How do you acquire “high quality” backlinks?

I’ve seen a lot of different posts talking about “want to rank? Just build more high quality backlinks”, but then people talking poorly about the various link building services available.

common objections:
“high DA but no FLW”
“High DA but inflated”
“High DA but high OBL”
“High DA guest post but ‘it’s just a link farm’ (ie the site is made to sell guest posts)”
“Don’t buy spammy web 2.0s”
“Don’t buy XYZ’s PBN”

And various other comments that seem to put down virtually every service provided here.
Which is fair, cause I’ve bought dozens of package over the years and none have really seemed to make an impact; most don’t even get indexed.

With that being said, what is your preferred way to add high quality backlinks?
What are things you look for?
Any specific service providers (either on BHW or outside) that offer this?

Buy from those with best reviews. Ignore those with reviews from newbie accounts.

fc-dh said:

By using the freaking search

Click to expand...

none of these search queries answer my question. I raised specific objections. Did you even read through it?

i mentioned how most guest posting sites sold here are looked down upon by members and asked for alternatives.

krishnaverma said:

Buy from those with best reviews. Ignore those with reviews from newbie accounts.

Click to expand...

The problem is that most reviews are posted within a day or two of receiving the package so there isn’t any way of determining if it affected serps. Even if a seller has case studies, it’s usually vague and hiding the keyword difficulty and search volumes and usually outdated.

tipsavvy said:

none of these search queries answer my question. I raised specific objections. Did you even read through it?

i mentioned how most guest posting sites sold here are looked down upon by members and asked for alternatives.



The problem is that most reviews are posted within a day or two of receiving the package so there isn’t any way of determining if it affected serps. Even if a seller has case studies, it’s usually vague and hiding the keyword difficulty and search volumes and usually outdated.

Click to expand...

Yes, but there are link services that have been on the market for years

tipsavvy said:

none of these search queries answer my question. I raised specific objections. Did you even read through it?

i mentioned how most guest posting sites sold here are looked down upon by members and asked for alternatives.



The problem is that most reviews are posted within a day or two of receiving the package so there isn’t any way of determining if it affected serps. Even if a seller has case studies, it’s usually vague and hiding the keyword difficulty and search volumes and usually outdated.

Click to expand...

Contact the buyers direct, it is the only way to gauge actual value of the service. You are right though, there is a lot of crap being offered. Most can be found on fiverr for a fraction of the price. Which is probably where they source it!

Outreach.

fasttrak said:

Contact the buyers direct, it is the only way to gauge actual value of the service. You are right though, there is a lot of crap being offered. Most can be found on fiverr for a fraction of the price. Which is probably where they source it!

Click to expand...

This is a good point; sadly most past-buyers that I’ve contacted have said they stopped using the service because it didn’t work for them.

zionbar said:

Outreach.

Click to expand...

Agreed. This is the good old white hat way. Kind of hard to do this at scale though, especially since any high DA websites would be charging significant fees. I know a sponsored post at my local newspaper website costs around $10-15,000.

tipsavvy said:

I’ve seen a lot of different posts talking about “want to rank? Just build more high quality backlinks”, but then people talking poorly about the various link building services available.

common objections:
“high DA but no FLW”
“High DA but inflated”
“High DA but high OBL”
“High DA guest post but ‘it’s just a link farm’ (ie the site is made to sell guest posts)”
“Don’t buy spammy web 2.0s”
“Don’t buy XYZ’s PBN”

And various other comments that seem to put down virtually every service provided here.
Which is fair, cause I’ve bought dozens of package over the years and none have really seemed to make an impact; most don’t even get indexed.

With that being said, what is your preferred way to add high quality backlinks?
What are things you look for?
Any specific service providers (either on BHW or outside) that offer this?

Click to expand...

The way I buy links is a little different, I research for the sites myself, I don't usually buy from sellers on here and elsewhere. But when I see a good deal on the forum I do patronize the seller.

The reason I do the outreaching myself is because it allows me flexibility to choose from different variables much more than when buying from someone or an agency. That's when you don't factor in the prices which is also very important (at least to me).

Now to your question, the most important thing I look out for are:
-Organic keywords(higher in the tens of thousands and even 100s is better, less than 10k is still good depending on the site itself).
- Organic traffic(same rule as 1 above applies).

The two above is assuming the sites are in your niche or a very closely related niche. Also, the traffic and keywords shouldn't show any sign of an overnight growth, it should be consistent and gradual growth over time(all of these are available on Ahrefs).

The reason I choose primarily these two is because you almost certainly never go wrong with them. You don't go wrong with them is because, for said site to be ranking on Google it means it has some value which Google sees in it and that value would trickle down to your own website.

