Links remain one of the strongest signals Google has for deciding who deserves to rank, which is exactly why the market is flooded with ways to fake them. I do not buy placements on link farms, rent networks, or acquire anything a manual reviewer would frown at, because links that can be bought that cheaply are worth what they cost, and carry risk on top.
What works, durably, is earning citations: digital PR pieces journalists actually want, data and resources other sites reference, strategic SEO-PR alignment of the kind that helped place a bank at number one for its category term with an AI Overview citation. Slower, real, and it compounds instead of expiring.
How links get earned
- Link profile audit: what you have, what is toxic, what competitors hold that you do not
- Linkable asset strategy: the content on your site worth pointing at
- Digital PR outreach to relevant publications, not directories
- Unlinked brand mention reclamation, the cheapest links you will ever get
- Competitor gap analysis to prioritise the citations that move rankings