building
- Expert quotes
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells training and education, outreach staffing.
Agency · Publishes who it turns away, not just who it serves
Off-page-only supplier for software companies, publishing a client qualification bar rather than a service tier and turning away work that does not meet it.
- Expert quotes
- Guest posts
- Unlinked mentions
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- You see the sites after placement
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Marketplace · Tells you up front if the post will be marked sponsored
Content placement marketplace publishing every listing's domain, metrics and price without a login, and the only entry stating per listing whether a post will carry a sponsored label.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- On paying publishers
- Openly sells paid placements
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Marketplace · Its platform commission sits outside the listed price
Ukrainian-founded content distribution marketplace covering websites and Telegram channels, with per-site pricing, escrow-style handling and a commission charged on both deposits and withdrawals.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- On paying publishers
- Openly sells paid placements
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Also sells telegram channel advertising, copywriting.
Marketplace · Longest publication guarantee published, on one of its pages
Polish content distribution marketplace covering a very large European publisher base across 36 languages, with in-platform copywriting and the longest publication guarantee published here.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- Unlinked mentions
- On paying publishers
- Openly sells paid placements
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Also sells copywriting, influencer marketing.
Marketplace · The only one here that says the words private blog network
International placement marketplace publishing full domain names and metrics without a login, and the only entry in this directory that openly sells private blog network links as a product line.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- On paying publishers
- Openly sells paid placements
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Also sells press release distribution.
Agency · Price on application
New Jersey manual outreach firm trading since 2011, selling fully managed campaigns, and publishing less operational detail than any other entry in this directory.
- Guest posts
- Resource pages
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Also sells technical seo, content strategy.
Productised service · From $300 per link
Brooklyn and Sydney supplier selling per-link placements in monthly volume tiers, with line-by-line buyer approval of the target list and white-label delivery for agencies.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- Digital PR
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Productised service · The link-only sibling of a full-service agency
White-label-only supplier selling guest posts and link insertions to other agencies through a reseller dashboard, run as a separate brand by a full-service parent agency.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- On paying publishers
- Does not say either way
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Productised service · Publishes both sides of the transaction
Atlanta and Bengaluru supplier running a two-sided operation, with a buyer package catalogue on one side and a publisher earnings dashboard on the other.
- Guest posts
- Niche edits
- On paying publishers
- Openly sells paid placements
- Target site disclosure
- Does not say
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
Marketplace · No minimum commitment
Paris marketplace connecting brands with vetted media across many markets, publishing delivery statistics and a twelve-month guarantee but no catalogue prices outside the dashboard.
- Guest posts
- Digital PR
- On paying publishers
- Openly sells paid placements
- Target site disclosure
- You approve the sites first
Sells nothing but link acquisition.
A dash on a card means the company publishes nothing on that point. It is the most common answer on both rows, and it is recorded rather than filled in: 22 of 38 say nothing about paying publishers, and 23 say nothing about whether you see the sites.
How to choose between link building agencies
Five things that decide whether a supplier fits, in the order they usually bite. Every figure below is computed from the directory above.
1. A from-price is not a price
The headline figure is almost always the lowest-traffic variant of the lowest authority tier. One supplier here publishes the proof on its own card: the same DR 30+ band costs $37 at 100+ monthly visitors and $107 at 500+, which is 2.9 times the price for the same advertised tier. Link building services packages are quoted the same way, so work out which traffic band you need before you compare two numbers.
2. Check which metric the price is banded by
They are not the same across suppliers and none of them flags it. One bands its cheapest product by referring domains, so a $60 link can sit on a site with twenty of them. Another lets the buyer pick whether the guarantee is measured on Moz DA or Ahrefs DR. A third publishes a vetting standard naming a DR 40 minimum while selling DR 20 tiers on the same site.
3. Ask whether content is included
It is the largest hidden variable in a per-link price. Several suppliers here bundle the article into the placement fee and several itemise it separately, which makes a bundled $99 and an unbundled $67 incomparable. Complete link building services should state which of the two they are, and the ones that do tend to say so on the pricing page rather than in a proposal.
4. Read the guarantee, including the exclusion
Cover here runs from nothing at all to thirty-six months. One marketplace states that all purchases are final and offers no replacement of any kind; another replaces a dropped link for twelve months but fixes the authority band at the moment you ordered, so a publisher that declines afterwards is not covered. One agency's guarantee keeps running for three months after the engagement ends. The exclusions are where the difference is.