Furthermore, high organic keywords and organic traffic is a testament/evidence that whatever backlinks the website has are of good quality and powerful enough to propel the site.

The above strictly applies only when you're buying a guestpost or niche edit backlinks, it doesn't apply to PBNs because most times PBNs were not built to rank. Sometimes they do rank and attract traffic but not as much aa a regular website. So, there's a different rule to buying PBN links.

DA, PA, DR, UR and whatever third-party metrics there are, is almost inconsequential when you could just make use of a real evidence of quality (search traffic and keywords).

While doing all these you should also know when to discard certain websites and when to choose a different that isn't ranking for much. You should just need to know what you're doing.

HenryObi said:

The way I buy links is a little different, I research for the sites myself, I don't usually buy from sellers on here and elsewhere. But when I see a good deal on the forum I do patronize the seller.

The reason I do the outreaching myself is because it allows me flexibility to choose from different variables much more than when buying from someone or an agency. That's when you don't factor in the prices which is also very important (at least to me).

Now to your question, the most important thing I look out for are:
-Organic keywords(higher in the tens of thousands and even 100s is better, less than 10k is still good depending on the site itself).
- Organic traffic(same rule as 1 above applies).

The two above is assuming the sites are in your niche or a very closely related niche. Also, the traffic and keywords shouldn't show any sign of an overnight growth, it should be consistent and gradual growth over time(all of these are available on Ahrefs).

The reason I choose primarily these two is because you almost certainly never go wrong with them. You don't go wrong with them is because, for said site to be ranking on Google it means it has some value which Google sees in it and that value would trickle down to your own website.

Furthermore, high organic keywords and organic traffic is a testament/evidence that whatever backlinks the website has are of good quality and powerful enough to propel the site.

The above strictly applies only when you're buying a guestpost or niche edit backlinks, it doesn't apply to PBNs because most times PBNs were not built to rank. Sometimes they do rank and attract traffic but not as much aa a regular website. So, there's a different rule to buying PBN links.

DA, PA, DR, UR and whatever third-party metrics there are, is almost inconsequential when you could just make use of a real evidence of quality (search traffic and keywords).

While doing all these you should also know when to discard certain websites and when to choose a different that isn't ranking for much. You should just need to know what you're doing.

Click to expand...

this was very thoughtful and well put, thanks for sharing.

another objection I’ve seen is that some of these guest post farms are ranking for thousands of keywords due to the sheer amount of content being posted and that the high amount of traffic is negligible because it’s being spread thin.

would you still go for a guest post on a site like this? My understanding is that we buy the black/gray hat guest posts for google to notice it and give us rankings, not for the real life search traffic, which is usually much more expensive.

1 step, forget about DA & similar metrics,
they're useful while filtering a large list of pages/domains,
always check the link profile manually, including the page and website in questions,

when it comes to pbns and if you really want the quality ones, you should actually build your own or go for the homepage renting service,
other than these are spammed networks with an extremely high OBL which will get you poor results that won't even stick,

for guest posting, you should be looking for genuine relevant websites that you (or someone else service) manually outreach to and get links from,
the usually sold are within websites which made for the sake of selling links and even if they got traffic, they're mostly targeting low competition & useless keywords,
and since they sell links pretty often, they're basically turned into a pbn websites, just with traffic

Hiring someone to make web 2.0 manually

tipsavvy said:

I’ve seen a lot of different posts talking about “want to rank? Just build more high quality backlinks”, but then people talking poorly about the various link building services available.

common objections:
“high DA but no FLW”
“High DA but inflated”
“High DA but high OBL”
“High DA guest post but ‘it’s just a link farm’ (ie the site is made to sell guest posts)”
“Don’t buy spammy web 2.0s”
“Don’t buy XYZ’s PBN”

And various other comments that seem to put down virtually every service provided here.
Which is fair, cause I’ve bought dozens of package over the years and none have really seemed to make an impact; most don’t even get indexed.

With that being said, what is your preferred way to add high quality backlinks?
What are things you look for?
Any specific service providers (either on BHW or outside) that offer this?

Click to expand...

Even some decent links are mixed-in from the trashier vendors, but yes, it's a serious problem.
As long as you are getting different referring domains, then I think there's some value, but you are correct... amidst all the noise, there is a need for legitimate services.
I have been ordering links from BHW more heavily over the last couple years, and I can testify that there are in-fact real gains on both client projects, as well as private projects.

In my experience, you are mainly looking for vendors in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, or maybe South Africa. (major English speaking countries)
Agencies in India, Pakistan, Philippines, and any other similar foreign country, are way too risky.
One of the challenges is that they also try to impersonate more trustworthy identities, so you also have to learn to spot the poor English'isms, and forms of speech.

