What links are for, and when you can skip them
Search engines treat a link from someone else's site as a kind of recommendation. If industry publications, directories and partners mention you, that's a signal the site is alive and known. But it's a secondary signal - it doesn't replace decent copy, a sensible structure or a technically healthy site.
If you work in one city and compete for searches like "stretch ceilings in [your town]", links are almost certainly not your problem. A complete business listing on maps, reviews, a separate page for each service and fast loading matter far more. Spending budget on links when you have three pages and headings like "Service 1" gets you nowhere.
A quick test: open two or three competitors ranking above you. If they each have 40 detailed pages with prices and examples and you have 5, links aren't the issue.
Which links work
What works is anything a person might have linked to on their own, unpaid. That kind of link is easy to justify: it's obvious why it sits where it sits and why a reader would click it.
Beyond that, the mechanics are simple. A link helps when it sits inside a meaningful piece of writing on your topic, not in the footer of a site about everything at once.
- Industry media and blogs: an expert comment, a case breakdown, an interview. You get the link and real visitors.
- Partners and suppliers: a "Where to buy" page, a "Our contractors" page, joint projects.
- Specialist directories and listings that actually have visitors: maps, industry registries, review platforms.
- Posts where you answer a question properly, rather than dropping a link in a comment for the sake of the link.
- Your own social accounts, channels and company profiles. Little direct weight, but they send clicks.
Which links get you penalised
The danger isn't "bad sites" as such - it's volume and sameness. When a young site picks up 300 links in a month all using the same anchor text "buy cheap windows", that's a pattern algorithms spot without effort.
A word on link marketplaces. Buying isn't a death sentence in itself, but 90% of the cheap inventory there is sites built purely to sell links. No audience of their own, no updates, but plenty of "partner links" blocks with casinos and payday loans sitting next door.
- Sitewide links in someone's footer or sidebar - they land on every page at once and look bought.
- Identical anchor text across dozens of sites. Natural links are almost always varied: the company name, the domain, "here", "more details".
- Bulk runs through comments, forum profiles and guestbooks. Those "5,000 links for $30" packages are exactly this.
- Sites outside your topic and not in your language: a classifieds board in another language isn't recommending your B2B service.
- Sudden explosive growth: zero links, then 200 in a week, then zero again.
- Sites already linking out to casinos, betting, payday loans and adult content.
How to vet the agency doing your link building
The key requirement: a report as a list of URLs, not a count. "45 links placed" isn't a report, it's a number. Ask for a table with the page address, the date, the anchor text and the destination.
From there you can check everything yourself in half an hour, no tools needed.
- Open 10 random links from the report. Is the link still there? Does the surrounding text read like a human wrote it, or like a pile of keywords?
- Look at the site's homepage. Recent material, named authors, contact details? Or a last post from 2019 and a "Sponsored content" section with 4,000 entries?
- Check the neighbours: who else does that page link to? If it's loans and betting, skip the site.
- Compare the anchors in the report against each other. If 30 of 45 are word-for-word identical, ask for variety.
- Ask how many links per month are planned and why that number. There is a sensible answer; "more is better" isn't one.
- Find out who owns the placements. If the agency is renting links from a marketplace, they disappear along with the effect the moment you stop paying.
What to do if you already have bad links
Start by working out the actual damage. A small number of junk links is usually just ignored - you aren't responsible for who links to you. Worry when you can see a bulk run and a drop in rankings that lines up with it in time.
The sequence is straightforward. Check the messages in your search console accounts - a manual action comes with a notification. Export the list of external links and look at what appeared over the last few months. If you find a bulk run, stop paying for the placements and, where you can, email the site owners asking for removal. Google has a link disavow tool, but using it blind is risky - you can disavow useful links too.
Above all: don't try to drown out the bad links by buying more. That's the most common reaction, and it makes things worse.
A simple strategy for a small business
Don't chase volume. Five mentions in industry sources per quarter do more than a hundred marketplace links, and carry no risk.
In practice it looks like this: first get the site into a state you'd be happy to be linked to - pages for specific services, prices, examples of work, contact details. Then collect what you can get for free: maps, review sites, partners, suppliers, professional communities. After that, one or two pieces a quarter for industry media: a breakdown of a problem you solved, with numbers and specifics. Those pieces bring links and enquiries directly.
If there's no budget for all of it, put it into the site rather than into links. A technically sound site with a clear structure will climb in search without a link budget - slower, but reliably.
A link is useful when you can justify it: it's clear why it sits on that particular page and why a reader would click it. Anything bought by the batch, distinguishable only by the number in a report, is more likely to hurt. If your check suggests the work belongs in the site rather than in links - at EFIMOV DEV we build sites, online stores and services on React and Node.js. Starting prices for each service are published on the site, and an exact quote follows the brief.
Frequently asked
Can I buy links, or is it always a risk?
Buying isn't a death sentence in itself - the risk comes from buying in bulk and all the same way. Two or three placements a quarter on live, on-topic sites with real audiences and varied anchors usually does no harm. A "300 links this month" package is high risk with almost no upside.
How many links does my site need?
There's no universal number, and anyone who quotes one without looking at your niche is selling you a package. Use the competitors ranking above you as your benchmark: if they have 20-30 mentions, you don't need 500. For a local business, links often aren't the first priority at all.
How do I know if links got my site penalised?
The signs: a noticeable drop across most of your queries rather than a few, timed with a link buying push. Check the notifications in your search console accounts - a manual action comes with a message stating the reason. With no message, it's more likely an algorithm update or a problem on the site itself.
My agency shows growth in "link volume" in the report. Is that enough?
No. A rising link count isn't a result; traffic and enquiries are. Ask how rankings moved for specific queries and how many enquiries came from search. And always ask for the list of URLs so you can inspect the sites with your own eyes.