Scorecard
Buy a dofollow link or keep reclaiming: a buyer's scorecard
Reclaiming is cheap in money and expensive in time. Buying is the opposite. This scorecard weighs both with your own numbers.
Rule of thumb
Reclaim first, buy when time is the constraint
Almost every site has a few dead pages and a few forgotten mentions. Clear those first. If the date you care about is less than a month away, or nothing is left to reclaim, a single placement can fill the gap.
- Placements are permanent dofollow, from $1 to about $500
- Pricing scales with donor authority, traffic and niche
- No ranking is promised, and none should be assumed
- Review the basket before paying; nothing is charged at that stage
Score each line from 0 to 2
| Question | 0 points | 1 point | 2 points |
|---|---|---|---|
| How soon is the date that matters? | More than 3 months | 1-3 months | Under 4 weeks |
| Unlinked mentions or dead pages left to fix? | Dozens | A handful | None |
| Replies to your last five outreach emails | Most replied | Some replied | Silence |
| Is the target page ready to convert visitors? | No | Mostly | Yes |
| Is a relevant donor in the store at a price you accept? | None | Maybe | Several |
| Can you afford a loss on this test? | No | Barely | Easily |
What a placement is, and what it is not
A placement is one link inside an article on a vetted site. The article is written automatically with one clean link to your page, and it usually goes live within about 24 hours of payment.
You can choose automatic mode with a target URL and keyword, give your own instructions, or supply a finished article. Each row in the store shows Domain Rating, organic traffic, referring domains, niche, language and price, so you can judge it the way you would in Ahrefs.
It is not a shortcut around the work. A dofollow link on an irrelevant site adds little, and Google's SpamBrain and the December 2022 link spam update were built to discount links that exist only to be counted. Pick relevance over the biggest number.
Majestic and Moz scores are alternatives to Domain Rating if you prefer them, but pick one metric and stay with it.
Estimate a test budget
A local estimate only: it shows what a few placements could cost at different price points. It does not check your account.
A $100 example, clearly an example
Say you have $100 and three pages that lost links. Spend nothing on the two with redirectable inbound links, and use the money on the third. It is only a sketch.
Compare two ways to spend it. One is four placements near $25 on relevant sites, each pointing at the page that lost its links. Another is a single placement near $100 on a stronger domain. Neither outcome can be predicted here, so measure referrals and impressions in Search Console for six to eight weeks before ordering more.
For the reclaim side of the choice see the lost links timeline and the broken-link sorting guide.
Log every order in the ordered list with its date and target page. Without that record you will not know in March which link did what in January.
The top of the price range, about $500, buys a donor with strong authority and traffic. Few sites need that for a first test, and a recovery job rarely justifies it.