Link building services, earned through outreach and checked by hand

Who are link building services for?

Link building fits a business whose pages already answer the searches it wants, while competitors keep ranking ahead because more sites point to them. The links worth chasing depend on how far the business reaches:

• Established local businesses: the links that count come from the businesses and groups around you: suppliers, trade associations, partners and local organizations. Google says how many websites link to a business is part of how well-known it looks in local results. That side of the work sits on our local SEO services page.
• Multi-location and regional businesses: each location page can earn links from its own area, such as a chamber of commerce, a supplier or a community group near that branch. The pages themselves are covered under SEO for multiple locations.
• National businesses: rivals linked from many sites, where a page needs something others will cite before outreach has anything to offer. Among the questions Google gives site owners for assessing their own content is whether it provides original information, reporting, research or analysis.

If search engines can’t reach your pages, or the pages don’t answer the search yet, links won’t fix that. Start with technical SEO or on-page SEO, and we’ll tell you on the call if that’s where you are.

What is link building in SEO?

Link building is the work of getting other websites to link to yours. Each link has visible text, called anchor text, which Google says tells people and Google something about the page being linked to. Google wants that text descriptive and reasonably concise, and relevant to the page it sits on as well as the one it points to.

We count link work in referring domains: the number of separate sites that link to you. Ten links from one site add up to one referring domain, so a report that counts links can look busier than the work behind it.

Links also carry labels in their code. Google asks sites to mark paid links and advertisements with rel=“sponsored”, links in comments and forum posts with rel=“ugc”, and links they would rather Google not associate with their site with rel=“nofollow”. A labeled link can still send you visitors.

Why do links matter to Google?

Google uses links in two ways. Its link guidance says they are a signal when it decides how relevant a page is, and a route to new pages for its crawler. Its explanation of how results are ranked adds that one factor in judging quality is whether other prominent websites link or refer to the content, which Google treats as a general sign that the information can be trusted.

Links are one signal among many. The same explanation names the words of the search, how relevant and usable a page is, how expert its sources are, and the searcher’s location and settings. A link to a page that doesn’t answer the search won’t carry it far, which is why our link work runs inside the rest of our monthly SEO services.

Which links help, and which break Google’s rules?

The links that help are the ones a site chose to give because it had a reason: it buys from you, belongs to the same association, quoted your owner, or found your guide worth citing. That is what people mean by white hat link building.

Google’s spam policies define link spam as links made to or from a site mainly to manipulate search rankings. Their examples include:

• Paying for links: exchanging money, goods or services for links, or for posts that contain them.
• Link swaps: excessive trades of links between sites, and partner pages made only to cross-link.
• Automated and template links: links made by automated programs or services, and links spread widely through the footers or templates of other sites.
• Low-quality placements: low-quality directory and bookmark links, keyword-heavy links in articles, guest posts or press releases spread across other sites, and forum comments with keyword links in the post or signature.
• Required links: a link demanded as a condition of a contract or terms of service, without letting the other site label it.

Google says sites that break its policies may rank lower or not appear at all, whether its automated systems catch them or a human reviewer issues a manual action. Links bought for advertising or sponsorship don’t break the policies when they carry rel=“sponsored” or rel=“nofollow”.

How does outreach link building work?

Outreach link building is asking, one site at a time, for a link you have a reason to get. It runs in three parts:

1. Find the sites with a reason: the businesses and groups you already deal with come first, then pages that mention you without a link. A customer’s page is asked only with that customer’s agreement.
2. Offer something real: each note gives the site something it can use. A note that offers nothing is a stranger asking for a favor.
3. Ask plainly: for a link to your website, never for keyword link text or a followed link.

How do you win back lost and broken links?

Links disappear when the page that carried them is removed, redesigned or moved, or when the page they pointed to on your site is gone. Broken link building, as the market uses the term, means finding links that lead to dead pages and getting them repaired: on other sites, by offering a page that replaces what was lost, and on your own, by fixing where the old address goes.

Our monthly link check starts with your side of that:

• Links to pages you removed: a permanent redirect from the old address to the right live page.
• Links to an old address: a note asking the site to update the link, with a redirect in place meanwhile.
• Listings that dropped your link: fixed inside the listing itself.
• Links a site took down: a short note asking for the link back.

Each lost link is then marked as recovered, asked for or gone, with the reason.

How does digital PR earn links?

