What Are Premium Link Building Services?

Want the highest-quality link placements to scale your business website? This article will show you how to build them.

What Are Premium Links?

Definition

To help you best understand premium links, I’ll start with a quick preview of link building results.

Assuming you get quality links and your site is healthy, your page will take at least 61 days to be on the first page of Google search results — Ahrefs. FYI: this happens only 5.7% of the time.

In other words, most pages (94.3%) take a year to be on the top pages of search results pages.

Sustaining your site’s ranking is another story.

In another research, Semrush studied 28K domains that appeared in the top 100 search results for 13 months; only 4.2% got to and retained the top 10 spots.

So, what do the top-10 retainers have that others don’t?

Premium links; They make all the difference.

In essence, premium links are the highest-quality backlinks. You get them only from the top link building strategies and REAL websites.

More importantly, premium backlinks yield results in 2-4 weeks.

What Premium, High-Quality Links Are Not

PBN Links

Backlinks from PBNs (Private Blog Networks) are in no way premium backlinks. They are not even high-quality links.

Worse case: PBNs are shady and could lead to penalties if used consistently. How so?

• PBNs, like the name, are built privately on aged domains to funnel backlinks to selected websites. This manipulates search engine bots into thinking that the target page is authoritative.

• As a result, Google and other search engines frown on manipulative link building techniques like PBNs.

Spam Links

Unlike in PBN, spam links are not sent to your site but to competitors’. But to what ends?

The aim of this link building strategy is not to aid visibility. In contrast, it is to send seemingly toxic links “intentionally” to cripple the rankings of a competing page.

You’ll find lazy freelancers selling these types of backlinks on marketplaces. They call it all sorts of weird names like:

• SEO attack
• SEO blast
• Beat your competitor
• Crush the competition
• Negative SEO links

From experience, I can say boldly that these “sneak attacks” don’t do anything. Spam links are not only an unsustainable link building method, they are futile 100%.

No one achieves link building and SEO success by focusing too much on competitors. Yes, you study what they are doing. But you do better in a unique way to succeed. That is what premium link building gets results.

Besides, you risk significant penalties if discovered. Your website could be removed altogether from search results.

Link Building Service for Increasing AS/DA/DR Scores

For a start, AS (Authority Score), DA (Domain Authority), and DR (Domain Rating) are scores awarded to websites by SEO tools (Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs, in that order). They are not Google’s standards (or any other search engine) or ranking factors.

Nevertheless, ranking positions correlate with domain ratings — Backlinko.

So, what am I saying?

Good DR scores are good. And it will naturally come if you focus on building quality content and links. Not the other way around.

DA services don’t go about the process naturally. They are only tweaking the scores. They doesn’t won’t result in any significant change in rankings. Funnily enough, lower DR sites will outrank your seemingly high DR scores if they build naturally and consistently.

Further reading: 5 Natural Ways to Increase Your Domain Authority

INCREDIBLY Cheap Links

Don’t get me wrong; there are affordable premium links.

At SERPReach, for example, I help businesses and individuals build high-quality backlinks via niche edits and guest posting for as low as $78 (assuming you’re getting 1 per the two services).

Even at that, premium links don’t come cheap. They are not what you find in marketplaces. Or the cheap stuff freelancers quote at questionable prices.

Look at these quotes, for example:

Who will build 50 white hat links for $25?

When you do the breakdown, that will be 5 cents for a supposed premium link with 100% manual outreach. Even “less important” web 2.0 backlinks (on the right) sell for $1 per link.

In what world are web 2.0s more strenuous than white hat foundational backlinks?

Frankly, such rates are too “good” to be true.

From practical experience, such links are PBN backlinks. Manual outreach for a link is too much work and is worth more than $25. Now, you’ll do that 50 times for $25?

That is off and DEFINITELY not premium links.

Tiered Links

Tired backlinks can often come off as manipulated links that violate link spam policies. How?

Tiered link building means to build backlinks to the pages linking to your site — and to send more links to even the former.

The idea is to drip more link juice from all the interconnected pages to your money site.

The issue, however, is that tiered link building is built on “tier 1” backlinks being better than “tier 2,” and that the latter is better than “tier 3.”

Such a foundation is already against how premium links work. Here, all links are high-quality from authoritative sources. Otherwise, you won’t see sustained search results page rankings.

Do You Need Premium SEO Link Building Services?

While premium backlinks work, they are time-consuming and require having a relationship with link pages to build. You might not have the time for all that.

