The days of offering someone a free guest post and receiving a link in exchange are all but gone. Now you have to buy backlinks most of the time.
Unfortunately, most site owners now understand the value of a backlink. And the vast majority of them are looking to cash in.
It’s something our link building agency encounters daily.
But the question is…
Should you cough up the money and buy backlinks for search engine optimization?
According to Authority Hacker’s 2025 research, 93.8% of link builders say link quality is more important than quantity, driving up demand for premium backlinks.
If you do it correctly, you’ll reap the rewards from high quality backlinks.
But if you do it incorrectly, you’ll waste a lot of money (and even get in trouble with search engines).
With AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, Perplexity, etc, now powering search queries through AI-powered responses, quality backlinks remain crucial for visibility across both:
So let me show you the right way to buy backlinks in 2025!
What Will I Learn?
Buying links is when you pay someone else to insert or add a backlink from their website to your website.
The goal is generally to pay for a quality link from a high-authority website to boost your own website authority and increase your search engine rankings in the google’s search results.
This is usually done in two ways:
Buying links is more common than you think among SEO professionals. If done correctly, paying for links is a great way to increase your google rankings.
But there are some things you need to be aware of first…
Let me be clear:
All link building is against google’s guidelines.
That also includes buying dofollow backlinks for seo.
Search engines only want you to earn links “naturally” because they consider those links as endorsements of your website.
That means that Google is actively on the hunt for people buying dodgy and spammy backlinks in order to manipulate google’s algorithm.
Make no mistake: Google penalties do happen.
The truth is that Google penalty recovery is hard work.
Google takes penalties seriously and has a dedicated team of people who hand out manual penalties to site owners caught building low quality links.
If you think you’ve been hit with a penalty, we recommend getting real experts to take care of it for you.
Search Logistics has a team of Google penalty recovery experts with an excellent track record of helping clients recover.
You can also use our Google penalty checker tutorial, which shows you exactly how to identify google penalties.
I didn’t tell you all this information to scare you off from buying backlinks.
Quite the opposite…
But you need to understand the risks involved when you buy quality backlinks and manually build backlinks in general.
Yes, you should buy high quality backlinks. But you need to understand that you get what you pay for when it comes to link building services.
If someone offers you “cheap backlinks,” they are most likely:
The last thing you want to do is end up on a guest post farm that links out to every site willing to pay them a few bucks.
Your goal is to build backlinks from high quality websites that search engines trust.
Buying backlinks from these types of relevant websites is often a balance between offering a mix of compensation and value.
That can mean an expertly crafted guest post with valuable content + an editorial fee to have the content placed.
Remember:
Buying backlinks is a standard practice in the SEO services industry.
But you must approach it carefully and ONLY buy high quality backlinks on real sites trusted by search engines.
SEO’s buy backlinks because links are crucial for improving search engine optimization.
Quality backlinks signal to search engines (like Google) that your website is trustworthy and content is credible.
This becomes even more important when optimizing for AI engines (like ChatGPT, Claude, or Google Gemini etc,) and Google’s AI Overviews, which prioritize authoritative sources when generating responses.
Think of a backlink as an endorsement.
The more links (endorsements) you have from trusted, high-authority sites the more search engines will trust your valuable content.
More trust = Higher search rankings.
But that’s not all…
Backlinks offer a ton of other benefits to your site:
The bottom line is this:
Quality backlinks are a valuable and essential part of a good SEO strategy. That’s why SEO’s are willing to pay for them.
Recent data from Authority Hacker shows that about 28% of SEO budgets go towards link building. This reflects the continued importance of quality backlinks even in the AI search era.
Quality backlinks cost $50 to $500 per link, depending on:
The average cost we get quoted for a good backlink is around the $250 mark.
Sound expensive?
Remember that with quality backlinks, you get what you pay for.
Just a handful of valuable backlinks can mean the difference between your content ranking 10th or 1st.
When you reach out to a website for a backlink, they usually quote their highest price.
Just because they say a price doesn’t mean you have to pay it. We always negotiate the price and look to build long-term partnerships with the website.
It’s not uncommon for site owners to drop their prices as low as 50% if you tell them it’s not within your budget.
Site owners charge for backlinks because they know how valuable they are for search engine rankings.
The site owners spend time creating great content and building their site’s authority. It makes sense then that they would want compensation for giving you a backlink.
And not all websites are created equal…
The quality of a link from a website comes down to a lot of factors:
High quality websites won’t just link out to anyone – Even if you offer the payment. They usually only link to other real sites that provide value within the industry.
These are the types of authoritative and relevant websites you want, but they often charge more for a quality link.
On top of that:
BuzzStream’s 2025 analysis reveals that approximately 85% of AI Overviews include at least one link to a top 10 result.
The biggest risk of buying links is if search engines identify you are purchasing low quality links from spammy sites to manipulate their algorithm.
There is also a risk that buying links does nothing for your search engine rankings, and you end up wasting money.
Let me explain what I mean.
The most common issue with buying links is that the backlink has zero effect on your Google rankings.
What that really means is you end up wasting your money on poor backlink services.
Search engines usually ignore backlinks from low quality websites. Even if they get indexed, they have little to no effect on your search rankings.
Think about it:
If Google doesn’t consider a website to be quality, why would a backlink (endorsement) benefit your website?
Remember that buying a backlink is an investment in your SEO efforts. Make sure you buy backlinks that will give you a return on that investment.
Manual Google penalties do happen – But much less than you think.
It’s easy to find tons of stories online of people getting penalised for buying shady backlinks from private blog networks. This might make you think that most websites that buy backlinks receive google penalties at some point.
