The Best Link Building Services: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What’s Next

Link building has always been one of the most misunderstood parts of SEO – and fast forward to now, that hasn’t changed. What has changed is how search engines (and now AI systems) interpret authority. With Google’s AI Overviews and Search Generative Experience (SGE), your backlinks aren’t just signals of credibility – they’re part of a bigger entity and brand ecosystem that determines whether your business even appears in AI-generated answers.

At The Links Guy, we’ve seen countless agencies and “link vendors” promise quick wins: thousands of links, guaranteed rankings, even AI link building. Most of these services still fall into the same trap – chasing volume or vanity metrics instead of actual authority and results. Yet, as studies from companies like Ahrefs and Seer Interactive in 2025 shows, quality mentions and contextual authority now also correlates strongly with AI visibility, rather than just raw backlink counts.

That’s why picking the right link building service today isn’t about who can deliver the most links – it’s about who can build the right links or execute a future-proof off-page strategy. The ones that position your brand where both people and AI systems trust it: reputable publications, topic-relevant blogs, and high-quality industry mentions.

In this guide, I’ll break down which types of link building services are still worth your time (and budget), which ones to avoid, and a few “emerging” ones you should keep an eye on.

This isn’t theory – it’s based on over a decade of experience auditing campaigns, testing outreach methods, and analyzing what actually drives results in 2025’s search landscape.

7 Link Building Services That Work in 2026

As you’ll know by now, there are a number of tactics you can use to acquire backlinks. As such –  not every SEO agency’s process, link building package or service, is exactly the same.

First, we’re going to cover services out there, which we’d consider “good practice” when it comes to the type of link building you should be doing.

1. HARO-Style Soundbites

For years, HARO (Help a Reporter Out) was the go-to platform for earning editorial links. When it shut down in 2024, it looked like the end of that era – but the service has since been revived by Featured, and as of 2026, HARO now operates again as a small, free journalist-source newsletter. It’s more limited than before, but the principle behind it hasn’t changed: providing genuine expertise to journalists in exchange for earned media coverage is still one of the most reliable ways to build trust, authority, and brand visibility.

The ecosystem, however, has evolved. Many professionals now use platforms like Qwoted and Featured’s new query feeds, while others focus on building relationships directly with writers on X, LinkedIn, or within Slack communities. 

What still matters most is the quality of your input. Journalists and editors can instantly spot copy-pasted or keyword-stuffed replies – and in 2025, they’re also inundated with AI-generated responses that all sound the same. Most experienced writers I know are fed up with that flood of generic, ChatGPT-style submissions.

If you hire an agency or freelancer for this kind of work, make sure they understand this reality. You can’t “AI spam” your way into credible coverage. The best agencies will still craft expert quotes written by real people with experience or proprietary data behind them. Some AI software now claims to generate press-ready quotes automatically, but those tools tend to produce shallow or inaccurate responses. (We’ll cover more on the risks of “AI link building” later.)

As Mike King and the team from iPullRank put it, “Search is a brand channel.” These earned media placements do more than generate backlinks – they strengthen your brand’s entity presence in AI-driven search results. Studies from Ahrefs and Seer Interactive in 2025 back this up: articles featuring named expert quotes or company mentions are more likely to appear in Google AI Overviews and Perplexity answers than similar content without attributed sources. That aligns with what we’ve consistently seen at The Links Guy: high-quality, editorially earned placements outperform bulk guest posts or paid placements every time.

When evaluating link building services, choose partners who approach HARO-style outreach as digital PR, not a numbers game. The right provider will research relevant journalists, craft thoughtful, personalized responses, and position your brand as a trusted voice worth quoting – not just another backlink request.

Learn more about our HARO link building process and see how this strategy integrates with our digital PR approach for maximum authority and visibility.

2. Guest Posting

Guest posting continues to still be a reliable link building method – but the bar for quality has risen sharply. The days of submitting 500-word generic posts to any blog that accepts contributions are long gone. Today, guest posting only works when it’s treated like a strategic partnership, not a transaction.

A good guest post provides real value to the publisher’s audience, aligns with their editorial style, and offers data-backed or experience-driven insights. Google’s most recent updates and the rollout of AI Overviews (SGE) have made it clear that editorial relevance and author expertise matter far more than word count or anchor text placement. In fact, many of the top-performing guest posts now double as brand-building content – attracting not only referral traffic but also recognition in AI search results and citation-style inclusions.

Guest posting can be a really good way of getting niche relevant links in the right sectors. The caveat here is that guest posting (done the white hat way), should yield you good quality links, on genuine websites, which are contextually relevant. Here is an example of a client where we did guest posting primarily for almost a year, and helped them 5X their traffic. This helped until they were in a position to bring other linkable assets in, and be able to do things like digital PR to supplement our efforts.

Unfortunately, the guest posting space has also become cluttered with agencies selling bulk placements on recycled sites that exist purely for link swaps. These sites often have declining traffic, thin content, or obvious link footprints. If your provider promises “guaranteed placements” on dozens of blogs overnight, that’s a red flag. Those links won’t help you rank long-term – and may even dilute your brand’s credibility.

Look for guest posting partners who:

• Focus on relevance and quality. Make sure your guest posting service only offers quality content-sharing sites, with Adsy being one example. Your goal is to find an agency, freelancer, or platform that has a wide selection of niche-relevant websites with strong SEO metrics.
• Keep anchor text diversity in mind. There is no universal rule of thumb, but you don’t want them to be very aggressive on exact match anchors, especially when you have control over the context of the link in many cases.
• Look beyond your standard link building, and can also build editorial relationships. The best ones pitch original, thought-leading ideas that fit within respected publications in your niche or related niches. These partnerships could even lead to ongoing collaboration, podcast invites, and unlinked brand mentions – all of which strengthen your authority across both traditional and AI-driven search. This is especially effective when paired with white hat link building techniques that emphasize genuine outreach and topic alignment.

Note: Guest posting can take more resources and time to execute, since it involves having to write blog posts for each target, and you’ll also need time for many of the posts to go live. As you can see from this small snapshot of our internal tracker for guest post writing, some articles may get rejected, or there is a lag time which you have to contend with as well.

Kevin Indig notes a major shift in nature of search, in his Growth Memo about “The New Normal”:

“SEO is morphing into an “influence” play that spans Google, LLMs, and every social feed your customers consult for a second opinion.”

I think this rings true for off-page SEO as well – this is where guest posting can play a key role in influencing how your brand is seen, and how it’s cited in this new, expanded ecosystem of search.

3. Content Marketing Agencies

Content marketing remains the backbone of sustainable link building – and the companies that truly excel are those that integrate link earning directly into their content strategy. 

Great content marketing doesn’t just generate traffic  – it earns editorial links, brand mentions, and AI visibility as a byproduct of authority.

For example, here’s an example of a statistics page that a client created. We built a few links to push it along, but for the most part, the 300+ links it gained over that 2 year period came naturally. 

The best content marketing agencies focus on creating these linkable assets: research reports, data studies, infographics, or practical guides that people genuinely want to cite. When executed properly, these assets help brands become reference points in their niche, earning mentions across blogs, news outlets, and social platforms. 

I think in previous times, you could argue it was much much easier for a high authority site to passively earn links, but AI has somewhat leveled the playing field now. LLMs pull from diverse, trusted sources, not just high authority sites – and that can also amplify the reach of content, provided it’s made with some GEO-friendly element in mind.

The problem though, is that many agencies sell “content marketing” as a package of shallow blog posts with no outreach strategy behind them. Publishing alone doesn’t build links. Without amplification  –  be it link building/digital PR, outreach, and social seeding  –  even the best content will stay invisible.

The most effective agencies combine strong ideation with smart promotion. For example, a campaign that combines original data and thought leadership can attract citations from major industry sites, as mentions in AI Overviews and LLMs. This holistic approach sits at the intersection of content, PR, and SEO  –  it’s what we call content-led link building at The Links Guy.

When choosing a content marketing partner, look for teams that understand not only how to produce compelling content and  ideate relevant topics with you –  but also how to seed it effectively  – through outreach, partnerships, and data storytelling. This ensures that your investment in content translates into authority signals that matter both for Google rankings and AI search visibility.

4. Broken Link Building

Broken link building is one of the oldest tactics in the book, but it remains a solid and ethical way to earn backlinks when done with precision. Fast forward to the present day, and it’s less about mass outreach and more about strategic replacement of outdated or dead resources with genuinely helpful, updated content.

The premise is simple: find broken pages that once linked to a resource similar to yours, recreate a better version of that resource, and reach out to the site owner suggesting the fix. What separates effective broken link building from spammy campaigns is the quality and relevance of the content you’re recommending. Editors don’t care about your link  –  they care about restoring value for their readers.

This tactic works best for:

• Brands that already publish high-quality informational resources, research studies, or evergreen guides. For example, a cybersecurity company with an updated present-year “phishing report” could easily replace dead links pointing to old reports from 2018 or 2019. It’s low-risk, high-value, and can even strengthen relationships with webmasters who appreciate the maintenance help.
• Niches or topical groups that are broad enough. At TLG, we tend to find that the broader the niche or appeal of the content, the more conducive it is to broken link building. For instance, we implemented this for an enterprise client in the fitness sector, and could get a number of broken links over the 3+ years we worked with them – purely because there are always health & fitness websites going offline, or with 404 pages. 

Modern tools like Ahrefs’ Broken Link Checker or Semrush’s Backlink Audit make it easy to find opportunities at scale. 

But the real success comes from how you pitch it. 

Personalizing each message, even slightly, and explaining why your updated resource is valuable, and demonstrating relevance to the site’s audience will always outperform template-driven blasts. 

Just like the example below, where we specifically showed them a very comprehensive “bodyweight workout” piece, and made reference to it being “scientifically proven” – because of the expertise behind the authors, and the way in which they even looked at actual fitness and human movement journals. These small nuances, and turns of phrase in your outreach can make a large difference.

When hiring an agency to manage broken link building, make sure they’re not just scraping lists of 404s and blasting generic outreach. The best partners will:

• Identify high-quality, contextually relevant opportunities that align with your brand’s niche.
• Vet sites for traffic trends, topical relevance, and link quality metrics before outreach.
• Recreate content that adds real value  –  not just rehashed pages  –  and tailor it to the audience that originally linked to the resource.
• Use personalized, polite outreach that shows awareness of the site’s content and user needs.
• Have other tactics they can lean on – because broken link building in most cases will have limited runway, or won’t be suitable for all websites.

5. Resource Page Outreach

Resource page outreach has quietly become one of the most effective  –  but often underused tactics. Unlike guest posting or broken link building, this approach doesn’t rely on creating new articles for external sites. Instead, it focuses on getting your existing content listed as a valuable resource on curated reference pages or “best tools” lists maintained by universities, non-profits, and industry publications.

The key here is fit. Editors and webmasters who maintain these pages are selective — they want links that genuinely add value for their readers. For example, if your brand publishes a comprehensive guide or data report that fills a knowledge gap, it stands a good chance of being included. But a thin, commercial landing page will almost always be rejected.

Instead of asking for a link outright, you’re suggesting an addition that enhances the page’s usefulness. Reference how your resource complements the existing links, and mention specific reasons why it’s worth including or why your company is well suited to be the source of expertise on this topic –  for example, updated research or unique data points.

Here’s an example below – which we break-down in more detail in our “Ultimate Guide to Resource Page Link Building”.

At TLG, we’ve used this tactic to secure links on some red brick universities in the UK, and some well known US universities – as well as government links at state and city level, or even charities.

This is a tactic which won’t always be suitable for every website, but you really would want the agency’s link building team to at least be aware of the execution of this tactic. 

If not, you might be missing out on some really good links. 

So if hiring an agency for resource page link building, it’s important they:

• Vet their lists properly, to ensure those resource page targets are actually relevant. Because of the type of institutions they may end up reaching out to, burning through these lists may not come across very well, and end up reflecting badly on your brand.
• Are not over-relying on link building automation. While some semi-automation can be done, you don’t want this tactic to be in the hands of someone blasting out email templates. Otherwise you may end up with emails like the one below ( Where they reached out about a page which had nothing to do with mental health or ADHD!)

• Understand the nuance of contact collection for resource pages. Collecting generic info@ emails, or CEOs won’t cut it here. So if the agency has a habit of using the same method to collect contacts, as every other tactic – it won’t work. For example, when we wanted a link on this university website, we contacted the “Communications Officer” who then looped in someone from the “Health and Wellbeing” team at the uni. 

Makes sense when you take a human-centric approach to link building, but there’s no guide out there teaching this type of nuance!

6. Skyscraper Technique

The Skyscraper Technique –  once popularized as a quick-win strategy –  has matured into something much more strategic in recent times, compared to when it was first coined by Brian Dean. It still revolves around improving on existing high-performing content, but success really now depends less on superficial upgrades or hitting a word count –  and more on true differentiation and depth.

This also isn’t anything new to SEO though, and the industry has been talking about this content concept for several years – I talked about it here back in 2020, on The Next 100 Days podcast.

Instead of simply making a longer or more keyword-stuffed version of an existing article, the modern approach to skyscraper content means identifying topical gaps, outdated stats, and missed opportunities for expertise. In a post-AI search world, information gain  –  how much new insight your content provides compared to what already exists is key.

The process still starts with competitor research using tools like Ahrefs’ Content Explorer or Semrush Topic Research, but the output needs to deliver something original: be it proprietary data, expert commentary, original thoughts and opinions, or real-world case studies. 

But can AI really tell if new content is objectively better? 

Well, I strongly believe there is actually an off-page and domain authority element to this as well. If search engines like Google see that a page is being cited and/or the brand is cited in the right context – I think this also helps with rankings. For AI models, “good” content means content that is traceable, credible, and contextually aligned with information from trusted, authoritative sources. 

Bernard Huang points out that information gain works best when paired with clear signals of authority  – original data, first-hand expertise, and strong entity associations  –  so AI systems can identify both freshness and trustworthiness in what they retrieve.

Going back to skyscraper link building – If you’re hiring an agency to run skyscraper campaigns you need to make sure that your collaborations involve:

• Auditing the top-ranking content and identifying true value gaps.
• Coordinating with your internal content team (or the agency creates that content) to ensure the narrative, tone, and depth aligns with your brand’s expertise.
• Interviewing subject-matter experts to inject firsthand insights or collaborate with your internal SMEs for authenticity.
• Include updated statistics and data visualizations that enhance what already exists.
• Crafting personalized outreach campaigns, or adopting a value-first approach to your outreach. Even Brian Dean admitted in a podcast episode with Matt Diggity back in 2022, that “template blasting” doesn’t work as well as it used to.

7. Digital PR Agencies

Digital PR has been a hot topic within SEO since 2023. When leveraged specifically, for building links, it is one of the most resource-intensive, and highly skilled link building techniques there is. It is also one of the most expensive to run, but executed correctly –  it can yield huge returns when coupled with the right overarching SEO strategy.

Agencies like Search Intelligence, Rise at Seven and Digital Loft are household names in this area.

Digital PR has a number of benefits:

• It can help with raising your overall authority.
• It can help you get branded mentions (helping drive branded search, which research shows has a 0.344 correlation with AI visibility)
• Being on high traffic sites can also drive significant referral traffic (in some cases).

Strong digital PR teams can act as storytellers and data translators. They find the intersection between what your business has to say and what the media wants to report on. This might take the form of original data studies, expert commentary on industry trends, or creative campaigns tied to broader conversations. For instance, a SaaS company could run an annual “State of Productivity” survey, while a fintech brand might publish anonymized spending insights that get picked up by financial journalists. The key is newsworthiness – rather than direct self promotion.

There are caveats to consider as well:

• Pricing models vary widely. Some agencies offer a link guarantee for a range of links, others avoid KPIs and offer no guarantees. Five figure monthly retainers are common for serious digital PR, and many agencies do not publish transparent pricing. Expect custom quotes.
• There are bad players in Digital PR as well. Some providers simply buy posts on private blog networks masquerading as news sites. If you are paying a premium, verify you are getting coverage on real media sites with real audiences. You particularly need to watch out for pay to play media. Nothing is inherently wrong with paid strategies, but you can end up spending thousands with unscrupulous providers promising seemingly high authority domains that do not move the needle. (example below)

Note here the irrelevant, mixed organic traffic, and obvious sponsored post churn.

• If you do work with a digital PR agency, align on what counts as a relevant, on brand story. The agency’s ability to deliver industry relevance will dictate the type of publications that cover you. If you are trying to earn coverage on international women’s fashion magazines, there is no sense in pitching a story about the latest fashion trends seen on “The Only Way Is Essex” ! Relevance, audience fit, and timing beat sheer volume every time.
• Digital PR is also not immune to template blasting, or AI-generated slop. The Olivia Brown PR tool controversy highlighted some of the concerns around how over-automation, and overuse of AI by PR agencies  is affecting journalists. So whether you hire an agency or do PR in-house, its good to be mindful that you’re not annoying journalists as well, with poorly targeted outreach and low quality stories. 

6 Link Building Services Which Don’t Work And You Need To Avoid

1. Cheap Links / Freelancer platforms

The most obvious one that springs to mind here is Fiverr.

You can certainly find some really good gigs, amongst the 2 million+ services on Fiverr. But as for link building specifically… I’d be surprised if you find a good quality service.

Most are going to be quite cheap services, where you’re paying in the region of $100 or less for a link. Maybe 10 years ago, you could get away with building spammy links at scale, but today – you’re likely just spending links which won’t drive much impact.

Aside from Fiverr, I’d even say you need to be careful of platforms like Upwork, Freelancer and Legiit. Maybe you’ll find some good services there, but it’s going to be few and far between.

2. Negative SEO Links

Negative SEO happens, when there is a nefarious attempt to dampen the rankings of a target website or how Google views a website- which leads to organic search traffic loss.

It can happen through a number of techniques – such as entity poisoning, hacking, code injections, or even a falsely-filed DMCA takedown request.

It’s also possible that negative SEO happens through the use of high volumes of toxic backlinks. It isn’t highly common to see this kind of attack in all industries, but such black hat link building can be seen in more grey areas like vaping, gambling or the adult industry.

Just make sure you are conducting regular backlink audits, and can remove spammy links, and identify negative SEO links, if they do occur.

3. Tiered Links

Tiered link building  –  creating layers of backlinks that point to other backlinks – was once seen as a clever way to multiply authority. Now, it’s a recipe for detection. AI-driven spam analysis tools can likely map link patterns across layers of sites, making these networks easier than ever to flag and devalue.

Legitimate link building should be flat and direct: focus on getting quality editorial links straight to your key assets, rather than building artificial “tiers.”

Caveat: If you’re doing a more “white hat” approach  – tiered link building can come in the form PINs (Private Influencer Networks)  – which involves creating legitimate sites with an actual audience and traffic. Links are built to these “PINs” which will link to the “money site”. Large media companies are kind of doing this on a much larger scale, and this very likely does work. But, this tactic is expensive to run.

4. Private Blog Networks (PBNs)

We touched on this a bit, but PBNs are one of those black hat tactics that certainly is still being used.

Do they work in the short-term? They probably do.

Are they reliable and something you should be using as a business looking for long-term, suitable growth? No.

Google has always been looking to crack down on PBNs, and arguably, is getting better and better at finding them, and devaluing such links, or penalizing sites that use PBNs.

I can only see their system improving here, and driving the PBN market deeper and deeper underground – until it’s probably only going to be used by people looking to “pump and dump” a website, or use it in niches with a higher risk tolerance to risky SEO practices. That’s why with niches like iGaming or adult, people are still utilizing PBNs, or using parasite SEO tactics. 

You also need to be careful you don’t inadvertently buy PBNs from bad providers. PBN operators will often rebuild expired domains, fill them with thin AI content, and sell placements disguised as editorial links. These sites might show high DA metrics but often have low or fake traffic, weak engagement, and no genuine readership.

So if a link vendor refuses to show you the URLs before purchase or insists their network is “safe,” walk away.

5. Directories, Blog Comments & Web 2.0s

These are essentially just anything which you would classify as “quick” links. Something where anyone could sign up to a website, and submit a link, or some content with a link inside.

Automated blog commenting, generic business directories, Web 2.0 links or Article submission directories. Even press releases which you submit via a syndication service like CISION’s PRWeb, or other similar platforms,  have their uses  –   but don’t expect them to drive much link equity.

These tactics still get repackaged as “foundational links” or “diversification.” They may have acted as good pillow links in the past, for padding out your link profile. But fast forward to the present day, and these links will be unlikely to move the needle.

The one exception is niche directories, where perhaps you have a directory which is unique to your industry or geographical region. If it’s a good quality site and the site does have some sort of vetting process for submissions, it’s still worth getting on those links. Posting valuable comments on niche online communities, or subreddits is also better than automated forum posting.

6. Brand Mention Services

This is a newer entrant to the “doesn’t work” list – brand mention services claim to improve AI visibility by flooding the web with more mentions of your brand name. The pitch is that AI systems will see your brand repeatedly and start surfacing it more in results.

While it’s true that brand mentions play a role in entity understanding, this kind of synthetic mention farming is a shortcut that I think is a bit like “putting the cart before the horse.”

The brands who are consistently being mentioned in AI searches/LLM answers – are there because it’s a direct reflection of how frequently mentioned in the space they operate, and if you want to simplify things – how good a job they have done with their PR and/or SEO strategy. 

As Lily Ray pointed out with this example of Levi’s visibility, when it comes to searching for information about jeans – they’re cited the most because of the sheer volume, and the context in which the brand is talked about. They didn’t get there by forcing brand mentions at scale. 

Don’t get me wrong – there are definitely various tactics you can use,  which will lead to you being mentioned in the right places – which subsequently can lead to better AI visibility. 

If you are already doing a good job with brand building, and you are looking for a reputable provider to push along the velocity of brand mentions – especially for the SaaS industry – SAASY LINKS is a strong player in this niche.

But attempting to force AI visibility with a brand mention service…  is not going to be the magic button you’re looking for.

Emerging Link Building Services to Watch (But Be Cautious Of)

This leads us onto services which are emerging in the sector and (you guessed it), are related to the rise of AI, and GEO/AEO. 

1. AI Link Building

Using AI for link prospecting, data enrichment, and outreach personalization can dramatically improve efficiency. However, the risk comes when automation takes over the strategy and execution.

At TLG, we have the benefit of trying to recruit link builders for almost a decade with upwards of probably 100,000 applications within that time. 

So we can quickly see the difference between a thoughtful, human email like this:

And when someone has just copy-pasted a completely generic, bland email out of AI like this:

A growing number of tools are emerging, which claim to generate “AI-written outreach”, or you’re probably being bombarded with Clay tables, or N8N automations that are claiming to build links automatically (like below).

In practice, many of these “fully autonomous” tools are just sending out AI slop at scale. If it’s doing outreach, it’ll hallucinate or make things up, and make the email look sloppy. 

I even tested the automation above myself, and the contacts it collected were wildly off, the emails had no variation (mostly templated), and I doubt anyone could build decent links at scale using it.

Many editors or journalists are increasingly becoming vocal about the flood of robotic outreach cluttering their inboxes. 

What I’ve found is that if the AI link building service or tool is collecting email contacts automatically,  it’ll often collect irrelevant people. 

So it’s really important, such tools are used responsibly, and either have the correct nuance or a large knowledgebase built into it (or better yet), are wielded by someone who knows what they’re doing, and can steer it in the right direction, and manually intervene where needed.

One tool I actually do recommend is Pitchbox. It comes with a few AI link building features, and a handy one if you’re having to create lots of segmented templates, is the AI Template Assistant. 