Digital PR earns coverage on news sites, trade publications and blogs by giving their writers something to use: data no one else has, an expert’s comment on a story they’re covering, or a tip. The link comes when the article credits its source. Google’s starter guide says promoting new content, word of mouth included, leads to faster discovery by people interested in the subject and by search engines, and warns that overdoing it can look to search engines like manipulation of search results.

Two practices sold under the same name can break Google’s rules. A paid placement, where an outlet is paid to publish an article carrying your link, is the advertorial Google’s spam policies describe, unless the link is marked sponsored or nofollow. A press release sent out on a wire for its links falls under the same policies when the links carry keyword text. Agencies package this work differently: on Thrive’s price page, competitive link building sits at the middle level and digital PR at the top one.

We never pay for a placement, and we don’t put out wire releases for links.

What do off page SEO services cover besides links?

Off page SEO is a general name for work done away from your own site that shapes how search engines and people see you. Links are the part most people know. The rest:

• Mentions: pages that name your business without a link. They still tell readers you exist, and the page has already chosen to write about you, which makes it a natural place to ask for a link.
• Your Business Profile and reviews: for a local business, Google’s local ranking draws on how well-known it is, including its reviews. That work has its own page: Google Business Profile management.
• Listings: the same business name, address and phone number on every directory and industry site that lists you.
• AI answers: how AI assistants describe your business and which sources they cite. Once a month we check how often AI answers mention you, and generative engine optimization is our service for making your business easier for AI answers to find, read and cite.

When you compare off page SEO services, ask which of these each one covers. This page describes our link earning and the monthly link check.

How do you choose a link building agency or company?

The two names describe the same kind of firm: a link building agency and a link building company both sell the outreach and the checking. Google’s guide to hiring an SEO gives three warnings that apply here. It says to be wary of firms whose first contact is an email you didn’t ask for, to avoid SEOs that talk about link popularity schemes, and that no SEO you hire should require a link back to its own site. Then ask:

• What will you offer each site? A good answer names the tip, quote, data or relationship behind each pitch.
• Who sends the notes, and from whose address? You should know what goes out in your name.
• How do you decide a link is real? Ask to see the linking page for each one they report.
• Is any of it paid? Paying for a placement, a guest post or a link added to an old article is one of Google’s examples of link spam.
• Will you promise a number of links? Sites decide for themselves whether to link, so a count promised in advance is a reason to ask how the links get placed.

What happens to spam links pointing at your site?

Sites pick up links from scrapers and template sites they never asked for. Google says that in most cases it can assess which links to trust without help, so most sites will not need its disavow tool, and it calls the tool an advanced feature that can harm a site’s performance in Search if used incorrectly.

The tool is for a narrower case: a considerable number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links that have caused a manual action, or likely will. Google issues a manual action when a human reviewer finds that a site’s pages break its spam policies, and the one for unnatural links describes a pattern of manipulative links pointing at the site. The fix it sets out is to ask site owners to remove the links or add nofollow, disavow only what can’t be removed, and then request a review.

We follow that order. We disavow only after a manual action, or for paid links a past vendor placed, and only with Nicolas Perez’s approval. A sudden wave of junk links on its own is no reason to disavow anything.

How do you measure link building?

Count sites, then read them. Search Console’s Links report lists the sites that link to you most and the link text they use, and Google suggests confirming that you recognize the sites listed. The report works from a sample of links rather than every one, so the monthly check also pulls new and lost linking sites from Ahrefs. Ahrefs gives each site a score it calls Domain Rating. We record yours as a trend over the months and set no target on it.

We log each real link with the page it sits on and how it was earned. Each month is read against its targets and against the dated record we made when the work started. Rankings and leads depend on more than our work, so we don’t promise them.

What does link building look like with us?

We’re a company formed in 2023 by co-founders Nicolas Perez and Noah Alvarez, and we work with businesses across the US from our office in Valencia, California. We run our SEO work, link earning included, on sites built in our own system. If yours was built somewhere else, we rebuild it first, with every old address redirected to its new page. The market’s ranges for each level are on our SEO pricing page.

Some link work we turn down: paid links and placements, guest posts, link insertions, scholarship pages, expired domains and link swaps. A set number of links is never promised, and running paid ads isn’t part of the work. If links are what keeps your pages behind the competitors above them, book a 15-minute call with a list of who ranks there.