Buying backlinks: what it fixes, what it costs and what we do instead
Buying links produces a measurable effect and leaves you with a fragile position, because the value you acquire depends on a practice Google treats as manipulation. We do not buy links for our clients. What we do instead comes down to two moves: making pages worth citing, and working to be named in the comparisons other people write.
- Google's spam policies treat exchanging links for payment as manipulation, whatever the price paid.
- Denying that paid links have any effect would be false. A quality placement does produce one, and that is what makes the subject hard to settle.
- A toxicity score produced by a tool is not a penalty. Mass disavowal does more harm than good in most situations.
- On commercial queries, what models cite most are comparison rankings, and in professional services those rankings are written by third parties in 80.9% of cases.
- The practical consequence is not to buy more links: it is to be present in other people's comparisons.
On this page
Link buying
Link buying means paying to obtain a link pointing to your site from another site, with the aim of improving your ranking in search engines. The transaction can take several forms: a direct payment, an exchange of goods or services, an article written and placed for a fee, or a monthly subscription with a vendor who delivers an agreed number of links. What defines the practice in Google's eyes is the ranking intent attached to the payment, not the amount or the format.
What Google says exactly
The Search spam policies treat exchanging links for payment as a form of manipulation. The text targets buying as well as selling, it covers money, goods and services, and it includes articles written for the purpose of placing a link.
Two details matter, because they are often reported wrong. First: the policy says nothing about the quality of the linking site. A paid link on a respected media outlet falls under the same text as a paid link on a directory with no readers. Second: the sanction provided for is not necessarily a manual action. The most common case is quieter, and it is simply that the link stops counting.
On June 5, 2026, Google also published a page on using third-party services and tools for SEO. It contains one sentence worth remembering before signing anything: Google does not evaluate third-party services, and you should be wary of anyone who claims otherwise. The page explicitly covers so-called AEO or GEO offers in addition to classic SEO offers.
No vendor is approved, certified or recommended by Google for SEO. A statement of that kind in a proposal is inaccurate, and it can be checked in one minute against the official documentation.
The real grey zone, and the four checks that settle it
There is a difference in kind between paying a directory for a hundred links and paying a trade publication for a sponsored article its readers will actually read. The second transaction is advertising, an old and legitimate practice. What separates it from the first has nothing to do with price: the two transactions can cost the same.
Four checks are enough to know which side a proposal falls on. They can be done in fifteen minutes, with no paid tool.
Does the site have an audience of its own
A newsletter with subscribers, a social feed people follow, articles that draw comments, direct traffic. A site whose visits all come from search engines, and whose name nobody knows, lives off reselling links.
Is the publication identified as sponsored
A visible mention, and a link carrying the attribute that signals the paid nature of the relationship. A media outlet that hides this information is selling a link rather than an audience.
Would the content stand on its own without the link
If the article exists only to carry a link to you, its readers will see that too. Content worth reading brings visits on top of the signal.
Is the rate card organized around a tool's metric
A rate presented according to a tool vendor's authority score describes a link market, not an audience market. A media outlet sells its readership, not a score.
A placement that passes all four checks remains an advertising expense, to be evaluated as one: how many people in your market will read it, and what each contact costs you. A placement that fails two or more is link buying, whatever name it goes by.
The toxicity score, and why mass disavowal turns against you
A report announcing that 35% of your inbound links are toxic triggers a predictable reaction. That reaction rests on a confusion, and it is worth clearing up.
Toxicity is a score calculated by a tool vendor, using its own method. It does not exist at Google, it corresponds to no penalty, and two different tools do not give the same score for the same profile. A link classified as toxic is a link a statistical model finds unusual: a low-quality page, a directory, a site in another language, an old business listing site.
Google has written for years that its systems ignore the great majority of low-quality links rather than sanctioning the site that receives them. Nobody can hurt your ranking by pointing dubious links at your site, and that is precisely why the disavow tool has lost much of its usefulness.
Mass disavowal, on the other hand, has a real cost. It removes links that counted from the calculation, it is hard to undo, and it uses up a budget that would have produced results elsewhere. The rule we apply is simple: we disavow only when a manual action has been notified in Search Console, or when there is a documented and acknowledged history of link buying.
A free audit that opens with a percentage of toxic links and offers a cleanup package is selling the solution to the problem it has just created. The right first question is whether a manual action appears in Search Console. In the vast majority of cases, none does.
The real math, in dollars
The Quebec market is easy to read. A decent editorial link, on a site with a real audience and in the right sector, generally trades at $300 to $1,000 apiece. Offers well below that come from networks of sites built for the purpose.
The next question is volume, and it is the one that settles the debate. A single link moves nothing measurable on a competitive query. It takes a steady flow over several quarters to see an effect, which turns a one-time expense into a subscription.
Let us compare what the same amount produces elsewhere, over one year.
| The same annual budget | What it buys | What you are left with at the end |
|---|---|---|
| In paid links | A flow of links on third-party sites | Links that can stop counting, on pages you do not control |
| In content and service pages | Pages that answer your commercial queries | Assets that belong to you and keep working |
| In search advertising | Visits bought on your queries | Inquiries received during the period, and nothing after |
The third case deserves a mention, because it is often forgotten in this debate. On a modest budget, search advertising brings inquiries right away while SEO takes hold, whereas a link budget brings neither for several quarters. How to split between the two is covered in our analysis of the marketing plan and its budget.
