Controlled and Data-Driven Link Building

Check the slides and recording from my recent talk in Brighton in October 2024. Below the embedded slideshow you’ll find a simple summary of my talk based on my presenter’s notes. You’ll be able to learn about many pitfalls in link building strategy and scam or low quality digital PR tactics. I will show you the alternative for this kind of link building – more controlled, predictable and goal oriented.

You will also find selection of the best places to buy links from!

Lessons from a $708K investment in link building

Here’s the full recording from BrightonSEO Conference October 2024:

And here is my deck with all the slides:

What I was talking about? Literally:

If you are responsible for delivering results in SEO you can’t rely only on luck. You need to be an engineer who plans, implements and controls the whole on-site and off-site SEO process.

Data-driven link building

First things, first. What is actually data-driven link building. For me, it’s a precisely designed process of:

• prospecting (for example based on link gap),
• identifying the most common & best unique backlinks among competitors,
• deeper verification of their value based on quality metrics & indexation,
• setting up a strategy with priority for links,
  • you can get immediately,
  • with best quality/price (or effort) ratio.

Issues with link building

But it’s not that easy to deliver the needed backlinks in a specific timeframe to catch up and outrank the competitors.

If you want to run digital PR campaigns or if you’re acquiring links from unknown middlemen (mostly providing backlinks from spammy guest post farms), you will encounter a lot of obstacles and risks. And I personally don’t like it. And to be honest I cannot afford it. I want to control the process.

Here’s one of the offers I received for guest posting service. Among others there’s a promising perspective of getting a backlink from msn.com for 100$:

I asked for an example of a delivered service, an example of an article with a link, and then this guy sent me a URL. I checked it, let’s say one week later, and it was already gone.

It shows a major problem with acquiring link from unknown vendors, middlemen contacted via messenger, without contract etc.

Another example: whenever someone offers you link insertion on a strong website like Hubspot’s blog, think twice. According to ahrefs there are already 297 outgoing links from this single article.

45 days later it changed title, lost 2 referring domains but number of external links increased to 310. Simplifying, It means you’re sharing a smaller quantity of link juice with more websites. Equation is simple – you get less.

Is that white hat link building?

You may think that methods like guest posts, outreach, and link insertions are somehow white hat because there is no trace of you paying directly for them. I see it when people in Facebook groups are looking for these kinds of services:

I’m a control freak but also a very curious guy, so I asked how they define white hat link building services. And got a very unspecific answer: white hat means legit and authorized.

Dude, white hat doesn’t mean that at all… So what does white hat link building mean? Many people use terms like ‘legit’ and ‘authorized’ to suggest compliance with Google’s guidelines. But is that correct?

What Google says about link spam

You probably know this article from Google, right? Anyway, you should! Let’s check how they define link spam.

They don’t want you to buy links, obviously. But is that all?

Link exchanges – this is what you actually get in many cases when you order white hat link building services based on outreach.

Outreachers have their previously made connections and lists of placements. Many of them build link carousels, and it doesn’t seem to be white hat according to Google…

So maybe getting links from journalists as a reward for delivering quality content for them?

It also may be considered a link spam. Situation is very similar when you send your products to bloggers, vlogers, influencers and expect a link from a blog post, a review etc. Is it a white hat digital PR? Or is it link buying? …

Quick question. Spot the difference. First scenario – you’re paying directly to get a link. Second – you pay someone to provide some goods to publisher – links, content, dinner, bribe whatever – and get a backlink.

From the perspective of link spam definition this strategies are almost the same.

You know that meme:

All those tactics are only examples, but the Google’s take on link spam is even broader and may seem scary to some SEO specialists.

Google definition of link spam is quite broad:

Following strictly Google guidelines can cause migraine or stop you from delivering results.

But done properly it doesn’t have to be that painful.

We know, that the fact that Google doesn’t recommend something doesn’t mean it has to be ineffective. So let’s do some truely effective link building!

Solutions for effective link building

I want to share some valuable insights you can use in your campaigns.

If you wonder why should you listen to my advice. I’m not talking about some things I’ve read online or strategies offered by chatGPT. I own 7-figure SEO agency – takaoto – and I run this business for over 12 years. I’m in SEO for over 15 years.

We’ve spent over 700K USD last year on link building. So… yes, we are paying for backlinks. We are buying them.

