Link-Building Costs

Link-building cost depends on the method. Time, content, prospecting, publisher fees, tooling and management all contribute to total cost.

Key points

• Internal labor
• Prospecting tools
• Content production
• Publisher fees where applicable
• Agency or service fees
• Reporting and QA

Build a repeatable process

Document how opportunities are found, screened, approved and reviewed after publication.

Keep quality multidimensional

Combine relevance, editorial quality, visibility, placement context and business fit rather than optimizing for one metric.

Know when to use a marketplace

Marketplaces can be useful when sourcing volume becomes the bottleneck, especially if your team already has a strong vetting process.

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