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Link building · IN SHORT

Strong links.Real relevance.Earned.

A mention that belongs.A meaningful relationship.Attention beyond placement.

See our approachExplore what matters
Illustration of three connected smoked-glass links beside an open notebook on basalt.
VISUAL IMPRESSION · LINK BUILDING

WHAT MATTERS

Three things to know.

RelevanceA natural place for your expertise.

For each client, we look for industry contacts, suppliers and publications where a link would add something useful.

RelationshipsMake contact before placing a link.

We research who fits your business and why they might write about you. The content gives the mention a reason to exist.

MonitoringKeep checking after publication.

A link can change or disappear. We follow placements and check whether they still make sense.

01 / HOW IT WORKS

Start with the content.Then build the links.

We assess potential sources, prepare an appropriate proposal and keep track of what is agreed. The proposal should explain what the other site’s readers gain, rather than ask for an unrelated reference. For a placement, the record should identify the source page, destination and reason. A dated check shows whether it is still present. A link can change or disappear; monitoring does not give us permanent control over someone else’s website.

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  1. Check the foundations.

    We assess whether your technology and content are ready for more links.

  2. Find relevant contacts.

    We look for connections between your business and relevant websites.

  3. Publish and monitor.

    We work towards editorial mentions and keep track of the agreements made.

02 / PART OF ONGOING SEO

Build your authority.

Link-building activity is part of the €250 monthly SEO service, excluding VAT, within the agreed scope. The effort is directed towards one or two suitable placements per month, without a guarantee. Separate help costs €65 per hour excluding VAT, agreed before work starts. We do not promise a fixed ranking improvement, link lifetime or time to results. Bring your site, target pages, market and any existing outreach so we can determine where the work would be useful.

€250per month, excluding VAT

Technical work, content and link building stay within the agreed scope. Our current partner base is Dutch; British and Irish placements require new outreach, not an existing local inventory. Placements and rankings are not guaranteed. Separate help costs €65 per hour excluding VAT.

Read what the service includesExplore LinkLoop yourself
Gianluca, founder of TheSEO

MEET THESEO

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Working on websites and visibility since 2017. You speak directly with Gianluca.

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Explore the details at your own pace.

SRV.04 · link building reg. L.000 · service and software

Link building specialist: authority you cannot buy.

There are three ways to get a backlink: buy it, swap it or earn it. We do two of them, and for swapping we built our own software. LinkLoop swaps in triangles so no reciprocal pattern appears, watches every link, and gives your credits back when a link goes offline.

See LinkLoop → What the market charges free to start · 10 credits a month
Section 01 · The routes

Buy, swap or earn

reg. L.001

The bars below are an estimate and not a measurement. They show the proportions behind why we take one route and not the other.

FIG.01: Three routes to the same linksheet 1/3
ROUTE 01 · WE DO NOT DO THIS Buying You pay an intermediary and a link appears. Fast, scalable and available everywhere. The problem is not the link itself but what happens the moment Google works out how it got there.
SPEEDhigh
COSThigh
RISKhigh
DURABLElow
Google calls money for links that influence ranking link spam explicitly. The sanction is a manual action.
ROUTE 02 · THROUGH LINKLOOP Swapping Site owners link to each other because it makes sense for both sets of readers. Costs no money but does cost time: finding partners, making contact, keeping track of who did what. That is exactly the work we put into software.
SPEEDmiddling
COSTlow
RISKmiddling
DURABLEreasonable
Reciprocal swapping at scale is link spam too. That is why LinkLoop swaps in triangles, see FIG.02.
ROUTE 03 · WHAT WE DO Earning Somebody links to you because you have something worth linking to: research, a tool, an explanation that exists nowhere else in that form. The slowest of the three and the most work, and precisely for that reason impossible to copy.
SPEEDlow
COSTmiddling
RISKlow
DURABLEhigh
That is why we build free tools and 100 downloadable skills. Things that work earn mentions a bought link never will.
Section 02 · The software

LinkLoop swaps in triangles

INS.01 · built in house

The familiar objection to link swapping is fair: A links to B, B links back to A, and at scale that is a pattern Google names in its spam policy. LinkLoop solves it with a third party in every swap. You give a link to one site and get your link from another, so no reciprocal pair appears anywhere.

