What I learned buying link-building vendors — blunt notes from too many demos and one costly pilot
1: What this list will do for you — stop buying promises, start buying outcomes
If you only take one thing away from this list, make it this: vendors sell certainty; your job is to buy measurable, repeatable work. I wasted $12,000 on a “proprietary network” that delivered two links and a lot of excuses. After that I stopped buying based on slides and sales cadence and started buying on evidence — logs, CSV exports, screenshots with timestamps, and a small paid pilot that mirrored the main campaign.
Read this list like a shopping checklist you can use the minute a vendor asks for a PO. Each item includes practical questions to ask in a demo, what success looks like in raw numbers, and the red flags that mean walk away. I’ll also give contrarian takes where the common industry advice misses what actually moves the needle — for example, why nofollow links still matter for referral traffic, and why “all-in-one” outreach automation can actually increase your labor cost if implemented wrong.
Practical example: before your next purchase demand a 30-day pilot for no more than $1,000. If a vendor refuses, that tells you more about their processes than their slide deck ever will.

2: Nofollow links still drive real referral traffic — how to measure their value
The common line is that nofollow links are useless for SEO. That’s a half-truth. I ran three campaigns in the last 18 months where editorial nofollow placements on niche blogs drove between 800 and 1,400 visits in the first 30 days. Conversion to trial averaged 2.6%, netting $1,800 to $3,200 in attributable revenue per link in two cases. That’s not SEO uplift — it’s direct referral revenue you can measure in Google Analytics or your product analytics tool.
How to track nofollow link ROI
Use UTM parameters on the landing URLs to isolate traffic sources. Don’t rely on “referral” alone; it’s noisy. Set a clear conversion event before buying the link — signups, demo requests, or micro-conversions like whitepaper downloads. Ask the vendor for a screenshot of the live placement and a timestamped server log or cached page to prove it went live on the agreed date.
Contrarian view: if your buying decision is driven only by domain authority scores or citation metrics, you’ll miss the real value. A niche blog with a loyal audience and a nofollow policy can still put your product in front of the exact buyer you need. Don’t throw away a source because of a tag — measure the traffic and conversion impact first.
3: Treat link building like CRM work — why you need a dedicated link-building CRM
Link outreach isn’t a one-off task; it’s a pipeline. That’s why using a shared spreadsheet or your generic CRM leads to duplicated outreach, missed follow-ups, and angry editors. A link-building CRM should do these things well: contact deduplication, outreach history per contact, attachment support for creative assets, host- and page-level tracking, and status workflows (prospect - pitched - follow-up - promised - live - checked).
What saved me after a year of broken spreadsheets
We moved a $40k/year program into a link-building CRM and cut duplicate outreach by 70% in the first quarter. Email sync (IMAP) was a must — it prevented the “someone else emailed them” problem that had cost us a month of outreach where we unknowingly pitched the same editor twice. Tagging by content pillar and buyer persona allowed the PM to see which verticals were over- or under-served.
Ask vendors to show a CSV export of a campaign with full timestamps and email bodies. If they can’t or won’t provide raw exports, treat that as a transparency issue. Also be realistic: not every CRM fits every team. If you have a small, in-house team of two, a lightweight tool with automation for reminders is better than a full enterprise suite that needs a dedicated admin.
4: Demand outreach transparency — what full tracking actually looks like
Transparency isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between paying for https://bizzmarkblog.com/what-a-link-building-agency-actually-does-in-2026/ results and paying for excuses. Full tracking means you can answer: who was contacted, when, what subject line was used, what the response was, and whether the link went live. If your vendor uses vague status labels like “working” or “in progress,” push for concrete outputs.
Checklist for vendor transparency
Raw outreach logs exported in CSV or JSON, including email headers and timestamps. Proof-of-publication artifacts: live URL, screenshot, and archived copy (Wayback link or HTML snapshot). Performance metrics per placement: visits, time on page, conversions — preferably via UTMs or an analytics dashboard the vendor provides where you can validate the numbers.
Real example: One vendor reported 30 placements in a quarter. When we asked for URLs, they provided only 12 live links and seven “in review” entries. After pushing for logs the vendor finally returned a CSV showing 11 bounced emails and 9 unsubscribed contacts — numbers that should never have been hidden. That transparency saved us $15k in wasted spend by stopping the campaign early and pivoting to a higher-quality outreach list.
5: Campaign management tools should save hours, not create new chores
Many vendors pitch automation and promise to remove manual work. My experience: poorly implemented automation increases work because you end up fixing the machine. Good tools do three things well — centralize creative assets, automate repetitive follow-ups with conditional logic, and surface exceptions where human judgment is required.

Features I demand and why
Conditional follow-ups: follow-up only if no reply and after a custom delay. Avoid blanket sequences that keep spamming a contact after they asked to be removed. Creative library with version history: saves time on A/B subject line tests and keeps approvals auditable. Bulk edit and smart replace: update a campaign’s outreach copy based on a new talking point without breaking personalization tokens.
Contrarian take: don’t buy every automation checkbox. If your team is small and your outreach needs true personalization, a semi-automated process where a human reviews the CRM-suggested template before sending will outperform full automation. In one campaign, adding a 30-second human review before send increased reply rate by 42% and reduced follow-up volume because conversations started faster.
6: How I evaluate vendors — scorecards, pilot projects, and the deal breakers
I use a simple weighted scorecard: transparency 30%, delivery 25%, tooling 20%, support 15%, price 10%. That scoring forces me to prioritize what matters. Too often teams pick on price or tooling aesthetics and ignore delivery verification. A vendor might have a beautiful UI but weak processes or opaque reporting.
Pilot project template
Define 3 target pages or link types you want and the KPI (visits or signups) for the pilot. Set a fixed 30-day budget cap — I recommend $500 to $1,500 depending on the scope. Require raw outputs: outreach CSV, screenshots of placements, and UTM-tagged URLs for analytics validation. Score the pilot using your scorecard and decide: keep, adjust and roll, or stop and recover budget.
Deal breakers I won’t ignore: guaranteed rankings, refusal to provide raw logs, reliance on “private” link networks without disclosure, or any suggestion of black-hat shortcuts. I’ve been burned by vendors promising “links from national newspapers” without specifying which ones. If they can’t prove it with a live URL and a direct contact, it’s a red flag.
Your 30-Day Action Plan: Vet vendors, run a pilot, and cut the crap
Here’s a no-fluff, day-by-day plan you can start today.
Days 1-3: Define success. Pick one campaign goal (referral signups or demo requests), identify 3 pages you want links to, and set a realistic conversion target (e.g., 250 visits and 5 signups). Days 4-7: Shortlist vendors. Ask for a written one-page pilot proposal and their willingness to sign a 30-day pilot contract for $500–$1,500. Reject anyone who refuses. Days 8-10: Demo with a focus on exports. Ask them to show a CSV export of a recent campaign. If they can’t produce it in the demo, move on. Days 11-20: Run the pilot. Require UTM-tagged links, screenshots, and a weekly raw log export. Monitor visits and conversions daily; don’t wait until the end to pull the plug if the numbers are terrible. Days 21-25: Score the pilot against your weighted scorecard. Map time spent internally versus vendor output to get a true cost per link or per conversion. Days 26-30: Decide. Keep the vendor and expand with new guardrails, renegotiate based on evidence, or terminate and use what you learned to go to the next vendor.
Final note: vendors sell confidence. Your job is to buy accountability. Demand raw data, short pilots, and clear SLAs. If a vendor resists, assume they have something to hide. If you follow this plan you’ll stop wasting budget on smoke and mirrors and start buying placements that actually move numbers on your dashboard.