A couple months back, I ordered from a dutch guy, here, who I'm pretty sure is Pakistani, because I spotted some properties that are commonly circulated by Pakistani agencies.
It's going on three months, now, of revisions for that order, because he can't understand basic English, and he doesn't understand basic SEO link structures.
So, yeah, it's a real problem, and the only solution is to just be really critical of who you are working with.

I requested samples, for example, from @MisterF , recently, and the nature of his message, with the information provided, makes it really clear that he's native to a top-tier country.
Also, look at his messages and interactions... he's been around for a while... he's got a reputation, etc.
That would be one example of a legitimate vendor, and I haven't even ordered anything from him, yet... you can just see certain indicators at-a-glance.

There are essentially two types of vendors:

1. Private Assets (pbns)
2. Relationships and Connections (guest posts or link drops)

I am a firm believer that, no matter who you are working with, they should be providing samples, and there should be a reasonable level of content quality and low-to-no spam.
For PBNs, I often like to know how many referring domains are in their network, because sometimes vendors will use the same domain multiple times, and that's really kind-of lazy.
I don't always ask, but I would prefer vendors who have 100+ referring domains in their network, so that they can support a 1:1 ratio for backlink requests.

It's still common practice to conceal your PBN network, which I think is just something that makes it easier for bad vendors to scam you.
Google sees your assets, geniuses!
We can also see the links in search console, so if someone won't show samples, then we should walk away, and if they don't give links in the final report, then it's also a risk.

I don't always ask, but I have also come to find poor links, later, because they were concealed from me, and too much time passed for me to go through the trouble of a complaint or fraud report.
Samples are key, because it allows you to check if the metrics are inflated, and if the assets have any ranking keywords.
Ranking Keywords are key to checking if Google trusts the asset.

I could say a lot more about PBNs, but it really just comes down to a vendor in a tier-1 country, pretty much.
If you choose a good vendor, then you will generally get good results, but you still have to check their work, because they do sometimes make mistakes, or do really stupid things.
I worked with a guy, some months ago, who put my link next to the anchor text (LoL), and when I commented on it, he wouldn't stop telling me about how he had 12yrs of SEO experience, and had an agency in Philadelphia, etc...
I don't care, guy... if you don't anchor my links with common sense... I'm gonna say something about it. LoL (smh) [drama]

For guest posts, niche edits, link drops, etc... you are often getting a high quality asset, but there are many pitfalls on price and various tags, or issues with undisclosed OBL or internal linking, etc.
For some high quality assets, it is very common that guys don't tell you when the links are marked as "sponsored" or as "no-follow", so that's a pretty common, and ridiculous problem.
It's not really that difficult to find guest post opportunities, so if I hire a vendor to handle the process for me, I also don't want to pay DOUBLE the price, just for you to do a little work.

That's a pretty common issue...
You've got a site charging $200 for a post, but some guy wants to charge $400, just so someone on his team can get an article written for $20, then submit it to the service. (LoL)
The best guest post vendors I have come across are charge a flat service fee, or a percentage service fee per post.

So, it's cheap for them to handle the process, and the content is written or provided externally at-cost, but they work with the posting sites, or have pre-existing relationships, to ensure that the content is created to exact specifications, etc.
Sometimes, posting sites will require that they write the content, and will often charge something like $100, so in some cases it's just an issue with many guest posting sites over-valuing content on their site by a very large margin.
I've personally done tests over the years, and I've found that it's very difficult to predict how Google will value most assets.

In one test I did, I bought a $5 guest post with weak metrics, then a $100 guest post with strong metrics, and the $5 guest post ranked better than the other one, even though the metrics were lower.
Even if it only did half as well, or a quarter as well, that would still be better performing at-scale.
For one of my side projects, some of my seemingly strongest links are from two really crappy looking guest posts that probably cost me $15 each.
So, guest posts, and similar properties, can be great, but the high costs for a single link can be very risky.

In conclusion, buying links is a matter of money, but also of very critical discernment, both in terms of who you are working with, and also the properties you are dealing with.
Markets now commonly offer productized backlinks, but we must always remember that they are risky service based products, and the purchasing process must be treated with a great deal of scrutiny.
In order to have success, we must identifying trustworthy vendors, and ask the right questions, so that our link-building budgets do not go to waste.

I also use HARO as well as my own outreach. Both can be difficult but you can build amazing quality backlinks with a little hard work. Although I use backlink services for some of my money sites - I don't for my major sites as I would never risk spammy backlinks harming them. Sometimes it's a matter of either going quick and hard on a website and hoping for the best (doesn't always work out when big G seems to update every 2 weeks!!) or go slow and gentle, building HQ manual links and thinking of the long term effects.

