Link building is the practice of earning hyperlinks from other websites to yours. A link is a mention with a URL attached. Search engines treat those links as one signal among many. People can also click them. Neither outcome is guaranteed from a single placement, a month of placements, or a pretty report.
That last sentence is the part most agencies skip. They sell movement. We sell a published URL on a host you approved. If organic traffic later rises, that is useful. It is not the invoice line.
What the work actually is
Someone has to pick a host, write or place content that fits that host, and follow the page until it is live. There is no software that does this honestly at scale. There is a person sending email, a person drafting, and a person checking the live HTML.
At Vexa that host is a named row on our publisher sheet — niche, DA, DR, traffic and price together. You approve the site. We run outreach. You get the live URL. If we cannot name the domain before you pay, we will not take the order. Unnamed inventory is how junk gets billed as “authority.”
The sheet is not a ranking tool. DA and DR help you sort. They do not prove the editor still wants your topic. We re-confirm the row before we invoice because sites close, change rates, or stop taking outside copy. A row from last quarter is a hint, not a booking.
The three formats we use
Guest posting is the usual format: a new article on the host with a link back. The editor can still cut a link, ask for a local angle, or reject the draft. That is normal. We confirm current rules before money moves. See guest posting.
Link insertions — niche edits — go into existing copy where the row allows it. The surrounding paragraph has to make the mention honest. We do not drop a SaaS pricing URL into an unrelated recipe. Availability is per publisher, not a blanket “we can insert anywhere.” Details: link insertion.
Digital PR is a news-style mention on media and press rows. Those hosts move slower, reject more pitches, and cost more. They are still a named site and a live URL when they publish — not a press-release blast to a list you will never see. Read digital PR if that is the brief.
The mix follows your brief, not a secret “algorithm pack.” If you only want guest posts, we only lock guest-post rows. If you want a split, say so before we start.
What we do not sell
- Unnamed “DA 50 packs” or private blog networks
- Ranking dashboards that pretend one link moved Google overnight
- A promise that organic traffic will rise by a date
- Comment spam, profile links, or sitewide widgets dressed up as editorials
The deliverable is the published link on a site you approved. SEO movement, if any, is slower and depends on your pages, offer and competition. Treat rankings as a later effect. Treat the live URL as the job.
What you need before we start
Lock the pages you want mentioned and the anchors you prefer. Brand, URL, and natural phrases beat a wall of exact-match commercial keywords. We will flag anchors that do not fit a host. We will not invent a second product page you do not have.
Tell us hosts to exclude — competitors, junk you have already bought, or anything legal cannot touch. Tell us if brand or counsel must approve every draft. That time sits on top of the TAT on the row. Fast blogs and magazine calendars are not the same clock.
If you do not know which URLs matter, say so. We can work from a short list of money pages and a few supporting articles. We still will not promise those pages will rank.
How a Vexa campaign runs
Browse the sheet, lock target URLs and anchors, we flag hosts that do not fit, we write when writing is included, Jaweria tracks go-live, you receive the URL. If a publisher drops out, we replace from the same sheet where a matching row exists. We do not invent a mystery replacement off-list.
Go-live is not instant. Outreach sits in inboxes. Editors travel. Drafts come back with notes. A realistic window is weeks, not a weekend, unless the row is a fast blog that already accepted the topic. We will tell you when a row is slow before you pay for it.
When the page is live we send the URL. Open it. Check the link, the anchor, and the surrounding copy. If the live HTML does not match the row, tell us. We chase the publisher or replace the placement. We do not log into their CMS and rewrite their site after they publish.
Hosts control their HTML. A link can be edited or removed later. We do not promise forever. We promise a live URL on an approved host, and a replacement from the sheet if that placement is pulled while we are still the agency on the work.
Who this is for
This model fits teams that already have pages worth mentioning — a product, a guide, a local service, a brand someone can name. It does not fit a brand-new domain with no offer and a request for “page one in 30 days.” Off-page work on a thin site is still a live URL. It is not a rescue plan.
If you want volume without names, we are the wrong vendor. If you want named publishers, honest metrics, and a person you can WhatsApp when a draft stalls, start on our link building page or send the niche on contact.
What a live URL is not
A live URL is not a ranking. It is not a traffic spike. It is not proof that your page is “done.” It is a published mention on a host you approved. Keep those sentences separate in your own reporting. Mixing them is how a useful placement gets called a failure two weeks later because a keyword did not move.
It is also not a permanent asset you can book as a line on a balance sheet. Hosts edit, redirect and redesign. We replace a pulled placement from the same sheet while we are still on the work. We do not sell insurance that the internet stays still. If you need a mention that cannot vanish, you need your own site — not someone else’s CMS.
Use the live URL the way you would use a press clipping: open it, save it, show it to the person who paid. Then get back to the next named row. That is a campaign. Everything else is a slide.