02
Each one is the tier below it plus another discipline. Every service named here links to its full scope, including what it does not cover.
Essential proof
190 recorded campaign rows for Lumin PDFA source-backed export review across document-workflow topics.Growth proof
127 final URL records for Beltway HVACRecorded coverage across HVAC services and locations, with live status unverified.Authority proof
47 candidates for Voyager PlumbingA five-month record after one rejected replacement row is excluded.03
Four variables decide where an engagement lands inside its tier. The mark on each scale is where a typical account sits — not the middle, because most accounts are not in the middle.
The largest single driver. A placement on a publication with an editor who answers their own email takes four to six weeks of relationship, not four to six days.
Regulated verticals need review sign-off before a draft reaches an editor. That cuts the prospect list by roughly two thirds and adds a fortnight to every piece.
Rises less than proportionally up to a point, then stops. Above roughly ten a month the vetting bar is what gives, so past that the answer is a second market rather than a bigger number.
A profile with an unresolved problem in it has to be read before anything is added. Sometimes the first quarter is cleanup and no new links are built at all.
04
Fixed scope and a fixed fee. Useful on their own, and each one is credited against the first invoice if it turns into a retainer.
2–3 weeks
Full backlink review, toxic link identification, disavow file, and a recovery roadmap. One document, one call.
$2,400
2 weeks
A vetted pitch list for your vertical — every site through the same six checks, with the reasoning recorded per row. Yours to keep and to run yourself.
$1,200
1 week
Where the three sites beating you actually earned their links, which of those are reachable, and which were bought and should not be copied.
$950
04
Not upsells. These are the things that are not for sale here at any figure, and the reason each one is not.
Every link is earned editorially. A site that sells placements has its outbound equity discounted wholesale, and the discount is applied retroactively to everything it ever linked to — including you.
Nobody controls the results page. A guaranteed ranking is either a misunderstanding of the work or a misrepresentation of it, and the second is more common.
Commit to fifteen and by month three you will be hitting fifteen — having relaxed the vetting standard four times to get there. Quality is the only variable left to flex once volume is fixed.
Both are recognisable at scale, both are cheap to detect, and both leave a cleanup project that costs more than the campaign ever did.
I will flag what is broken and say what it is costing you. Fixing it is somebody else's discipline and pretending otherwise helps nobody.
05
Tell me the site, the pages that matter commercially, and roughly when you need the first links live. I will reply with a number and the reasoning behind it — including if the honest answer is that you do not need this yet.
No charge for the first look. A written answer, not a calendar link.