FIG.02: The triangle swapsheet 2/3
Company Alinks to B
→
Company Blinks to C
→
Company Clinks to A
↩ the circle closes, nobody links back to their own giver
Why this worksNo site links back to the site that links to it. So there is no reciprocal pair to find, because it does not exist.
What does not changeEvery placement has to fit the page it sits on. A link that makes no sense is refused by the platform, even inside a valid triangle.
FIG.03: Link monitoring and credits backsheet 3/3

A link that disappears costs you nothing

Agencies sometimes promise "permanent placement", but nobody has any say over somebody else's site. LinkLoop solves it the other way round: every link is checked continuously, and if it goes offline for good, your credits come back. The example below is schematic.

link-monitoring.logstatus
  • LIVE
  • LIVE
  • CHECKING
  • OFFLINE
  • REFUNDED
schematic example
DAY 0Swap accepted. The link is live, the credits have been transferred.LIVE
CONTINUOUSCheck. The platform visits the page and checks whether the link is still there, is dofollow and carries the right anchor text.LIVE
DAY 41Link not found. The page has been rewritten. The counter starts running; one miss is not yet a verdict.CHECKING
DAY 44Offline for good. Several checks in a row miss the link. The placement is written off.OFFLINE
DAY 44Credits back. Your balance is restored automatically and you can spend the credits again.REFUNDED

The pointer runs down the five rows above one at a time and the header reports the state at that moment. This is not a measurement of your own placements but the shape of the monitoring: as long as a link is alive the platform keeps coming back, and only when several checks in a row miss the link is the placement written off and the credits returned. Anyone with motion switched off sees where it ends up, the last row, because that is the row that makes the difference with an agency promising permanent placement.

3L.01 · parties in every swap
10L.02 · free credits a month on Starter
0L.03 · credits lost on a link that went offline
30dL.04 · your own Search Console data in your profile
L.01 to L.04 · properties of the platform, not results. The network is young and we say so plainly. It is also almost entirely Dutch today, which matters if your own site is British or Irish; see the note under the service below.
Section 03 · Rates

Start free, grow when it pays

reg. L.002

Credits are the currency of the platform: an accepted swap costs credits, a delivered link earns them. All paid tier prices are per month, exclude tax and can be cancelled monthly. A business in the United Kingdom or Ireland accounts for the VAT itself under the reverse charge. After payment we activate your account personally, usually within one working day.

Starter €0 10 credits a month
  • Profile with your own Search Console data
  • Take part in triangle swaps
  • Link monitoring on all your placements
Sign up free, no payment details needed
Growth €29 /mo 50 credits a month
  • Everything in Starter
  • Five times the swapping room
  • For businesses building steadily
Start Growth excluding tax · cancel monthly
Pro €79 /mo 150 credits a month
  • Everything in Growth
  • For serious link builders
  • Room for several campaigns at once
Start Pro excluding tax · cancel monthly
Agency €149 /mo 500 credits a month
  • Everything in Pro
  • For agencies and larger teams
  • Several sites under one account
Start Agency excluding tax · cancel monthly
Section 04 · The service

We find the right partners

SRV.01 · inside the SEO engagement

Would you rather not swap yourself? Inside the SEO engagement of 250 euro a month we do the searching. Not with bulk lists, but by looking per client for sites where a mention genuinely fits: trade peers who are not competitors, suppliers, trade media and local parties.

We aim at one or two good placements a month. That is an effort and not a guarantee: a month without a good opportunity is not bought off with a bad link.

One thing to be clear about before you buy this in English. A link is only worth something in the language and the market of the site it sits on, and our own partner base is Dutch today. We have no British or Irish link inventory to draw on, and until we do we will not promise the same level here that we promise on the Dutch page. What we can do is the method: find the right sites in your market, approach them and monitor what gets placed. Do you need volume in the British market from month one? Say so and we will tell you honestly that this is not the place for it.