What generative models change in this math
A recent piece of data shifts the subject. It comes from an analysis of 1,056,727 citations published in March 2026, across 75,000 answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Perplexity.
On commercial queries, the ones where a person compares options before buying, 40.86% of cited sources are comparison rankings: articles that rank several vendors. And in professional services, among the thousand most cited URLs, 80.9% of those rankings are written by third parties rather than by the companies that appear in them.
The practical consequence is clear, and it does not point toward link building. Publishing your own ranking where you place yourself first carries little weight, since four citations out of five go to independent comparisons. Buying a link carries even less, because the link does not get you into a third party's text. What moves the needle is being named in the comparisons other people are already writing.
A second piece of data points the same way. In the survey of 23 citation factors published in May 2026, brand mentions across the web correlate with citations at 0.664, against 0.218 for inbound links. The gap is a factor of three, in favour of being named rather than being linked.
The method for getting into those comparisons is detailed in our analysis of third-party mentions and citations by models.
What we do instead
Three workstreams replace the link budget, in this order, because each one makes the next more effective.
Make your pages citable
A piece of data only you have, a real case with numbers, a position backed by arguments. That is what gets a third party to cite you without your having to ask.
Get into the comparisons that already exist
Find the rankings in your category, understand their inclusion criteria and do the outreach. This is relationship work, not purchasing.
Keep non-editorial sources up to date
Business listings, professional directories, industry associations, public data. Models rely on them to understand who you are, and these sources can be corrected with no media budget.
Linking between your own pages is part of the same work, and it is the only link lever entirely under your control. It is covered in our analysis of internal linking. What Google actually evaluates when it comes to authority is detailed in our analysis of the E-E-A-T criteria.
The three questions, with the default answer
When a proposal includes a link budget, three questions are enough. The default answer, when even one of them has no clear answer, is not to commit the spend.
- Does the linking site have an audience of its own: a newsletter, a readership, traffic that does not come from search engines.
- Would the same amount, put into content or advertising, produce more: at equal budget, over twelve months, counting what you are left with at the end.
- What happens if these links stop counting: if the answer is that the ranking collapses, the position is fragile by construction.
A proposal that presents a link budget as a separate, recurring line, without naming the target sites or their audience, is selling a volume. One that names three publications in your sector and explains why their readers are your buyers is selling an audience.
Evaluating a proposal that contains a link building line, with the numbers in hand, is part of what we cover in a 90-minute consultation.
On an engagement, we start by listing what already points to the site and by checking one thing in Search Console: whether or not a manual action is present. That check takes two minutes and it decides everything else. Then we look at where the existing links come from, because a site that has already been cited by a trade publication has an open door nobody has pushed. What stays in-house is the list of associations, suppliers, clients and publications in your sector with whom you already have a relationship: it is the raw material of all mention work, and nobody on the outside has it.
Checks before committing a link budget
A full reading of an agency proposal is detailed in our analysis of how to read a proposal. The criteria for choosing an SEO vendor are in choosing an SEO agency in Quebec. What Google updates actually do to link profiles is covered in our analysis of Google's algorithms.
Building authority that does not depend on a link budget is at the heart of the Attract customers with SEO and AI goal.
Already running a marketing team? See how we plug in as reinforcement on organic search.
Frequently asked questions about buying links
Does Google penalize buying links?
Its spam policies treat exchanging links for payment as manipulation, which exposes you to a manual action. The most frequent case is quieter, however: the link simply stops counting. The spend is then lost without any notification to warn you.
My agency is proposing a monthly backlink budget. Is that normal?
It is common in the Quebec market, in a range of $300 to $1,000 per link. What decides is not the presence of the line but its content: the target sites must be named and have an audience that does not come only from search engines. A budget expressed as a number of links rather than as named publications describes a volume to deliver.
How do I know if my backlinks are toxic?
Toxicity is a score calculated by a tool vendor, with its own method. It corresponds to no sanction at Google. The only check that matters is done in Search Console, in the manual actions section. With no notification, there is no penalty to fix.
Should you disavow low-quality links?
In most cases, no. Google's systems ignore the majority of low-quality links rather than sanctioning the site that receives them. Disavowal is justified when a manual action has been notified, or when there is a documented and acknowledged history of link buying.
Do links still count for AI answers?
Less than mentions. In the survey of citation factors published in May 2026, brand mentions across the web correlate with citations at 0.664, against 0.218 for inbound links. Being named weighs about three times more than being linked.
What should you do instead of a link budget?
Three workstreams, in order: make your pages citable with a piece of data or a case only you have, get into the independent comparisons in your category, and keep non-editorial sources such as business listings and industry directories up to date. None of the three requires buying a link.
- Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search, accessed September 2026.
- Google Search Central, using third-party SEO services and tools, updated June 5, 2026.
- Tom Wells for Peec AI, The content types most cited by LLMs, 1,056,727 citations across 75,000 answers, March 2026.
- Zyppy, AI citation ranking factors, 23 factors scored, May 7, 2026.
Geneviève puts the strategy for your engagement into action. She leads all our web development projects: Shopify, WordPress and the new ways of building a site with AI. She manages our team of developers and translates your business needs into technical language. She runs your organic search (SEO), your visibility in AI answers (GEO) and your site's conversion rate optimization (CRO). Her work is at the heart of three goals: Attract customers with SEO and AI, Improve your site's conversion, and Strengthen your visibility in AI answers. With Gabriel, she also builds the landing pages for your advertising campaigns. She writes mainly about SEO, AI visibility and web design.
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