And it pays off. Here’s an example of meal prep delivery services website:

Here’s an apartment rental service:

This is a fashion ecommerce website – you can see seasonal ups and downs in traffic but each year the apex is higher:

Link building tips (and thing to watch out for)

So, what I learned so far? Here are some pracitcal tips how to buy links and control the process:

Link building platforms

My go-to tactic is using link-building platforms that already established connections with tens of thousands of publishers, portals, bloggers. They offer a wide range of metrics and options to explore. I find them incredibly effective for data driven approach. Here’s an example of broad variety of filters in Linkhouse – register for free and test it on your own!

I personally prefer Linkhouse for delivering new solutions and advanced link building options and the best UX.

There are similar options in platforms like Whitepress (test it), Bazoom and Collaborator.pro (maybe also worth checking) as well.

Variety of filters in Whitepress:

Domain analysis

One of the biggest advantages in general is ability to choose the domains of your preference that suit your strategy. If you can’t see the domain name before buying links, you’re losing control and the outcomes may be different than expected. DR-based offers and link packages doesn’t say much until you see and examine the true quality of the domain.

Look here. You just got report with your DR50+ links…

This website has DR67 nad over 9K referring domains. Looks promising on the first spot, but due to some reasons, it lost majority of exposure in Google and it barely gets traffic. Number of referring domains doesn’t translate into traffic so there are probably some major quality issues. Many of those links in the link profile may have been devalued. Or maybe this website was penalized because of excessive amount of unnatural outgoing links. It’s hard to tell. But it will not deliver value that you would expect from a DR67 link. That’s for sure.

Or look at this one:

DR82 looks amazing right? 28,4K referring domains too. But traffic history suggest something else. And by knowing only the numbers, without knowing the domain, you wouldn’t be able verify it. Basic numbers like DR or number of referring domains can be very misleading without broader context.

Also most of the offers you’ll see or reports of acquired backlinks will show you just one side of the coin. 37k referring domains sounds good

but…

There are almost 2x more linked domains which drain that link juice, dilute it, so you get less, than you expect.

This particular website is newsbreak.com and it’s a great example while you may find it often in digital PR campaign reports.

Link ratio

When you’re using link building platform – like Linkhouse for instance you can filter out all the domains with low in /out ratio. The higher, the better.

Links from subdomains, DR and UR

When you’re buying links or order PR campaigns: watch out for links in subdomains. What metrics would you see in a report, if you got a link from esguniversity.substack.com?

Ahrefs shows you DR calculated for the top domain – 92 in this example:

But if you look at subdomains metrics precisely, this is what shows up. 34 referring domains and 32 traffic. Man, you just paid for a link with DR 92. Or maybe your link building service provider (white hat? digital PR?) bragged about marvelous link with DR92? So you would probably expect results, right? But 34 referring domains will not, in most cases, provide the value you need.

So watch out, because links you will get are often in separated subdomains with far less authority.

This is one of the reasons I prefer filtering not only by DR or other domain level metrics but also checking manually where you actually get links from. Link placement is really important. Here’s an example of quite weak domain with DR 16, but UR of referring URL is 2.4:

Not great, but it’s not the worse you can get.

In a meantime you can get links from possibly strong domain with DR75 like this:

But as you can see, UR is only 0.3! Higher domain rating doesn’t have to provide higher value and better link juice distribution.

How to drive more link juice to your article with a backlink pointing to your website? It’s easy when you’re using sponsored articles or high quality guest posts.

This is a feature from Linkhouse:

You can enhance your articles position within the website and enforce it with link juice by choosing offers with additional internal linking. It works really fine and also helps with the indexation.

Read also: Guest Post Links: Where to Buy High-Quality Backlinks (and How They Work in 2025)

Topical relevance in link building

If you like you can also choose the sources with topical relevance. It’s wise to have both links form big portals and from your industry, topical related media. Here’s example from Bazoom:

For better relevance you can also prefer to choose link placements from specific countries. Most of the platforms allow you to choose by website’s language. Linkhouse additionally enabled filtering by countries.

Sometimes filtering by language may not be enough and it’s worth checking where the website performs best. Especially when you want to build brand awareness (which is crucial in SEO right now) or when your campaign is aimed to deliver leads or if it’s part of aff parasite SEO campaign.

Here’s example of website in English with main traffic source from United States (screenshot from Linkhouse):

And here’s a website in English with most traffic from Pakistan, then India. For some campaigns it will make a difference.

Stop paying for nofollow links

Other risk you take while relying on digital PR campaigns, is getting many backlinks that are nofollow. Link building platforms allow you filtering those offers out. In most cases it’s extremely easy. Example from Bazoom:

Here’s Linkhouse:

And here’s Whitepress:

See? Easy peasy.