5. Decide how much judgement you are buying
A marketplace sells a placement at a visible price. An agency sells the decision about which placement to buy, usually at an undisclosed markup. Paid link building services are the honest name for one end of that range, and the companies using it tend to publish the publisher's fee alongside their own. The ones avoiding the phrase are not necessarily doing anything different.
What the market charges
Monthly commitment bands across all 38 link building agencies here, normalised so a per-link seller and a retainer shop sit on one axis.
- Under $2,000/mo12
- $2,000 - $5,000/mo17
- $5,000 - $10,000/mo10
- $10,000/mo and up1
- Does not publish a price18
A supplier is counted in every band its published pricing spans, so the totals add up to more than 38. The last row is not missing data: it is the 18 companies that publish no price at all, which is a fact about how they sell.
Where the specialisms actually are
Filter the directory to the suppliers that name your sector on their own site, rather than the ones that list every industry on a landing page.
Software is the best-served niche in this directory by a distance. Searches for saas link building agencies land on a real specialism: several suppliers here work with software companies only, and one publishes a client revenue bar it turns work away below. Tech link building agencies are a looser group, because almost everyone claims technology, so the filter below reads what each company names on its own site rather than what it would accept.
One more group is worth naming because the label is doing less work than it looks. Ai link building agencies mostly means outreach written by a model, and the effect has been to collapse reply rates rather than raise them: publishers now receive far more pitches and answer a smaller share of them. The suppliers here that mention AI at all attach it to research and prospecting, not to the email.
41 we checked and did not list
The part of a directory nobody publishes, because producing it means opening every site. Several of these appear on competing best-of lists today.
The market uses several names for the same thing. Link building companies, seo link building companies and seo link building agencies all describe the businesses below, and the label tells you nothing at all about whether one is still trading.
Of the list that follows, one ceased operating in 2022, one now serves a domain-parking placeholder with every service page returning a 404, one is serving injected casino spam on its homepage, and one publishes a head office at a postcode belonging to Buckingham Palace. Each of those took a single page load to establish.
7 no longer operating, or no longer this business
Globex Outreach
globexoutreach.com
The domain resolves but serves a website-builder placeholder with no internal links. Every service URL still indexed by search engines, including /services/ and /usa-guest-posting-services/, returns 404. Third-party roundups still describe it as a New York agency founded in 2010 with 13,000+ blogs.
Heroic Search
heroicsearch.com
The domain redirects to the founder's personal site, which states the agency operated from 2013 to 2022 and that he now works in-house elsewhere.
Search Intelligence
searchintelligence.co.uk
The domain now serves a parked page selling advertising placements from GBP 50 a month. No services, no team and no case studies. Checked independently twice.
Digital Olympus
digitalolympus.net
Still trading, but no longer selling this service. Its /link-building-services/ and /digital-pr/ pages return 404 and its own page sitemap lists no service page at all. What it sells now is a Slack community membership at $100 a month. Checked independently twice.
Stickyeyes
stickyeyes.com
The site loads, but no blog post, news item or dated page is newer than March 2021.
Accelerate Agency
accelerateagency.ai
Both the apex and www redirect to a personal LinkedIn profile. The agency site no longer exists.
SEOButler
seobutler.com
The site loads and publishes a UK company address, but its homepage carries injected Spanish and German casino spam linking to gambling brands, and its shop lists a guest posts product at $1.00 beside a test product named testyury1, also at $1.00.
1 published details that are not true
Outreach Rush
outreachrush.com
Publishes its head office as 123 Creative Lane, London, SW1A 1AA. SW1A 1AA is the postcode for Buckingham Palace, and there is no Creative Lane at that address.
6 could not verify who is behind it
SubmitCore
submitcore.com
Neither the apex nor www accepts a connection, so not a single fact could be read from the company's own site.
Love To Link
lovetolink.com
No reachable site at any of six domain variants. Third-party write-ups quote monthly packages, but none could be checked against the company itself.
Growth Machine
growthmachine.com
The server refuses connections on both the apex and www, so nothing could be read from the company's own site.
INSERT.LINK
insert.link
A working marketplace claiming 36,515 publisher sites, but it discloses no company name, no registration number, no address and no named staff anywhere on the site. Its terms give only a governing-law clause naming Estonia.
Repute Post
reputepost.com
Advertises niche edit links from $23 without stating which authority band that price buys, how many links, or whether content is included. No head office, no team, no registration and no founding date are published; the only date evidence is a copyright range.