But that’s not necessarily true…
Some of the biggest websites in your niche likely buy paid links at scale every month!
Receiving google penalties is always a risk when it comes to building links.
But if the backlink looks natural within the content, how would Google’s algorithm know you paid for it?
The key is to follow strict guidelines and understand the best practices.
Not all link building strategies are equal.
Some get better results than others. Below is a list of methods you can use to buy backlinks safely and a couple to avoid as well.
When you buy backlinks, you need to be confident you are only buying them from high quality websites.
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again…
When it comes to buying links, you get what you pay for. High quality backlinks aren’t cheap backlinks.
Don’t get suckered in by cheap deals that promise huge results.
Avoid these two link building methods below.
Buying backlinks on marketplaces like Fiverr is the fastest way to get yourself a manual google penalty.
Let me explain:
Most cheap backlinks services that sell links on freelance marketplaces simply have a list of spammy domains that have “good” domain authority metrics.
These kinds of links look great but they have manipulated the key Domain Authority (DA) metrics to look better than they actually are.
The reality is that search engines know these domains are spammy and low quality.
Search engines will either ignore these types of links or worse…
Manually penalise any website that buy backlinks from that domain!
It’s just not worth the risk.
If you want to outsource your link building, hire trusted link building services with a reputation for building high quality backlinks.
Private blog networks (PBNs) are a group of websites that builds links and passes the authority of those links to a single website.
Think of it like a cartel of other websites that exist to pass link equity onto any site that buy backlinks from them.
This is considered a pure “black hat” SEO tactic used by dodgy guest post services.
Private blog networks (PBNs) backlinks are usually very cheap and have good domain metrics. But search engines can easily detect private blog networks today, so the links are all but worthless.
Watch out for private blog networks and ensure you only buy backlinks from real and relevant websites with verifiable organic traffic.
Now that you’ve seen the methods that don’t work for buying links – Let me show you the ones that do.
Keep in mind:
Just because the methods below can benefit your SEO efforts doesn’t mean they are entirely risk-free.
Use the following methods carefully and ensure each quality link you build looks completely natural.
Niche edits (also known as link inserts) are backlinks inserted into existing content that search engines have already indexed.
The site owners edit the content and adds your link. That’s it!
The benefits of paid niche edits are:
The biggest benefit of niche edits is that because the web page is already indexed in Google, you can see the link’s impact on your search rankings quickly.
If you choose the right page for the niche edits, you can also attract some sweet referral traffic.
Who doesn’t want that?
The biggest downside of the niche edits is finding the right websites to get placed on. You really have to do the work to ensure you get a great link from a quality site.
The last thing you want is to get listed on a niche edit link farm website.
These types of websites usually have good metrics but link out to any and all sites that are willing to pay. Being associated with a link farm website can really damage your SEO efforts long-term.
Guest posts are the most used link building method on the planet.
And for good reason…
Guest posts have stood the test of time as a dependable backlink strategy.
According to DemandSage’s 2025 research, long-form content exceeding 3,000 words generates about 3.5 times more backlinks than shorter articles, making comprehensive guest posts particularly valuable for large language model optimization (LLMO).
Here’s how it works:
You pitch a piece of content to write and publish on someone else’s website. Then simply add your link in a relevant part of the content.
The owner gets a nice piece of fresh content and you get a valuable backlinks.
Win-win, right? Not so fast…
Most site owners will ask for an editorial fee to go along with the guest posts. This is the paid part of guest posts and it’s very normal.
The biggest benefits of guest posts links are:
What we love about guest posts is that you have more control over the whole process.
You select the website, write the content and choose where the backlink is placed. You can also select the anchor text to maximise the link’s quality.
The downside is you have to spend time writing the blog post, which is time-consuming.
But it’s a small price to pay for quality control!
Sponsored content is the safest way to build backlinks – But they also carry very little weight in terms of link equity.
Let me explain:
Whenever you place a link to another website, search engines want you to help categorise that link for them by tagging it with an “attribute”.
In 2019, Google updated its link attributes to include:
Nofollow, Sponsored and UGC links don’t add any SEO value. ONLY dofollow backlinks will help you.
Search engines will know you paid for a sponsored link and it won’t pass any link equity.
What’s the benefit, then?
A sponsored link still gets clicks from users and grows your brand’s website’s visibility.
The truth is that the link building space is hard work.
There are so many things to think about. And the consequences of building low quality links can be severe.
That’s why so many site owners (and even SEO agencies) choose to outsource their link building needs to trusted link building services.
That way, you can focus on growing your business while letting the pros take care of the links.
Who do we recommend?
LinksThatRank builds the highest-quality links of any backlink service. They also regularly publish their case study results so you can get an idea of what to expect from their link building services.
Here’s an example of a recent case study below:
Pretty crazy, right?
Every backlink that LinksThatRank builds passes a 23-point quality control process and is manually reviewed by a member of their team.
That means you only get backlinks from real high quality websites that improve your SEO efforts!
Check out their backlink services here.
Buying backlinks is common in the SEO industry.
The truth is that buying high quality backlinks that look natural to search engines can really boost:
This backlink strategy has been around for years and continues to work today.
But you need to have a strong process to identify high quality websites worth buying links from.
As generative search grows, implementing these backlink strategies ensures visibility across both traditional Google and AI-powered platforms through answer engine optimization (AEO).
You also need to focus on quality control to ALWAYS make sure the links look natural within the content you produce.
For a lot of people, this process is too overwhelming.
That’s why many site owners outsource to link building services like LinksThatRank.
LinkThatRank have a reputation for building quality backlinks that will actually deliver results.
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