Besides, these link types (like other link building techniques ) work best in scale. You must hire outreach specialists, content writers, and on-page & link building experts.

On the other hand, you could subscribe to link building services instead. When you do, you’ll enjoy all the benefits of high-quality backlinks without the usual stress at reasonable prices.

Either way, yes — you need premium backlinklink building.

But before you hire any link builder for help, you should know how premium backlink building is done. I’ve compiled the top techniques below. Take a look.

10 Ways to Build Premium, High-Quality Links

What to expect:

I’ll cover the following subtexts for each of the strategies below:

• What the technique is
• How it works
• The pricing
• The pros & cons

That said, let’s dive in.

Niche Edits

Link insertions (niche edits) mean placing backlinks into existing content. Of course, it would only make sense that such content ranks high on search results and is published on highly authoritative sites.

In such a case, your backlink will be a premium link.

📌 So, how does this work?

The idea behind niche edits is the evident traffic and sales prospects.

For example, imagine placing an inbound link on this post to your site:

Let’s do a quick math:

• The article is ranking on page 1 with 41K traffic.
• Say 5% of the traffic (= 2050 organic traffic monthly) visited your website. If 2% of that figure is converted, you’ll get 41 leads. And that’s on the lowest estimate. 

Isn’t that amazing?

Such results are why niche edits stand out and are premium links.

Read more on how to build niche edits from scratch…

📌 What about pricing?

Ahrefs reached out to 450 websites across 9 niches; they found that the average price for a niche edit is $361.44.

Of course, the average varies depending on the target website.

📌 Pros

• There is assured link juice since niche edits are placed on aged posts. You can even predict the impact of that — as I did in the example about “website design.”
• You don’t have to write any article from scratch. You only need to do rough content & keyword research and launch your outreach campaign.

📌 Cons

• Niche edits can be rigid. You might not be able to control the position of the placement of the anchor text.
• The seeming “best” posts might not accept link insertions. 

Further reading: Do Curated Link Insertion Services Work?

Guest Posting

This strategy involves writing on other sites — but relevant websites. And, of course, guest blogging (same as guest posting) works best when the other websites are related to your niche.

Either way, the idea is to provide quality content as proof of your expertise, leverage the referral traffic and authority of the other websites, and build relationships with key actors in your niche.

Note: guest post backlinks are only premium links if the linking page is a high-authority website.

📌 So, how does this work?

• First, find a high-authority website that accepts guest submissions
• Read their submission guidelines page. It should look like this:

• Pitch your idea to the site owners
• If the idea is accepted, start writing.

If you don’t want to do any of the 4 steps, subscribe to guest blogging services. In my opinion, outsourcing is both energy and time-efficient.

📌 What about pricing?

Ahrefs reached out to 180 websites across 9 niches; they found that the average price for building links via guest post is $77.80.

Of course, that figure doesn’t consider the cost of writing. Otherwise, you’d spend roughly $200 per premium guest post backlinks.

📌 Pros

• Unlike in niche edits, guest posts offer more flexibility. You can decide what anchor texts to use and where.
• Guest posts are more affordable than niche edits.

Why am I comparing niche edits and guest posts?

Both are contextual link building strategies.

📌 Cons

• Several PBN link sellers are faking as premium guest blogging services.
• The high authority sites rarely accept guest submissions. Hence, premium links via this strategy can be expensive.

Blogger Outreach

Blogger outreach is mostly about outreach. In fact, I’d say it’s more of “outreach link building” than “contextual link building.”

Either way, the idea of this link building strategy is built around marketing already-written articles to bloggers.

In some cases, blogger outreach also involve a bit of broken link building. How?

You can make custom requests to target only broken links.

📌 So, how does this work?

• Blogger outreach is 100% manual. Typically, it works this way:
• Audit the content of your website — based on intent and marketing potential
• Draw a list of the preferred content
• Now, identify bloggers that will naturally link your content.
• Find the contact details of the bloggers > pitch > follow up

Blogger outreach can get really strenuous. Fortunately, you can outsource it to link building companies.

📌 What about pricing?

Unfortunately, there is no recent study on this.

Nevertheless, I’ll provide an estimate based on 3 blogger outreach services. The target is a DR 40 site: 

• Starting with our package at SERPReach: $99.

• Outreach Monks: $179 or $199. Let me explain the reason for the price differences.

Outreach Monks have different packages for Ahrefs, Semrush, and Moz fans. Hence, the price differences.

• The HOTH: $300 — this includes the cost of writing the content.

