How much should I pay for an SEO backlink?
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How much should a business pay for an SEO backlink?
To help you determine how much to pay for an SEO backlink, we asked marketing experts and small business owners this question for their best advice. From expecting different costs based on your industry to keeping it between $200 and $1000, there are several insights that may help you decide how much to pay for an SEO backlink. Here are six insights into how much a business should pay for an SEO backlink:
- Expect Different Costs Based on Your Industry
- Consider Data and Be Open to Bargaining
- Never Pay Less Than $40 or More Than $100
- Avoid Paying for an SEO Backlink
- Look at the Type of Link You Are Paying For
- Keep it Between $200 and $1000
Expect Different Costs Based on Your Industry;
The cost of an SEO backlink varies significantly between $100 - and $20,000 per month based on the volume and quality. You will be better off deciphering a price point per link in the long term while judging your charges for an SEO backlink. Based on the industry, an average cost per link is $250-$350, considered the low-end price range for brands in the gaming or charity industries. Moreover, the $350-$600 budget will be for mid-range competitive companies, such as real estate and tech. On the other hand, the $600-$1500+ budget for an SEO backlink is for the expensive end of link building for finance industries.
Caroline Lee, CocoSign
Consider Data and Be Open to Bargaining
The right answer is: the less to achieve your goal, the better. More precisely, to judge whether the price for SEO backlink is favorable, you should consider some important factors. Domain Rating, URL Rating, the placement of your backlink, is it do or no-follow, and is it lifetime or time-limited are the primary ones. Ask for that information, create a sheet and write down all data. Benchmark them and choose five sites to test your link-building decision’s impact on your SEO. And, what’s important, don’t be afraid of bargaining!
Leszek Dudkiewicz, passport-photo online
Never Pay Less Than $40 or More Than $100
If you’re hunting for quality backlinks for your website, how much to pay really falls on a sliding scale. In my opinion, there are two big factors on this scale: the website’s domain rating (DR) and organic traffic. These two things are more important than anything else. The higher the DR ad traffic score, the more you should be willing to pay. Likewise, a site with a low DR and no real traffic shouldn’t fetch much of a price. In my experience, for your run-of-the-mill site with a 50 DR and traffic above 1,000 per month, I’d expect to pay around $60-75. That seems to be a pretty good figure for a link insertion. But no matter what you do, never pay less than $40 for a link (that's a red flag) and never pay more than $100 (it’s just not worth it).
John Ross, Test Prep Insight
Avoid Paying for an SEO Backlink;
If you’ve ever done any sort of link building, then you know that there are always sites that ask for money in exchange for a backlink. However, what these sites don’t know is that buying backlinks goes against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. This means that if you get caught, you will get a Google penalty which will kill your search engine ranking. Though there are ways to work around this, for most local and small businesses, staying away from buying backlinks is the most ideal approach as any risk isn’t worth sacrificing your brand’s visibility in the long run.
Joe Spector, Dutch
Look at the Type of Link You Are Paying For
According to Google, the answer is never. But unfortunately, that's not always realistic. The cost per backlink depends on the type of link (citation vs directory vs embedded map link vs guest post) as well as the quality of the site. I always look at the Ahrefs, Semrush (https://semrush.sjv.io/c/3584283/1595162/13053), and Moz domain authority scores as a blend to see how each research tool values the site (as each score is proprietary to each tool). Citation and directory links usually cost $2.50-$10. For low-quality guest post links, the typical range is $25-$50, but some high-quality guest post links could cost upwards of $700-$800. It also varies if you are purchasing the links through a vendor (saving you a lot of time in connecting with those sites) or if you are building them directly with each site. So, it depends.
Keep it Between $200 and $1000
As anything else in marketing, a fair price for a backlink depends on a lot of factors: DR, industry, your final goal, content, etc. However, let’s try to talk numbers; the average price for a quality backlink is $300-$600 per link. It can be lower in some industries and much higher in SAAS, for example, where a reasonable price can hit $1,000. I would recommend going for one quality link. If it is a reputable site and it is relevant to your domain, expect to spend at least $200; anything lower will probably either cause damage to your DR or simply be useless.
Kate Zmeevskaia, Hypetrain
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