Pick your case
Buy relevant backlinks: which of three situations are you?
Local owners tend to land in one of three spots. Each calls for a different first move, and in one of them the right move is not to buy anything yet.
Read the three and pick one
Be honest about the one that sounds most like you. You can change your mind after the next four to eight weeks.
A. Brand new, almost no mentions
Your site is a few months old, and a search for your own name finds a profile and little else. Fix the basics and add two or three links at most.
B. Established, but stuck on page two
You have reviews, a verified profile and good service pages, and rivals still sit above you. Targeted links are the textbook move here.
C. Several towns or branches
You serve three towns and one page tries to cover them all. Fix structure first, then spread a small link budget across the pages that matter.
Our pick for each
The first order, case by case
A should spend nothing on links this month. B should buy two to five placements aimed at one page. C should restructure before buying, then treat each town like a separate small campaign.
- A: profile, reviews, one real page per service
- B: two to five relevant placements, then wait
- C: one page per town, links only for the strongest
If you are in case B, here is the afternoon
- 1
Choose the one stalled page
Open Search Console and find the service page with the most impressions and the lowest clicks. That is your target.
- 2
Count what three rivals have
Use a checker such as Ahrefs or Semrush to see how many referring domains the pages above you have. You need a rough gap, not a spreadsheet.
- 3
Filter donors in the marketplace
Set niche and language, a modest traffic floor, and a price ceiling. Read each site before adding the row.
- 4
Order two or three, then stop
The article is written automatically with one clean link to your page, or you can supply your own text. Check the live URL in your ordered links.
- 5
Wait before deciding
Give it four to eight weeks. Changes in impressions come first, clicks later, if at all.
What 'relevant' means for a local business
Relevant means a reader of that page could plausibly need your service. A home-repair blog fits a plumber, and a gaming site does not, even if its numbers look lovely.
Region adds a second kind of relevance. A site talking about your county or country is a bonus, though the marketplace filters by niche and language rather than by city, so you judge that by reading.
Price tells you little here. A $4 link on a tidy, on-topic blog can beat a $200 link on a site that covers everything.
If you want a worked example of case B with prices, see the $100 plan. Lawyers in case B should also read the guide for law firms, since the rules there are stricter.
Google's link spam update of December 2022 and the SpamBrain system it uses are the reasons we keep the first order small. Quality of fit, not volume, is the safe habit. Small orders also let you learn which sites your customers actually read, which makes the second order smarter than the first. Keep notes.
Cheap is not a reason and expensive is not a reason. Fit is the reason, and you can check fit by opening the page for thirty seconds.