Every way to build links, charted by cost and risk.
Offpage Atlas is the reference for link building and off-page SEO: what each tactic costs, how likely it is to get a site penalised, what works in which industry, and which vendors deliver what they sell.
- 39 lessons
- 18 tactics rated for risk
- 10 industry playbooks
- 269 vendors tracked
What every tactic costs, and what it risks
Each bar is the typical price range for one link. The colour is the risk, from R1 inside Google's guidelines to R5.
- Link reclamationR1costs $0 to $50, risk R1
- Testimonials and partner linksR1costs $0, risk R1
- Local citationsR1costs $2 to $3.20 per citation, risk R1
- Unlinked mentionsR1costs $20 to $80, risk R1
- Broken links and resource pagesR1costs $100 to $300, risk R1
- Linkable assets and outreachR1costs $150 to $400, risk R1
- Digital PRR1costs $300 to $1,500, risk R1
- Journalist requestsR1costs About $400 with labour, risk R1
- Genuine guest postsR1 to R2costs $150 to $600 in labour, risk R1 to R2
- SponsorshipsR2costs $50 to $5,000, risk R2
- Link exchangesR2 to R3costs $0 to $150, risk R2 to R3
- Link marketplacesR3costs $60 to $500, risk R3
- Niche edits (link insertions)R3costs $179 average, $330 to $780 on quality sites, risk R3
- Paid guest postsR3costs $295 to $461 average, $1,100+ on quality sites, risk R3
- Expired domains and 301sR2 to R4costs $50 to $10,000 per domain, risk R2 to R4
- Parasite pagesR3 to R4costs $200 to $5,000+ per placement, risk R3 to R4
- Private blog networksR4costs $150 to $600 per site, plus upkeep, risk R4
- Public PBNs and automationR4 to R5costs Under $5, risk R4 to R5
Learn off-page SEO from the ground up
A curriculum in three levels. Every lesson opens with the short answer, then shows the evidence.
What is off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO is everything that happens away from your own website and still changes how search engines and AI assistants rank and describe it. Links are the largest part, but not the only one.
How search engines evaluate links
Not every link counts the same, and many count for nothing. Search engines weigh the authority of the linking site, how relevant it is, the anchor text and where the link sits on the page.
What is a backlink?
A backlink is a link on another website that points to a page on yours. Search engines read it as a vote and as a description of your page, but how much it counts depends on who links, where the link sits and what it says.
Link attributes: nofollow, sponsored and ugc
Nofollow, sponsored and ugc are labels a site adds to a link to tell search engines how to treat it. Google has read all three as hints since 2019, so a labelled link may or may not count.
Domain Authority vs Domain Rating: what authority metrics measure
Domain Rating, Domain Authority, Authority Score and Trust Flow are third-party estimates of how strong a site's backlinks are. Google uses none of them. They are useful for a first sort and easy to fake.
Do backlinks still matter?
Yes, but less than they did. Google says links are no longer a top-three factor, and Ahrefs' 2025 study still finds a 0.255 correlation between referring domains and rankings. Both statements are true at once.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable wording of a link. Google uses it as a core relevance signal, and heavy keyword anchors are also the classic sign of link spam. No safe ratio of anchor types has a primary source.
Brand mentions and citations
A brand mention is your name on another site, with or without a link. A citation is a listing of your business details in a directory. Both are off-page signals, and mentions are the factor that tracks AI visibility most closely.
What links cost in 2026
Prices from named studies, not from vendor sales pages.
| Benchmark | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average price SEOs call acceptable for one quality link | $509 | Editorial.link survey of 518 SEOs, March 2026 |
| Median sponsored article, direct from the publisher | $570 | ESBO analysis of 16,625 publisher quotes, September 2026 |
| Average link insertion (niche edit) | $179 | BuzzStream paid placement data, 2026 |
| Digital PR, per unique linking domain | $1,250 to $1,500 | BuzzStream benchmark, 2026 |
| Guest post sellers that pass a basic quality bar | 1.37% | BuzzStream analysis of 257,000 sites, 2026 |
Strategy by industry
A casino, a law firm and a software company need different links at different prices. Each playbook covers one market.
iGaming link building (casino and sportsbook)
Online gambling is one of the most link-dependent markets in search. Fewer publishers accept it, the ones that do know what the links are worth, and the gap between a sustainable profile and a disposable one is wider than anywhere else.
Ecommerce link building (category and product pages)
Online stores earn their money on category and product pages, which almost nobody links to by choice. Ecommerce link building is the work of getting authority to those pages through PR, partners and internal links, without paying for anchors that look bought.
SaaS link building (and B2B tech)
Software companies earn links with things other markets do not have, such as free tools, product data and integrations. Publishers are cheap and risk is low. The usual failure is building links to the blog and never moving that authority to the pages that sell.
Local link building (single and multi-location businesses)
Local link building is small in scale. A few dozen referring domains from real organisations in your town can be enough. Citations are the baseline, and local news, sponsorships and partners make the difference.
Link building for lawyers and law firms
Law firm link building combines local search with some of the most expensive keywords anywhere. Legal directories are the base, and local news, bar associations, sponsorships and data studies are what separate firms on page one.
Finance link building (loans, insurance and fintech)
Finance links are expensive, heavily scrutinised and often legally an advert. Data-led digital PR and useful tools win here. Sponsored articles that make product claims without compliance sign-off are the costliest mistake.
Affiliate site link building (review and comparison sites)
Affiliate and review sites were built on bought links with commercial anchors. The sites that survived Google's recent updates look different, with brand searches, real authors and links from people citing their tests. Links no longer rescue a site Google judges unhelpful.
Crypto link building (crypto, forex and trading)
Crypto and trading sites lean heavily on sponsored coverage, and much of it does little. Fewer than half of publishers accept the niche, crypto media charge premium rates, and paid articles are financial promotions in several markets.
Vendor reviews that say what they are based on
We track 269 marketplaces, agencies and tools. Our editor's picks are listed first with an editor's rating, and a test score is added only after we place real orders with a vendor.
Best forTeams buying sponsored articles in the Nordics and wider Europe who want content and publication in one price, with no subscription.
- Price from
- pay per link, prices not public
- Catalogue
- 80,000+ media outlets (vendor claim)
- Headquarters
- Denmark, with an office in Miami
Best forTeams in iGaming, sports betting, finance or crypto that want one supplier for managed outreach and self-service placements.
- Price from
- not public
- Platform catalogue
- 21,000 sites (vendor claim)
- Placements to date
- 50,000+ (vendor claim)
Best forAgencies that want to resell blogger outreach and niche edits under their own name, ordered by metric tier.
- Price from
- from $81 per placement
- Headquarters
- United Kingdom
- Model
- Productised service, pay per order
Best forCrypto, iGaming and adult brands that want a managed link building service from an agency that works only in sensitive niches.
- Price from
- not public
- Services
- Link building, digital PR and content
- Industries
- Crypto, iGaming, adult content
Best forTeams buying sponsored articles in several European languages who want one invoice, escrow and a long guarantee.
- Price from
- publisher price plus margin
- Catalogue
- 148,000+ websites, 384,000+ offers
- Languages
- 36
Best forSmall link building and digital PR teams that want contact history, templates and link monitoring in one place without an annual contract.
- Price from
- from $49 a month
- Product
- Outreach CRM for link building and digital PR
- Plans
- Starter $49, Growth $174, Professional $424 a month
The Offpage Playbook workshop
Six hours with your in-house team: strategy by industry, buying links safely, vetting publishers, anchors, governance and tracking. Built on real cases from competitive markets.