Link buying

When on-page is done — budget tiers, target evaluation, and 10-at-a-time cadence.

Don't spend a dollar on links until on-page + schema are clean. Otherwise you're throwing money away.

Budget tier decision tree

Under $1K, just starting out → QGP (~$100/link, links are what they are). After buying, run a NEO cloud-bucket campaign at each purchased link to amplify it — Google needs to see the purchased page has links of its own, or it devalues it.

$2K+ for a single push, target page already converts → Grindstone SEO (grindstoneseo.com, Clint's mastermind). ~$2K for 10 good links, often parasite links that rank on their own merit. They vet your site first — won't sell if you have other issues.

Built your own PBN via expired domains → don't bother. Hosting + maintenance + populating cost more than buying. (See Network safety for the safer real-publisher approach.)

Link-target evaluation rules

Before buying ANY link:

• Does the host have ANY traffic? Rank for ANYTHING? Yes = Google "kinda likes it." Good enough.
• Does the host internally link to its other guest posts? If not, walk away — Google devalues unlinked content. A bought link with zero internal links into it = $100 for an S3 bucket.
• Is the host in a relevant niche? Same-niche links carry more weight.

Cadence

10 good links at a time. Watch ranking. Another 10. Watch. Another 10. Not 100 in one shot, not 1,000.

Amplify purchased links with cloud buckets

After buying 10 links, run a cloud-bucket campaign pointed at EACH purchased link's URL — sends backlinks to your backlinks so Google sees value in them. Otherwise your $100 link is just a page with one outbound link, and Google devalues it.