Most failed link orders fail for dull reasons. Here are seven we see in news and trend blogs, and a check you can run on any placement.
FireBlogs editorial team ·
Fix: wait until the topic proves it has a second life. See the 48-hour test.
Fix: target the page you want to rank. A homepage link rarely helps a deep article.
Fix: spread orders over weeks. You learn more and look less odd.
Fix: filter by niche and language. A gaming link to a health explainer helps nobody.
Fix: check day one that the link is live, dofollow and reads like normal text.
Fix: look at 28-day windows in Search Console. Daily positions on news terms jump around.
Fix: hold a reserve. The timeline shows when to judge.
Confirm the link and anchor are there and the page loads without a login.
In your browser's developer tools, check there is no nofollow, sponsored or ugc attribute if you paid for dofollow.
If the page is not indexed after a few weeks, note it.
The Links report lists top linking sites. New ones can take weeks to appear.
Their crawlers differ from Google's, so a link may show in one tool and not another.
No checker proves that a link helps. It proves that a link exists.
Indexes differ. Ahrefs, Semrush and Majestic each keep their own index, and none of them is Google's. Search Console is Google's own data but samples and delays it. Use two sources and accept the gap.
If a placement we delivered is missing or wrong, tell us through your account page with the order number. For the budget side, the two plans show how to reserve cash for fixes.
The expensive one is the first on the list. Everything else wastes a few dollars, while buying for a dead story wastes the whole order.
Think of the news desk habit of asking "is this still a story tomorrow?" Apply the same question to the target page before opening the basket. If the answer is no, put the budget into the sequel instead.
The cheapest fix is a log. A simple sheet with the donor, order date, target URL, price and a note after six weeks turns hunches into data. Without it, a year of orders blends together and nobody can say what worked.
If you want example budgets to copy, the two-plan page is a good start. For what to do about a chain of links, see the tier 2 tree.
Day one for liveness, then roughly four to six weeks for any movement on the target page. Earlier numbers are mostly noise on a news site, where traffic swings daily with the news cycle.
Both. Search Console shows what Google reports about your own property. A tool like Ahrefs shows links it has crawled anywhere, including on competitors. Neither is complete.
Our placements are permanent dofollow. If a live link carries nofollow, report it with the order number and we will look at it.
You can check the donor before you pay: Domain Rating, traffic and referring domains are on each row. The article itself exists only after payment.