The other thing to consider is the value your site can give to others. For example, on one site I wrote an article that was picked up by a major news site and then, of course, got shared on social and other sites. That's rare but if your content is quality, up-to-date and interesting then there is a chance others could share it too.

When I'm commenting on, say, a blog post or article I don't mind if it's NF as I always ask a question in my comment, such as "Hi BHQ, I've just read your article on spammy links and thought it was very interesting. However, you missed out "blah blah blah" and I wondered why?" - What you are doing is opening an honest dialogue that could then lead to a sharing of a post article with links, podcast etc. Again, that's the slow burner way but through 1 great relationship, you may get many more opportunities - all for free.

Not sure if that helps at all but just some thoughts.

getivan said:

Even some decent links are mixed-in from the trashier vendors, but yes, it's a serious problem.
As long as you are getting different referring domains, then I think there's some value, but you are correct... amidst all the noise, there is a need for legitimate services.
I have been ordering links from BHW more heavily over the last couple years, and I can testify that there are in-fact real gains on both client projects, as well as private projects.
View attachment 192231
In my experience, you are mainly looking for vendors in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia, or maybe South Africa. (major English speaking countries)
Agencies in India, Pakistan, Philippines, and any other similar foreign country, are way too risky.
One of the challenges is that they also try to impersonate more trustworthy identities, so you also have to learn to spot the poor English'isms, and forms of speech.
View attachment 192232
A couple months back, I ordered from a dutch guy, here, who I'm pretty sure is Pakistani, because I spotted some properties that are commonly circulated by Pakistani agencies.
It's going on three months, now, of revisions for that order, because he can't understand basic English, and he doesn't understand basic SEO link structures.
So, yeah, it's a real problem, and the only solution is to just be really critical of who you are working with.
View attachment 192233
I requested samples, for example, from @MisterF , recently, and the nature of his message, with the information provided, makes it really clear that he's native to a top-tier country.
Also, look at his messages and interactions... he's been around for a while... he's got a reputation, etc.
That would be one example of a legitimate vendor, and I haven't even ordered anything from him, yet... you can just see certain indicators at-a-glance.
View attachment 192234
There are essentially two types of vendors:

1. Private Assets (pbns)
2. Relationships and Connections (guest posts or link drops)

I am a firm believer that, no matter who you are working with, they should be providing samples, and there should be a reasonable level of content quality and low-to-no spam.
For PBNs, I often like to know how many referring domains are in their network, because sometimes vendors will use the same domain multiple times, and that's really kind-of lazy.
I don't always ask, but I would prefer vendors who have 100+ referring domains in their network, so that they can support a 1:1 ratio for backlink requests.
View attachment 192235
It's still common practice to conceal your PBN network, which I think is just something that makes it easier for bad vendors to scam you.
Google sees your assets, geniuses!
We can also see the links in search console, so if someone won't show samples, then we should walk away, and if they don't give links in the final report, then it's also a risk.
View attachment 192236
I don't always ask, but I have also come to find poor links, later, because they were concealed from me, and too much time passed for me to go through the trouble of a complaint or fraud report.
Samples are key, because it allows you to check if the metrics are inflated, and if the assets have any ranking keywords.
Ranking Keywords are key to checking if Google trusts the asset.

I could say a lot more about PBNs, but it really just comes down to a vendor in a tier-1 country, pretty much.
If you choose a good vendor, then you will generally get good results, but you still have to check their work, because they do sometimes make mistakes, or do really stupid things.
I worked with a guy, some months ago, who put my link next to the anchor text (LoL), and when I commented on it, he wouldn't stop telling me about how he had 12yrs of SEO experience, and had an agency in Philadelphia, etc...
I don't care, guy... if you don't anchor my links with common sense... I'm gonna say something about it. LoL (smh) [drama]
View attachment 192239
For guest posts, niche edits, link drops, etc... you are often getting a high quality asset, but there are many pitfalls on price and various tags, or issues with undisclosed OBL or internal linking, etc.
For some high quality assets, it is very common that guys don't tell you when the links are marked as "sponsored" or as "no-follow", so that's a pretty common, and ridiculous problem.
It's not really that difficult to find guest post opportunities, so if I hire a vendor to handle the process for me, I also don't want to pay DOUBLE the price, just for you to do a little work.
View attachment 192240
That's a pretty common issue...
You've got a site charging $200 for a post, but some guy wants to charge $400, just so someone on his team can get an article written for $20, then submit it to the service. (LoL)
The best guest post vendors I have come across are charge a flat service fee, or a percentage service fee per post.
View attachment 192241
So, it's cheap for them to handle the process, and the content is written or provided externally at-cost, but they work with the posting sites, or have pre-existing relationships, to ensure that the content is created to exact specifications, etc.
Sometimes, posting sites will require that they write the content, and will often charge something like $100, so in some cases it's just an issue with many guest posting sites over-valuing content on their site by a very large margin.
I've personally done tests over the years, and I've found that it's very difficult to predict how Google will value most assets.