It may seem obvious, but let’s take a look at a case study from real digital PR campaign – shared by popular agency 2 months ago on social media.

Results: 14 publications, 12 with links. DR 21, 30, 70, 80, 90. Looks decent. How many of them are follow?

It turns out that only three have dofollow backlinks – it’s only 25% of publications. Dofollow links come from domains with DR 21, 30 and 72.

Link pillowing is important, but there are cheaper ways to do that!

Issue with high DR but dropping traffic

Ok, let’s look at those three domains little bit closer. One of them comes from website with DR21 and traffic lower than 1000. For the whole domain, not the article with a backlink.

So maybe the “strong” one from DR72 will be more promising? Unfortunately it comes from a website with dropping visibility and traffic.

Also watch out if you order continuous campaign you may get links from the same domains over and over again. Here’s an example from the same report / case study:

Sometimes it may be ok if you get reccuring links from a major media outlet every now and then, but in general it’s better when you get the new ones.

Setting up quality criteria for link building campaign

If I would order digital PR campaign to get backlinks I would specify some conditions for them to qualify to report.

Minimal criteria would be:

• number of links,
• % of dofollow links,
• minimum organic traffic,
• new, unique referring domains.

I would also specify timeframe because link velocity is very important part of off-site SEO. Getting 10 link monthly is different than 10 links per year right? Otherwise your competitors will outpace you.

All these requirements seem reasonable, would you agree?

So why won’t you buy sponsored articles while it’s much easier to match those requirements this way. This is why we use them as a basic tactic.

Data-driven anchor distribution

Another thing you need to focus in offsite SEO is proper distribution of anchor texts. It should look natural but should never be random!

Do reverse engineering to find what’s acceptable for Google, lookup best competitors. Here is step by step guide on how to define optimal anchor text distribution from Matt Diggity:

Always remember to define and craft the link profile you want. Many links to the main page with branded anchors look natural, but a nice pinch of exact match or naked URL anchors will still pay off and boost your efforts!

You can design you anchor-text profile by publishing sponsored articles as well. You can filter offers that allow you to use any anchors you like.

Pass the link juice to the pages of your choice

Another way to enhance your link building efforts is to choose wisely where to link. Digital PR and outreach campaigns result mostly in links only to the main page or resource pages.

With sponsored articles you can also distribute some link juice and robot attention to the transactional pages that target money keywords.

You can also use cheaper offers to build second tier links. You’re the master of the link building process – so you should decide where you link and which pages you promote.

Other shady tactics

There are also some other things to watch out for like nofollow backlinks from free blogs (like medium.com) or domains with very low indexation (aol.com, newsbreak.com). Actually there are many more signals that a specific won’t work.

---

If you need a link building audit – contact me!

Or arrange a SEO consulting session.

---

Summary… and the future of link building

Controlled, data-driven link building process in a nutshell:

1. Choose the domains (analyze them first),
2. Choose your target URL,
3. Design the text that will surround the link (not like randomly placed links from link insertions and digital PR),
4. Choose anchor-text (based on a general strategy).

Each part of the process (placement, surrounding, anchor and target URL) should stay under your control!

That’s not all. AI offers new opportunities. In the near future, I believe we will analyze entire websites in the same way Google does—through a truly digital, mathematical approach using vector representations, known as embeddings, provided by language models.

By counting cosine similarity of embeddings we will be able to establish genuine semantic, relevance based off-site strategy!

But to make it happen, we have to control and choose where we get our links from. So we need to have a list of websites to choose from. And it’s impossible when you rely solely on digital PR.

And final thought. Remember not to worry about colour of the hat. How Google can determine if the outgoing link from newsbreak.com (the website I mentioned earlier) comes from the link building platform?

Because, yes, you can buy it on Bazoom:

But it also may be offered by some private middleman that contacted you on messenger:

Or it can be acquired by some link building specialist from fiverr:

But it also can be a result of a digital PR campaign. More or less legit one…

The final result will look exactly the same – both for the user and for the Googlebot!

So in the end it doesn’t even matter how you acquire links.

But if I may control my link profile based on my criteria, I prefer that option! This is why I use mostly sponsored articles – whenever possible.

I get a guarantee of longevity of a link and can expect it to published within specific timeframe. So I can deliver what I’ve actually previously planned and what I’ve promised to my client.

Controlled delivery of what was previously planned is a foundation for both good SEO and a good service.

Good luck with providing high quality services, delivering good SEO and making business! Thanks for your attention.