SaaS Link Building Agency
saaslinkbuildingagency.co
Publishes no founding year, head office, team size or company registration, and names one individual. The copyright year is a template default. Pricing is quoted only after a call.
3 not a link building business at all
Growth Rhino
growthrhino.com
Appears on link building candidate lists, but sells cold email, cold calling and outbound sales automation. No link building product exists. A name collision.
Hurricane Commerce
hurricanecommerce.com
A cross-border trade data and customs compliance company. Not a marketing business at all.
Kalicube
kalicube.com
A brand entity and Knowledge Panel consultancy. Publishes no link building service.
2 selling rented links, which is a different product
A link you stop paying for and lose is a rented link. It is a materially different purchase from a placement, and worth separating rather than listing alongside one.
LinksManagement
linksmanagement.com
Sells links on a monthly per-link basis, for example a DA 40 link at $6.72 a month, alongside one-time prices. A link you stop paying for and lose is a rented link, which is a materially different purchase from the placements in this directory.
Sape
sape.ru
A two-sided exchange selling rental links, permanent links and crowd links, charging commission on account top-ups. A link network rather than an agency.
22 working agencies, but not link specialists
This is not a criticism. Each of these sells more than link acquisition, which puts it outside a directory of specialists and nowhere else. Several are excellent at what they do.
FATJOE
fatjoe.com
Around twenty products including local SEO, citation building, content writing, copywriting, press release distribution, content syndication and a social service. Its published DR rate card is quoted in the pricing section below as a market reference.
Loganix
loganix.com
Sells Google Ads management, white-label PPC, local SEO, SEO audits, keyword research and consulting as co-equal lines beside its link products.
The HOTH
thehoth.com
Sells managed SEO, local SEO and content as standalone products alongside its link outreach and link insertion lines.
Siege Media
siegemedia.com
A content marketing agency. Digital PR is one of several services, alongside content strategy, generative engine optimisation and affiliate partnerships.
Aira
aira.net
Sells paid media, CRM and analytics, CRO and HubSpot work alongside digital PR. It also publishes the annual State of Link Building survey, which is cited in this page's own research.
Rise at Seven
riseatseven.com
A search and social agency selling onsite SEO, social campaigns and paid work beside digital PR. One of the few in the category that publishes a price, from GBP 5,000 to GBP 70,000 a month.
Propellernet
propellernet.co.uk
Sells SEO, content, paid media and analytics alongside digital PR.
Kaizen
kaizen.co.uk
Sells SEO, generative engine optimisation and social media alongside digital PR.
Fractl
frac.tl
Sells organic growth strategy, content development and technical SEO alongside digital PR.
SimpleTiger
simpletiger.com
A SaaS SEO agency. Link building is one component of a retainer priced as a percentage of the client's revenue or funding.
Skale
skale.so
A B2B SaaS SEO agency measuring its work in qualified leads. Link building is one component of the retainer.
Omniscient Digital
beomniscient.com
A B2B software growth agency selling SEO strategy, content production and programmatic SEO alongside links.
Click Intelligence
clickintelligence.com
Sells SEO, paid media, paid social and content writing as co-equal lines beside link building and digital PR.
Ocere
ocere.com
Eleven service lines including PPC management, full-service packages and online reputation management. Its TLS certificate had also expired when checked.
Tao Digital Marketing
taodigitalmarketing.com
Sells SEO, PPC management and web design. Digital PR sits inside the SEO offering rather than standing on its own.
Designbysoap
designbysoap.com
A visual content studio producing infographics, motion graphics, video and presentation design. Links are one outcome of the content rather than the product.
LinkDoctor
linkdoctor.io
Its own white-label page describes audits, keyword research, on-page optimisation, content creation, local SEO and technical SEO alongside link building.
SAASY LINKS
saasylinks.com
Sells SaaS SEO, B2B SEO, answer engine optimisation, content marketing and Reddit marketing as co-equal lines beside link building.
Scalerrs
scalerrs.co
Eight co-equal lines including traditional SEO, content creation, YouTube marketing, Reddit marketing and Wikipedia page creation.
UppercutSEO
uppercutseo.com
Sells SEO strategy, content marketing, technical SEO, web design and PPC management from $2,500 a month. Its link-only sibling brand is listed in the directory above.
Hive Digital
hivedigital.com
A full-service digital marketing agency covering analytics, paid and social. Publishes no link building service.
