For years, people came to us asking for links. How many, what DA, how fast. And for a while we answered in the same language. At some point I realised that the word «link» was making both sides think about the wrong thing.
This is why we changed how we talk, and what changed in the work because of it.
A link is a side effect
When a respected publication writes about your company, three things happen. Readers who matter see your name. