Link building for US websites

Methods we use, and ones we refuse

A link helps when a real site with real readers chooses to point to you. Google's spam policies describe buying links to pass ranking credit and large-scale link schemes as violations. We therefore build links that a person would have a reason to give, and we explain the risk of the others before you meet them in a sales pitch from someone else.

The link building service page covers the standard scope, and the link building cost guide explains why prices differ so much between providers.

Disclosure and tagging in the US

When money, free products or other value change hands for a mention, the FTC's endorsement guidance says the connection must be disclosed clearly to the reader. In search terms, Google also asks that paid or sponsored links carry the sponsored attribute and that user-generated links carry the ugc attribute, with nofollow as a general option. We follow both. If a publisher charges for a sponsored article, it is labeled as such and tagged accordingly, and we count it as advertising, not as an earned link. We also never write fake reviews or invent customer quotes to attract links. The FTC's rule on consumer reviews makes that a legal matter as well as an SEO one.

Finding the right targets in a large market

The US has a huge number of publishers, which makes picking the wrong ones easy. We build the target list from three views: sites that link to two or more of your competitors, sites that rank for the topics you want and sites that your customers actually read. We remove sites that exist to sell links, and we check traffic, topical fit and whether real people comment or share. Regional focus matters: a plumber in Ohio gains more from an Ohio chamber and local paper than from a national list site. Software firms may gain more from partner integrations and review sites than from general news.

• Competitor gap analysis from backlink data, using tools such as Ahrefs.
• A link-worthy asset plan: a data piece, a calculator, a guide or a local event page.
• Outreach with a named sender and a clear reason to link, not a mass template.
• A shared sheet of every contact, reply and result, so that you see exactly where we asked.

Outreach to businesses is commercial email, so CAN-SPAM rules apply, including a physical address and an opt-out. Our link building outreach template shows the approach.

Measuring what the links did

We track new referring domains, their relevance, the pages they point to and movement in Search Console for the target pages. Referral visits from the linking pages are recorded too, because a good link sends readers. Rankings take time to respond, and they are shaped by many other things, such as content and site health, so we do not claim a link caused a jump. Where a site has technical or content problems, we suggest fixing them first, since links to a weak page deliver little. A technical SEO review or an SEO audit often comes before a link campaign.

Pace and price

Link work runs on monthly cycles. Month one is research and asset planning, then outreach starts and results arrive in a trickle, not all at once. Reports are sent monthly, and a call at 9:00 a.m. Eastern is 19:30 in India in winter. Do not expect any number of links in a given week, because publishers decide on their own schedule.

Projects start at $1,500, and our rate is $30 an hour. Competition, the strength of your assets, whether we create content and the number of target sites decide the quote. A fixed price follows a short call within one working day. See the US SEO pillar for how links fit the larger plan.