Vazoola
vazoola.com
Publishes a clear tiered link rate card, but its SEO and GEO page sells technical audits, keyword research, on-page optimisation, internal linking, content creation, local SEO and analytics at a flat rate, which is a retainer line rather than a subordinate service. Reputation management and content marketing are sold separately again.
How we checked, and what we owe you
We opened 79 companies and kept 38. Every fact on this page was read off the company's own website in September 2026, not from a comparison article and not from another directory. Where a company publishes no price, this page says so rather than estimating one, and 18 of them publish none.
Nobody here is a client or a partner. These are 38companies that were checked, not companies anyone is working with. A directory assembled from a referral list is a referral page wearing a directory's furniture, and it would tell you nothing you could act on.
No affiliate links and no paid placements. Nobody here pays to be listed, to be featured, or to rank higher. Outbound links carry nofollow and we earn nothing if you hire any of them.
We record what companies say, not what they do. The column on paying publishers reports each company's own published position. It is not our assessment of anyone's conduct, and a company that declines to address the question is recorded as silent rather than accused of anything.
No invented ratings. There is no star rating and no aggregate score here. The scorecards on the expanded reviews are an editorial read across six dimensions and stay out of the page's structured data. Third-party scores are shown with a source, a count and the date we read them, including the unflattering ones.
One honest gap. We could not verify a single shop whose published positioning is ecommerce link building and nothing else. Every candidate turned out to be a full-service ecommerce SEO agency or a generalist with an ecommerce landing page, so this page names none.
FAQ
Questions buyers ask
How much does a backlink actually cost?
Across the suppliers here that publish a rate, a single placement runs from about $37 to roughly $965, and campaign work runs into thousands. The spread is real, but most of it is not quality. One supplier's own card prices the same DR 30+ tier at $37 with 100+ monthly visitors and $107 with 500+, so before comparing any two prices, check which traffic band each one refers to. Most sellers do not publish one.Why do so many of these companies not publish a price?
Eighteen of the 38 here publish nothing. Some of that is genuine: campaign work has no unit to quote, and a digital PR programme is priced by what the research takes. Some of it is commercial, because a gated price means a sales conversation. Either way it is a fact about how a company sells, so this directory records it rather than estimating a figure.Is buying links against Google's guidelines?
Google's link spam policy treats a link that passes ranking signals in exchange for money as a violation. That is why the question of whether a supplier pays publishers matters more than its Domain Rating floor. Of the 38 companies checked, 22 publish nothing at all about it, and the ones that do answer plainly are mostly the marketplaces, which is the opposite of what most buyers expect.What is the difference between guest posts, niche edits and digital PR?
They are different businesses, not variants. A guest post is an article written to carry your link. A niche edit adds your link to a page that already exists. Digital PR pitches journalists and earns coverage you cannot order. They differ by an order of magnitude in price, by months in turnaround, and completely in risk profile. Buying the wrong one is the most common expensive mistake in this category.Should I use a marketplace or hire an agency?
A marketplace sells you the placement at a visible price. An agency sells you the judgement about which placement to buy, usually at a markup it does not disclose. If you already know what you want, the markup is the thing you are paying for. If you do not, it is the thing you are paying for and it may be worth it. Neither is disreputable; they are different purchases.What should I ask a supplier before signing?
Four things, in order. Which traffic band does your published price refer to, not just which authority band. Do I see and approve the target sites, and before or after placement. Do you pay publishers. And what exactly does your guarantee cover, for how long, and when is the authority measured. Fifteen of the 38 companies here answer the second question at all.Are cheap links worse links?
Usually, but not for the reason people assume. The cheapest tiers here are not lower quality by accident, they are a different product: one supplier's entry price is banded by referring domains rather than authority, which means a site with as few as twenty referring domains. Another marketplace states outright that under $80 a placement you are buying sites with negligible readership. The price is honest; the comparison to a $300 link is not.How many of these suppliers let you see the sites first?
Fifteen of 38 disclose the target list at all, and only a handful commit to showing it before outreach rather than after placement. One states plainly that it will not share the list in advance, which is at least a disclosed policy rather than silence. It is the single most useful question to ask and the one most of this market declines to answer.
Not sure links are your problem?
Plenty of companies buy authority when what they are missing is a reason for anyone to link to them. Link acquisition is its own trade and not one busyless sells, which is why this directory exists. The part that is ours is everything upstream of it: what gets published, why, and whether it was worth publishing.