Short answer: look at the website, not the sales page. A link is only as useful as the site it sits on, and you can check most of what matters in about ten minutes per site. Here is a checklist you can use with any vendor, including us.
1. Does the topic fit your trade or your place?
Open the site and read the main pages. A site about home repair or your city fits a roofer. A site that publishes on every subject under the sun does not. Topic fit is the first test because it is the one most often missing from cheap link packs.
2. Is there a real business or publisher behind it?
Look for signs of a real operation: a named owner or team, a way to contact them, pages about real places, and content that someone has updated recently. A site with no contact details, no history and no connection to a real place deserves more questions.
3. Is the site indexed, and does it have real visitors?
Type the site's address into Google with the word site and a colon in front of it. If almost nothing appears, Google may not be indexing it. For traffic, a checking tool can show a rough estimate. Estimates are imperfect, so use them to rule out sites with none, not to rank sites with a little.
4. Does the authority range make sense?
Authority scores such as DR are third-party estimates, not Google measures. They are useful for rough sorting. We use a score of 30 and above as a target, and it is only a target. A small local site with a lower score and a perfect topic fit can be a better match than a high-scoring site that has nothing to do with you.
5. Where will your link sit?
A link inside a useful article is the most natural. A link in a footer, a sidebar, a list of dozens of links or a page that exists only to hold links is a weaker sign. Read the page where your link would be placed. Would a visitor plausibly find it helpful?
6. What does the site link out to?
Scan the other links on the page. If the same site links to plumbers, casinos, supplements and lawyers, that tells you it is selling links to anyone. This is also where the term private blog network comes up: a group of sites built mainly to pass links around. You cannot always spot one from the outside, but a scattered outbound pattern and no real audience are warning signs.
7. What does a paid link mean for risk?
Google's guidance says links that are paid for should be marked so that they do not pass ranking credit. A marked link is lower risk but may carry less ranking benefit, and an unmarked paid link that exists to pass credit can go against Google's spam policies. No vendor can remove this tradeoff. Ask each seller how they handle it, and be wary of anyone who says there is no risk at all.
8. What should you ask the seller?
- Can I see real examples of sites you use, before I pay?
- What are your standards for topic, indexing, traffic and authority?
- Will I get a written quote, and what exactly does it cover?
- What do you report after the work is done?
- What happens if a link is removed or changed?
A seller who answers these plainly is easier to trust than one who leads with promises. Our standards are targets: relevant topic, indexed pages, some real traffic, a real business behind the site and a sensible authority range. We show real examples of hosts on WhatsApp, and our buy local SEO backlinks page explains how quotes are handled. For a wider view of why fit matters, read why generic links fail locally.
Search guidelines and tactics change over time, and no result can ever be promised. Even a careful check cannot remove every risk, and outcomes depend on your site, your competition and your category.