📌 Pros

• Getting your link on specific blogs or sites might be almost impossible. Fortunately, you can navigate such hurdles with blogger outreach since the strategy will be customized to your needs.
• Blogger outreach is a natural link building method. In other words, it is safe and SEO-friendly. But don’t spam prospects’ email addresses.

📌 Cons

• Frankly, blogger outreach can be expensive. You have already written the guest post, yet you’d pay almost the same as “guest post  + outreach.”
• Your guest posts might end up in PBNs and get your site penalized. Ask for the target site details and confirm if they are genuine to avoid scams.

Skyscraper Link Building

The term was coined in 2015 by Brian Dean (founder of Backlinko). It means finding the best-performing articles in your niche and creating something better.

Ultimately, the aim is to convince the linking sites (to the said content) that your content is better.

📌 So, how does this work?

Here is how Brian explains the skyscraper link building technique:

My opinion:

Skyscraper technique is only a fancy term for competitor backlink analysis. You’re practically stealing the backlinks of your competitors.

But prioritize what links to steal. Otherwise, you’d be left with spammy backlinks instead of the premium kinds.

In other words, this strategy involves finding the top-ranking articles for a desired keyword, studying them, and then creating something better.

📌 What about pricing?

Often, the skyscraper link building technique is infused with content research.

Otherwise (if you want the service specifically with outreach included), you might pay up to $2500 for a skyscraper link building campaign.

📌 Pros

• This strategy is based on 2 of the known ranking factors (quality content and inbound links). In other words, it is natural and safe.
• The link building aspect aside, this technique is crucial for content research. With it, you can find loopholes in existing articles on a given topic and use such to attain topical authority.

📌 Cons

• This strategy is fast losing relevance. SEOs tend to be lazy with their pitch. Some will even send the exact sample email Brian used.

• SEOs practicing the skyscraper technique focus on increasing word count instead of quality. Don’t fall into that category.

Content Marketing

This link building technique is similar to guest blogging. The only difference is that the “blogging” will be on your own website.

The market part is launching outreach campaigns for the published content.

📌 So, how does this work?

This strategy is in two parts:

• Create content — for this part, you will need keyword research, content strategy, and optimization. Otherwise, your articles won’t fulfill their aims (traffic and sales).
• Marketing — outside the internal links, you won’t have backlinks pointing to your page. But all that can change with outreach campaigns.

📌 What about pricing?

DIY content marketing is affordable — depending on the scale of the project. How so?

You might only need to outsource the writing part or blogger outreach.

Either way, you might be looking at $200 (at least) for writing and marketing a post.

Note: that estimate is for a 1000-word blog post.

On the other hand, if you want to outsource the entire “content marketing,” hire a specialized content marketing agency. That might cost you at least $1-2K monthly for premium content and backlinks.

📌 Pros

• Content marketing is multi-faceted and flexible. More importantly, it is a natural link building technique. Because of that, SEOs widely use it to build high quality links.

• Backlinks aside, quality content aids conversion and brand awareness. 

📌 Cons

• Often, content marketing agencies focus too much on quantity over quality. Ensure you pick one that can offer both.

Infographic Link Building

Infographics are crucial elements of content marketing. As a strategy, they work so well. So much so that I dedicated a section to discuss them.

This cut-out infographic will provide more closure:

📌 So, how does this work?

This strategy works similarly to skyscraper link building. You can get it started in 5 steps:

• First, find a popular topic in your niche.
• Scrap the top 10 articles in search results for an idea summary
• Grab infographic templates on sites like Canva
• Edit the templates to include the ideas
• Launch outreach campaigns

Alternatively, you can hire an infographic design company. This will help your infographics stand out enough to earn premium backlinks.

Further reading: How to Build Infographic Links?

📌 What about pricing?

DIY infographic building is unsurprisingly cheap. But it can be time-consuming. If you don’t have design experience.

The workload can be more strenuous. In that case, you can hire a freelancer to design for you. That will cost around $20-100.

Note: the quote is only for design. You might need to get a blogger outreach service to promote the infographic.

On the other hand, full-service infographic companies are more expensive. Here is a quick overview:

• Design and research only: up to $256

• Design, research, and writing: at least $3K

📌 Pros

• Visual content like infographics is appealing. It works when written articles fail.

📌 Cons

• Infographic link building is saturated. Only unique designs and a well-planned outreach campaign to make it work.

HARO Link Building

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a platform where journalists, bloggers, and other writers find original quotes for their articles. The source (of the quotes) are businesses and experts like you looking for premium backlinks.

