Service
Link building: mentions from sites your customers already trust, listed in the report by URL
Link building, as we do it, is earning mentions and links from sites Google already trusts in your sector: the trade body that lists its members, the manufacturer whose installers or stockists are named on its site, the directory your customers actually open, the local press when there is a story, and the suppliers and partners who will name you because you are real. Two or three a month from month two on the Growth tier at £599 a month, each one listed in the monthly report with its URL. We do not buy links, sell link packages or run guest-post schemes, and this page says why in the plainest terms we can find.
What counts
Six kinds of mention worth having, and how each is earned
The test for every one is the same: would a customer of yours plausibly arrive from it? A link that passes that test is one Google trusts too, because Google's systems are built to reward the links people actually follow.
| Source | Why Google trusts it | How it is earned |
|---|---|---|
| Trade bodies and registers | A membership list is a checkable claim about a real business, published by a body with its own reputation | Join, or make sure the listing you already pay for links to the right page with the right name and address |
| Manufacturer and supplier lists | An installer, stockist or partner list is a supplier vouching for you in public | Ask. Most suppliers have a page for it and most businesses have never been listed |
| Directories people use | Not the two hundred that exist; the two or three your customers open, which Google can tell from how people use them | A complete listing with the same name, address, phone and hours as the profile, and a link to the service page |
| Local and trade press | A newspaper or a trade title is an editor choosing to mention you | A real story, offered when there is one: a new service, a job that is unusual, an opinion on something in the trade |
| Suppliers, partners and clients | A firm you work with naming you on its site is the most natural link there is | Ask the ones who would say yes, and offer the same in return only where it is true |
| The Google Business Profile | Not a link in the classic sense, but the single most trusted statement of who and where you are | Built and kept current on every tier, as the local SEO page describes |
What we will not do
Five things sold as link building that we refuse
Bought links. Any link paid for to pass ranking value is a link scheme under Google's spam policies. It is detectable, and the pattern we have cleaned up after most often: a site that ranked, bought a package, and lost its positions in a week.
Guest-post packages. An article nobody asked for, on a site that exists to host articles nobody asked for, with a link in the third paragraph. The same policy, with more words.
Private blog networks. Sites owned by the seller, linking to whoever pays this month. When the network is caught, every site it linked to is caught with it.
Directory submission by the hundred. Two hundred listings on directories nobody opens do nothing, and inconsistent details across them damage the local signals the profile depends on.
Reciprocal link rings. You link to me, I link to you, and twenty others do the same. Google names this pattern in its policy on link spam.
How it is reported
Every mention with its URL, and the quarterly count
Each month's report lists the mentions earned that month by URL, so the claim is checkable in a browser. Each quarter, the referring domains pointing at the site are counted and compared with the quarter before, which is the only honest measure of authority work: not a score from a tool, but the number of real sites that name you and whether it is going up.
What the report does not contain is a “domain authority” figure. Those are third-party estimates, not Google's, and they move for reasons that have nothing to do with your business. The guide on what a monthly report should show explains what we read instead.
Order of work
Why links come third, never first
A mention points at a page. If the page is not indexed, or takes eleven seconds to load, or says the same thing as five other pages on the site, the mention points at nothing worth having. So on every account the technical pass comes first, the pages written from your query data come second, and the mentions start in month two, pointing at pages that deserve them.
How many you need depends on the three sites above you, and that is a question the free check answers for your market: whether they are on the trade body you are not, listed by the supplier you are not, and named by the directory you are missing from. Usually the gap is smaller than the link sellers say and closer than the business thinks.
Who does it
The same person who writes the pages and reads the data
Asking a supplier to list you, writing to a trade title, or completing a trade body profile properly is not outsourced, because each one needs someone who knows what the business does and which page the link should point at. That is Daniel Stoychev, on every account, as the about page says. The proof that the order of work holds is on the results page, where none of the five accounts bought a single link.
Related
Where link building fits
SEO content
The pages the mentions point at, written from query data.
Local SEO
The profile and the registers, which is the authority work on the Local tier.
Pricing
Mentions are on Growth and Multi-area; what each tier includes.
Free audit and quote
Send the site; the check says where the three above you are listed and you are not.
Questions about link building
Do you buy links?
No, at any price, from anyone. A package of links from sites nobody reads is a link scheme under Google's spam policies. It is the most common cause of a rankings collapse we have cleaned up after, and the disavow work afterwards produces nothing new. If a company offers you two hundred links for a fixed fee, that is what you are buying.
How many links a month do we get?
Two or three mentions a month from month two on the Growth tier, and two or three per product line on Multi-area. On Local the authority work is the profile and the registers: the trade body, the supplier's list, the directories your customers use. Each mention appears in the report with its URL, so the count is yours to check.
Is this digital PR?
It overlaps with the honest part of it. A story worth covering, offered to the local paper or the trade press, is something we do when there is a story. What we do not do is manufacture surveys or stunts to earn links, because that is content nobody wanted, written to be linked, and it is not what a business of your size needs first.
How do you judge whether a link is worth having?
One question: would a customer of yours plausibly arrive from it? A listing on the trade body they check, the manufacturer's installer list, the directory they actually open, the local paper. If the answer is no, the link is either useless or a risk, and we leave it.
Can we get link building without the retainer?
Not as a separate product. Mentions only help a site that is indexed, fast and has pages worth linking to, so they come after the technical pass and the first pages on every account. Selling them on their own would be selling the last step without the first two.
Find out where the three sites above you are listed and you are not
Send the address and your sector. The free check looks at what those three sites have that yours does not, including the mentions, and comes back within one working day with a quote from the price list.