Before you invest in backlinks

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. Before you spend anything on backlinks, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Technical fixes remove obstacles; content earns the position. Both are needed and they are not interchangeable. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• A handful of relevant links beats hundreds of irrelevant ones
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

Common failure modes

Bought links are a risk that eventually gets priced in. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

Being genuinely useful is still the most durable link strategy. There is a version of this that is over-engineered, and it is worth avoiding. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

How to tell if yours is fine

Search work compounds slowly, which is why it gets abandoned about two months before it would have paid off. Three things worth confirming about backlinks before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• A handful of relevant links beats hundreds of irrelevant ones — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.