How to vet a backlink service before you pay: 12 questions to ask

If you are reading this, you are probably holding two or three tabs open: a link-building agency, a cheap package from a marketplace, maybe a monthly service like ours. They all say "high-quality backlinks." The words are identical, so the only way to tell them apart is to ask questions the bad ones cannot answer well.

This checklist works whether you run a SaaS, a local service business, an agency buying for clients, or a freelance practice. It is written by Posting Dude, which sells a monthly editorial backlink service, so hold us to the same twelve questions. Every answer we give about ourselves below can be checked on our live pages.

First, decide what you are actually buying

Backlink offers fall into a few rough shapes: one-off directory or launch listings, guest posts sold per URL, outreach campaigns billed by the month, and recurring editorial articles published on a schedule. None is automatically good or bad. But if you cannot tell which shape an offer is after reading its page, that is already your first answer.

Write down one sentence before you contact anyone: what pages do I expect to exist at the end of the month, and where? Everything below is a way of checking a seller against that sentence.

The 12 questions

1. Which exact sites will my links be on? A real answer is a list of named domains you can open today. "Our private network of high-DA sites" with no names is not an answer.
2. Can I see live examples on those sites right now? Ask for URLs of published articles, not screenshots or a PDF. Open them. Read one all the way through.
3. Would a real person read the article the link sits in? Look for a clear subject, a specific reader, and sentences about what the product or business actually does. Spun text, keyword stuffing, or an article about nothing are signs the page exists only to hold links.
4. Who writes the content, and do I get to correct facts? You want someone who reads your site and a way to fix wrong pricing, features, or service areas before or after publishing.
5. How many pages do I get, and over what period? "10 links" can mean ten articles this month, or ten URLs dripped over a year. Get the count and the time window in writing.
6. How will I see what was published? A dashboard, a monthly report with URLs, or at minimum an email list of links. If you have to chase the seller to find your own links, expect to keep chasing.
7. Do the sites fit my buyers? A SaaS product and a plumbing company should not be on the same set of pages for the same reasons. Ask why these sites make sense for your kind of business, and accept "they might not" as an honest answer.
8. What are the sites about when I am not on them? Browse each homepage. A site that publishes on every topic from casinos to crypto to dentistry is selling placement, not editorial.
9. What happens when I stop paying? Ask whether published articles stay up, and get the answer in writing. Some sellers remove links when a subscription ends.
10. Are you promising rankings, traffic, or AI citations? The honest answer is no. Nobody controls Google, ChatGPT, or Perplexity. A guarantee of position one or "guaranteed traffic" is the most reliable red flag on this list.
11. What is the contract? Month to month, a minimum term, or prepaid packages? Know how to cancel before you start.
12. Who do I talk to when something is wrong? A named email address that answers is worth more than a ticket form that never does.

Red flags that should end the conversation

• Guaranteed rankings, guaranteed traffic, or guaranteed AI mentions.
• No named sites, only metrics such as DA or DR with nothing you can open.
• Prices that only make sense if the content is generated in bulk and never read.
• Example pages that are mostly outbound links with a few paragraphs around them.
• Pressure to prepay a large package before you have seen a single live article.
• Refusal to say what happens to your links after you cancel.

What changes by type of buyer

SaaS and software teams should weight question 4 heavily. Products change fast, and an article describing last year's pricing or features does more harm than good. Ask how updates work when you ship something.

Local and service businesses should weight question 7. Editorial articles are not Google Business Profile work, map rankings, or citation cleanup, and anyone who sells them as a replacement for that is overselling. They make sense when the sites and the article angle fit the people you want to reach.

Agencies and freelancers buying for clients should weight questions 5, 6, and 11. You need a predictable count, links you can put in a client report without editing, and terms that will not trap you when a client leaves.

Larger companies usually care most about questions 3 and 8. Brand safety lives in the neighbourhood: the other articles on the same site matter as much as yours.

How Posting Dude answers the same questions

Since we asked you to hold us to this list, here are our answers in short, all checkable on postingdude.com.

• Sites: Aura++, IndieHunt, EarlyHunt, Uno Directory, MakerHunt, SideHunt, LedePress, HedPress, ListedPress, and PiecePress. They are a publishing network we distribute on, mixing launch and discovery boards, a directory, and four press sites with different article shapes.
• Examples: the live examples page links to real published articles on those sites, so you can read them before paying.
• Count and window: 10 editorial articles per project every billing month, one on each of the ten sites.
• Visibility: published articles show up in your dashboard.
• Plans: Launch is $249/mo for one project. Studio is $399/mo for up to three projects, each getting the same 10 articles. Both are month to month.
• Extras: placements on outlets such as Peerlist, Dev Community, Indie Hackers, Quora, Medium, Hashnode, X, and LinkedIn are optional, only when the product is a genuine fit, and not a monthly quota.
• Promises: we do not promise rankings, traffic, AI citations, or revenue. We promise published editorial articles you can open.

If those answers do not fit what you need, that is useful too. Take the twelve questions to the next seller.

The short version

A backlink service is worth paying for when it can name the sites, show you live articles you would not be embarrassed by, tell you exactly how many pages you get each month, and refuse to promise rankings. If a seller cannot do all four, keep looking.