FIG.04: How we find a partnershipfour steps, every month again
STEP 01 Find candidates Who is already writing about your subject? We look for sites where your story fills a gap, not sites that happen to sell links.
STEP 02 Test them Real editorial staff, real traffic, no link farm. If the site is doubtful it drops out, even if the placement would have been easy.
STEP 03 Approach personally Not a standard email to a hundred addresses, but a proposal that explains what the readers of that site get out of it.
STEP 04 Place and monitor The link goes into monitoring, the same check as on LinkLoop. If it disappears you see it and we pick it up.
Why so few? One link from a site that matters weighs more than ten nobody reads. And anyone promising ten links a month has to buy them somewhere. Start by finding out where you stand: the free SEO scan checks in a few seconds whether your foundation is worth sending links to.
Section 05 · The agreement

What you will and will not hear from us

reg. L.003

Link building is the part of SEO with the most nonsense around it. Numbers of links placed, average domain authority, survival percentages. We do not have those figures in a form you should trust, so they are not here.

the agreementwill · will not
✓ You see every link with the reason beside it. From which site, in which article, and why that spot fits your subject. A link you cannot explain is a link you do not want.
✓ Credits back if a link disappears. Not as a favour but as a rule of the system: the monitoring notices it and the balance is restored. We can promise that because it is our own software.
✓ We say so when link building is not your turn yet. If your engineering is not right, or you have no page worth linking to, we start at the engineering.
✗ No bought links, not even if you ask for them. Google treats paid links that influence ranking as spam. What a manual action costs is more than those links ever returned.
✗ No counts, no domain authority, no survival percentage, and no British link inventory. The LinkLoop network is young and it is Dutch. Pretending otherwise would be exactly the nonsense we reject above. What you do get: per link you see where it sits, and if it disappears you get your credits back.
✗ No deadline by which it will work. This is the slowest part of SEO and it depends on where the link sits and what your competitors do. Four to eight weeks sounds good and means nothing.
DOC.01

What Google actually says about it

A great deal is claimed about how heavily links count. The best known claim is that they are one of the three heaviest ranking factors. That statement goes back to an offhand remark by a Google employee in 2016, which Google later distanced itself from. Google publishes no weights and never has.

What Google does say is that links help decide what a page is about and how relevant it is. And Google is very explicit about the other side: exchanging money, goods or services for links sits in the spam policy as link spam, as does excessive link exchange between sites. That second point is exactly why LinkLoop swaps in triangles rather than in pairs.

That difference is useful when choosing an agency. Anyone who gives you a weight, a percentage or a deadline is telling you something they cannot know. More on how to spot that is on choosing an SEO agency.

DOC.02

Software or service: which fits you

LinkLoop is for the owner who wants to do it themselves and keep control. You decide which swaps you accept; the platform does the finding, matching and monitoring. Starter is free, and the paid tiers above are there once ten credits a month is no longer enough.

Would you rather just hand it over? Link building with us is not a separate subscription but the third part of the same structure, after engineering and content. Inside an ongoing SEO engagement of 250 euro a month, this work is simply part of it, at no extra cost. Separately is possible too, on an hourly basis at 65 euro. All amounts exclude tax. Our service rates for SEO, Google Ads, social media and branding are on the rates page, and the subscription prices for Jarvis and the MyParcel Dashboard on their own product pages.

What the market charges and where that difference comes from is on what link building costs, which reckons with the Dutch market. Are you still unsure between doing it yourself and handing it over, that comparison puts the two side by side with worked examples.

DOC.03 · FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Are backlinks still important?

Yes, but less absolutely than is often said. Google confirms that links are one of the signals used to work out how relevant a page is. What Google does not do is publish how heavily they count. The often heard claim that links are one of the three heaviest ranking factors goes back to an offhand remark by a Google employee in 2016; a ranking or weighting of ranking factors is published nowhere by Google. Anyone who names you a weight or a percentage is making it up.

Am I allowed to buy backlinks?

You are allowed to, in the sense that nobody forbids it. But Google treats exchanging money for links that influence ranking as spam and says so explicitly in its own spam policy. The sanction is a manual action, and that costs you more than the links returned. So we do not do it, and not out of principle but out of arithmetic.

Is link swapping not against the rules as well then?

Excessive reciprocal swapping is: site A links to B and B links back to A, at scale. That is exactly why LinkLoop works with triangle swaps. You link to one party and get your link from another party in the circle. No reciprocal pattern appears, and every placement has to fit the page it sits on.

What does LinkLoop cost?