In one test I did, I bought a $5 guest post with weak metrics, then a $100 guest post with strong metrics, and the $5 guest post ranked better than the other one, even though the metrics were lower.
Even if it only did half as well, or a quarter as well, that would still be better performing at-scale.
For one of my side projects, some of my seemingly strongest links are from two really crappy looking guest posts that probably cost me $15 each.
So, guest posts, and similar properties, can be great, but the high costs for a single link can be very risky.
View attachment 192242
In conclusion, buying links is a matter of money, but also of very critical discernment, both in terms of who you are working with, and also the properties you are dealing with.
Markets now commonly offer productized backlinks, but we must always remember that they are risky service based products, and the purchasing process must be treated with a great deal of scrutiny.
In order to have success, we must identifying trustworthy vendors, and ask the right questions, so that our link-building budgets do not go to waste.

Click to expand...

amazing response as always. +1 for the memes to make the content more readable.

zippyants said:

I also use HARO as well as my own outreach. Both can be difficult but you can build amazing quality backlinks with a little hard work. Although I use backlink services for some of my money sites - I don't for my major sites as I would never risk spammy backlinks harming them. Sometimes it's a matter of either going quick and hard on a website and hoping for the best (doesn't always work out when big G seems to update every 2 weeks!!) or go slow and gentle, building HQ manual links and thinking of the long term effects.

The other thing to consider is the value your site can give to others. For example, on one site I wrote an article that was picked up by a major news site and then, of course, got shared on social and other sites. That's rare but if your content is quality, up-to-date and interesting then there is a chance others could share it too.

When I'm commenting on, say, a blog post or article I don't mind if it's NF as I always ask a question in my comment, such as "Hi BHQ, I've just read your article on spammy links and thought it was very interesting. However, you missed out "blah blah blah" and I wondered why?" - What you are doing is opening an honest dialogue that could then lead to a sharing of a post article with links, podcast etc. Again, that's the slow burner way but through 1 great relationship, you may get many more opportunities - all for free.

Not sure if that helps at all but just some thoughts.

Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing! How many links can you build per month using this tactic ? And how long does it take you on average to get, let’s say, 10 good backlinks?

tipsavvy said:

And various other comments that seem to put down virtually every service provided here.
Which is fair, cause I’ve bought dozens of package over the years and none have really seemed to make an impact; most don’t even get indexed.

Click to expand...

Guest posts, not from a package or from a marketplace, but by contacting site owners directly. If you are terrible at writing, you can hire a good native writer to do it for you. If you’re terrible at emailing people and making deals (it’s really hard), you can hire someone to secure the deals for you, from a list of target websites gathered by you.

rafark said:

Guest posts, not from a package or from a marketplace, but by contacting site owners directly. If you are terrible at writing, you can hire a good native writer to do it for you. If you’re terrible at emailing people and making deals (it’s really hard), you can hire someone to secure the deals for you, from a list of target websites gathered by you.

Click to expand...

haha, sometimes it’s just about a lack of time and not so much about a lack of skills.

it’s often cheaper to outsource work than to do it yourself, especially when you’re busy with other things.

let’s take a specific example now, let’s say you want to do local seo for a law firm and avoid the spammy link packages for obvious reasons.

citation building in niche relevant directories is one thing.
PR is another.
would you then look for high authority blogs in the legal niche and just email them asking if they’d be interested in posting an article we wrote and linking to our website until someone responds?

tipsavvy said:

haha, sometimes it’s just about a lack of time and not so much about a lack of skills.

it’s often cheaper to outsource work than to do it yourself, especially when you’re busy with other things.

let’s take a specific example now, let’s say you want to do local seo for a law firm and avoid the spammy link packages for obvious reasons.

citation building in niche relevant directories is one thing.
PR is another.
would you then look for high authority blogs in the legal niche and just email them asking if they’d be interested in posting an article we wrote and linking to our website until someone responds?

Click to expand...

Let me google that for you:

https://www.google.com/search?q="law"+"write+for+us"

Try the "donations" method.

shuttershades said:

Try the "donations" method.

Click to expand...

care to elaborate ?