The best part: using HARO as a source is free.

📌 So, how does this work?

HARO works in 3 basic steps:

• Register as a source

• Reply to a desired query

• If your pitch is successful, you’ll get a premium backlink from an authority site.

Further reading: How to Build HARO Links

📌 What about pricing?

HARO is free.

But the freemium plan is limited. You might never get replied to because of the competition.

To navigate the competition, try one of HARO’s paid plans ($14 – 149). With it, you can set keyword alerts and get query updates before other sources.

📌 Pros

• HARO has some of the best premium editorial links. And it is cheap too. For as little as $19, you can access the standard tools to get on top authority publications like Entrepreneur, Forbes, and The New York Times.
• Building links with HARO is 100% safe.

📌 Cons

• To use HARO for scale link building, you need a dedicated team. Otherwise, you’d get exhausted finding and pitching queries.

Using a PR Agency

HARO, while free, has limitations. Those limitations are what you can plug with PR agencies.

More importantly, the chances of link placement on target sites are high because of the relationship between PR pros and journalists.

📌 So, how does this work?

With your help, a PR link building agency will write a newsworthy story about your product, service, or case study. The agency will then get the news on top publications. In turn, you’ll get premium links.

Also read: How to Build Press Release Backlinks.

📌 What about pricing?

The price ranges from $200 (DIY) to $15K (and above for monthly retainers with PR agencies)

📌 Pros

• When successful, PR campaigns yield outstanding premium backlinks. And since you’re outsourcing the work, you won’t worry about pitching troubles. You’ll only reap the benefits.
• Instead of building relationships with journalists from scratch, you can leverage the network of PR pros.

📌 Cons

• Often, the links from PR agencies will point to your homepage. You can hardly funnel the juice to commercial pages or internal pages like a blog post.

Link Packs

These are similar to tiered link building. The only difference is that there are no tiers/layers — just the bundle of backlinks.

Hence, the name “link packs” or “link building packages.”

Some agencies also call “link packs” managed link services.

📌 So, how does this work?

There is no fixed standard to build links in packs. You can decide how many links you want and what type. Inform the link building company.

Nonetheless, you can expect a baseline of X, Y, and Z links.

Here is an example of a link building package:

• 2 niche edits
• 3 HARO/PR links
• 4 guest post links

Ultimately, I recommend you choose the plan based on the result of an SEO audit. Let your link builders know this also.

Either way, the idea is to get a bundle of premium links at a go to boost your content performance on search results.

📌 What about pricing?

Frankly, there is no fixed pricing for managed link services. The quote will depend on your search rankings and backlink profile.

Regardless, prepare for at least $500.

📌 Pros

• Link packs are convenient and transparent. The entire process is outsourced to link building agencies, and you will know what you’ll get from the start.
• Link packs are cheaper than if you get each of the units separately.

📌 Cons

• Managed services can come off as buying backlinks. That might flag your premium links as “spammy links.”

Using an SEO Agency

Unlike PR agencies, most SEO agencies handle everything about your SEO needs — from technical and on-page to link building strategies and other SEO services.

If you are a newbie to digital marketing and search engine optimization, this option is the best for you.

📌 So, how does this work?

You reach out with your goals. The agency will then plan your SEO strategy from web design, content writing & optimization to link building.

📌 What about pricing?

 Set aside $1K (at least) monthly to hire a quality agency that will fetch you premium links.

📌 Pros

• Hiring an SEO agency removes the stress of link building and digital marketing. The only thing you’ll do is read reports and occasional project review meetings.

📌 Cons

• Often, only a fraction of your money will go into link building. If you don’t want that, specify your needs in the agreement. This way, the agency will send your project to in-house link building specialists.
• Most SEOs only explore white label link building services. The back and forth might delay your campaigns.

Verdict: Which of the 10 Strategies Can You Trust?

Here is a quick recap of link building strategies:

1. Niche edits
2. Guest posting
3. Blogger outreach
4. Skyscraper link building
5. Content marketing
6. Infographic link building
7. HARO link building
8. Using a PR agency
9. Link packs
10. Using an SEO agency

So, which of the lots is the best?

There are no best link building services. You can use any of the strategies to get high-authority backlinks.

But your needs (revealed by SEO audit) will ultimately determine which of the lots fit you.

That said, niche edits offer quick results without compromising quality or endangering your site. I use it here at SERPReach to increase clients’ rankings, traffic, and revenue.

Want similar results for your money site?

Let’s talk!

Related article: What Are High Authority Backlinks?