Starter is free and gives 10 credits a month. Growth costs 29 euro a month for 50 credits, Pro 79 euro for 150 credits and Agency 149 euro for 500 credits, all three excluding tax and cancellable monthly. A British or Irish business accounts for the VAT itself under the reverse charge. After payment we activate your account personally, usually within one working day.

What does link building as a service cost with you?

If you are in an ongoing SEO engagement of 250 euro a month, this work is part of it. If you want it separately, that goes on an hourly basis at 65 euro. An amount such as from 750 euro a month for three to five links says nothing without knowing which sites are involved, so we do not quote it.

How many links do you place per month?

Inside the SEO engagement we aim at one or two good placements a month, found through partnerships that genuinely fit. That is an effort and not a guarantee: if in a given month there is no placement that passes the test, we do not fill the gap with a bad link. Quality always comes before number here. For a British or Irish site, add one honest caveat: our partner base is Dutch, so building in your market starts from nothing and goes slower than it does for a Dutch client.

Can you show what you have achieved before?

Not with figures on this page. We publish no counts of links placed, no average domain authority and no percentage of links still alive after a year, because we cannot back that up in a way you should trust. In a call we do show concrete work.

Section 06 · The map

Everything about link building in one place

reg. L.005

A page per question, sorted by what you want to know.

The basics

start here

If you do not yet know exactly what link building is or what it is worth.

What link building isHow it works, what a good link is and why it goes slowly.DOC What link building costsWhat the Dutch market charges and where the price difference comes from.DOC Outsource or do it yourselfThe honest comparison, with worked examples.DOC How peer to peer link building worksThe principle behind swapping, and where the limit lies.DOC

Doing it yourself

without budget

For the owner who picks it up themselves and does not want to pay an agency.

Free link building platformWhat LinkLoop is, how to start and what the credit system does.TOOL Link building without budgetFive strategies that cost no money, only time.DOC Guest postingHow to do it without it reading as spam.DOC Anchor text variationWhy the same anchor text everywhere works against you.DOC

The risks

read this first

Before you buy links anywhere or accept an offer.

Buying backlinks: the risksWhat the spam policy says and what a manual action means.DOC Link exchange: how it worksSwapping backlinks yourself, and what to watch for.DOC Choosing an SEO agencyEight questions to ask, including the one about links.DOC

For your situation

per type

The same principles, applied to a specific kind of business.

Link building for ecommerceWhy category pages need different links from articles.DOC Link building for SaaSWhen your product is the best link material you have.DOC For site ownersThe complete guide for anyone with one site who wants to grow.DOC For freelancersGetting more backlinks when you work alone and have little time.DOC The backlink networkHow an editorial placement comes about with us.SRV

Going deeper

the follow-up questions

For anyone already at work who is stuck on a specific question.

How many backlinks you needWhy that differs per keyword and how to estimate it.DOC Getting more backlinks: the guideThe routes and the working rhythm, in order.DOC Cost calculatorWork out roughly what link building costs in the market.TOOL Look at your backlink profileWhat to check before you accept a placement.TOOL

Can it be done without?

this first

Links are not always the answer. Sometimes the gain sits somewhere else.

Higher in Google without backlinksWhat engineering, content and internal links deliver before you think about links.DOC Free SEO scan24 checkpoints on your page, immediate result, no sign-up.TOOL Technical SEOThe layer where faults hit every page at once.SRV The whole SEO structureWhere link building fits: after engineering and content, never before.SRV
DOC.04

Do not start at links

Are you here mainly because your positions are not moving? Link building is rarely the first thing to tackle. Usually it sits in the engineering or in pages competing with each other. The free scan looks at that in a few seconds. If the foundation turns out to be sound, this is your next step: yourself through LinkLoop, or handed over inside an SEO engagement. If we work together, we process personal data on behalf of your company and we sign the data processing agreement beforehand, which sets out what we may do with that data. Dutch law applies to the engagement.

Working on the link profile of a website
Working on the link profile of a website
SEOthe basicswhat it costsLinkLoopsoftwarenetworkratesBook a call
Section 07 · Next stepreachable 24/7
Book a call ↗
Gianluca, founder of TheSEO
Written by GianlucaFounder of TheSEO. Has been building findability since 2017, in Google and in AI answers. More about the institute.

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