Link building for agencies is a wholesale market. Most firms selling search services do not run their own outreach team, so they buy placements from suppliers and resell them, often without the client ever knowing the supplier exists. That arrangement is legitimate in principle and dangerous in practice, because the agency inherits the supplier's methods and the client inherits the risk. This page is written for the agency doing the buying: what the supply chain actually looks like, which tactics Google names outright as link spam, and the due diligence that keeps a reseller from putting a client's site at risk on someone else's behalf.
What you are actually buying wholesale
Four things get sold under the same name. Digital PR is genuine outreach: a story, a dataset or an expert comment pitched to publications that may or may not link. Guest posting is placement of an article on another site, sometimes editorially and sometimes for a fee. Niche edits, also called link insertions, are payments to add a link into an existing page. Private blog networks are sites owned or controlled by the supplier for the purpose of linking. Prices vary by an order of magnitude across those four, and a supplier who quotes a flat per-link rate regardless of publication is almost certainly not doing the first one. The single most useful question to ask a wholesale supplier is which of the four they are selling on a given order, and whether money changes hands with the publisher.
The line Google draws, in Google's words
Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate search rankings, and the examples are specific: buying or selling links for ranking purposes, including exchanging money, goods or services for links; excessive link exchanges and partner pages that exist only for cross-linking; using automated programs to create links; advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles containing links that pass ranking credit; low-quality directory or bookmark links; keyword-rich links embedded in widgets distributed across sites; and widely distributed links in footers or templates. Google also says plainly that buying and selling links is a normal part of the web economy for advertising and sponsorship, and is not a policy violation as long as those links carry a rel value of nofollow or sponsored. That single sentence is the whole compliance test, and most of the wholesale market fails it.
Due diligence on a white-label supplier
Ask for a live sample of ten placements delivered in the last quarter, then open them. Check whether the article reads like something the publication would have run anyway, whether the site publishes anything unrelated to link sales, whether it has a real audience, and whether the link carries a nofollow or sponsored attribute where a payment was involved. Ask whether the supplier pays publishers and whether they will say so in writing. Ask what happens if a placement is removed, and what the replacement policy is. Ask whether they will confirm they do not use private blog networks. A supplier who treats those questions as unreasonable is telling you what their inventory is. Google's guidance is unambiguous that the site owner carries responsibility for the actions of firms they hire, which in a reseller chain means your client carries yours.
What to tell the client, and how to price it
Two disclosure decisions follow. The first is whether the client knows links are outsourced. Saying so costs less than being found out, and clients who understand the supply chain ask better questions. The second is what the deliverable is: a count of links is easy to invoice and easy to abuse, while a count of earned mentions with named publications is harder to promise and much harder to fake. Agencies that sell link building as a named line item with a stated method tend to keep clients longer than those who bury it inside an undifferentiated retainer, because when a placement fails there is something concrete to discuss. Whatever the pricing, keep the evidence: the outreach record, the correspondence and the live URLs, because that file is the only defence when a client asks what they paid for.
Questions people ask about link building for agencies
Is paying for links against Google's policies?
Paying for a link that passes ranking credit is. Google's spam policies name buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam, but also state that paid links are acceptable when qualified with a rel value of nofollow or sponsored. The attribute is the difference between advertising and a policy violation.
Should an agency disclose that link building is outsourced?
Yes, as a matter of practice. The client carries the risk on their own domain, so they are entitled to know the method. Disclosure also protects the agency, because a client who approved the approach cannot later claim they were unaware of it.
How many links a month is realistic?
Genuine outreach produces far fewer placements than paid inventory, which is precisely why paid inventory is cheap. Judge a supplier by the quality of the publications and the evidence of real outreach rather than by a monthly count, and be suspicious when the count never varies.
What if a client already bought bad links?
Start by cataloguing what exists and how it was acquired, then stop the ongoing purchases. Google's guidance notes that deceptive work done on a site owner's behalf can affect the site's presence in search, so the audit is worth doing before any new programme is layered on top.