You can choose from the different template styles, and like the example below, give it a bit more context and it’ll generate a template. 

I would still always recommend having a human edit the final product, especially getting rid of the flowery, AI-esque language – but it gives you a starting point. 

Pitchbox also has many more features you can use such as AI Reply (to speed up email responses), and AI Personalization – which operates a bit like a Clay table, and will pull certain data points from your entire list of targets, and will use AI to manipulate that data using your prompts.

So it’s not to say AI has no place in link building. When used responsibly, it can streamline parts of the process, and make a strong link builder, even better. 

2. AEO/GEO Link Building

We touched on the legitimacy of GEO and AEO earlier. These are good frameworks for understanding how AI search engines process and cite information. But when agencies start selling “AEO link building” or “GEO link building” as separate services, that’s usually a red flag.

AI systems pull answers from a broad ecosystem of sources based on topical authority and contextual reliability. In that sense, good SEO and PR practices already cover what these frameworks describe.

When you see “AEO/GEO link building” offered as a paid package, approach with skepticism. There isn’t really any logical reason to separate these types of links  – unless it’s being done from the POV of “forcing” your brand into AI systems, or trying to do something at a huge scale, for the purpose of creating quick, short-lived AI visibility gains. 

This may not be a popular opinion, but if you want better AI visibility  – just concentrate on building your brand, doing good SEO work, producing good content, and promoting that content. 

Picking The Right Link Building Service Provider

We’ve talked about the different types of of link building services that are out there – but how exactly do you define the best link building service for you?

Here’s some of the areas you could be looking at.

Hint: it’s not always going to be the ones listed on those “best link building services” lists!

Industry Experience:  What previous relevant experience does the link building agency have? 

If they work within your niche, or with sectors that are fairly close to it, that will help them. It could be in terms of creating relevant link building strategies, having existing relationships they can leverage, or the ability of their team to write content that has the depth of research required for publisher approval. 

Most agencies concentrate on SaaS, so if you’re non-SaaS, an industry-agnostic agency could be what you need. 

Reputation: What do others say about the service? 

This is where testimonials and shout-outs from trusted, credible people will come in. If the service has been mentioned in other relevant sites, they’ve been around for a while, people from the agency have been in podcasts, there are Clutch reviews and/or others you know have good things to say about them – these of course, should all have some weightage in your decision.

Just be careful not to be swayed by agencies that simply get their other SEO industry friends to endorse them, or who only rely on pay-for-play promotions – they should have impartial recommendations.

Transparency and Communication:  What methods do they use to get these links, and what type of links do they get?

Steer clear of agencies promising fast, guaranteed results or hiding behind vague terms like “proprietary networks” or are just throwing around stuff about GEO/AEO. 

Ethical link building means earning off page visibility, that will still be live and valuable  –  a year from now.  Ask about small things like quality control, their approach to link building metrics, how they handle link removals, or if they have any examples of links and how they define success.

Data-Driven Evaluation: Do they even know (or care) how link building is impacting your site?

A professional agency won’t just treat this as a “link volume” game, but also should factor in what impact its driving (if any), and how to evaluate if you even need link building, or you need certain tactics because of your website’s specific situation.

The best ones go a step further by monitoring AI search visibility, or your Share of Voice – albeit tracking AI visibility has not been perfected at this moment in time. 

Wrapping Up

What once worked through volume and shortcuts now depends on credibility, expertise, and authenticity. Algorithms and AI systems are maturing to reward the same traits real audiences value: relevance, transparency, and authority.

If there’s one pattern across every effective strategy discussed here, it’s that quality compounds. Links earned through genuine outreach, expert collaboration, and meaningful content don’t just improve rankings; they shape how your brand is understood across the entire digital ecosystem.

Avoid the noise –  the cheap links, the “AI autopilot” services, and the rebranded gimmicks  – and instead focus on sustainable, value-driven link building that aligns with your long-term brand and search goals. 

Brands that understand this will remain visible not just in Google’s results, but in the AI-powered search experiences that define the next decade.