Link building services: do it yourself, use a marketplace, or hire an agency?

There are three ways to get links: do the outreach yourself, buy them on a marketplace, or hire a link building service to do it for you. We run both a marketplace and an agency, so here’s an honest take on when each one makes sense.

	Do it yourself	Marketplace	Link building service
Cost per link	Your time	€50–€500 per link	€150–€1,000+ per link or a monthly retainer
Control	Full	You pick every site	The agency picks, you approve
Effort	High: prospecting, pitching, follow-up	Low: choose, brief, approve	Very low
Speed	Slow	Days per link	Weeks to set up, then steady
Best for	Small sites with time and patience	Teams that know what they want	Brands that want strategy and scale

When to do it yourself

If you have more time than budget, outreach yourself is the cheapest way and teaches you a lot. Expect a reply rate in the single digits and plan for weeks of work per handful of good links. Our guide to link building strategies is a good start.

When a marketplace makes sense

When you know which kind of sites you need and want to choose them yourself, without weeks of emailing. You see the site, the metrics and the price before you order, and on Linkbuilding.com the publisher is only paid once the link is checked.

When to hire a link building service

When links are part of a bigger plan: a competitive market, an international launch, digital PR, or a site that needs a careful anchor text and link profile strategy. A good agency does the research you’d otherwise skip, and is accountable for results over months, not per link.

Our own agency, Seeders, does exactly that for brands in Europe and beyond. Plenty of our clients use both: the agency for strategy and digital PR, the marketplace for extra links they pick themselves.

What to ask any link building service

• Can I see the exact sites before you place a link?
• Who owns those sites, and how do you know?
• Are the links dofollow, and what happens if one is removed?
• Do you use PBNs or link exchanges? (The right answer is no.)
• How do you report: by URL, with dates, or as a monthly “number of links”?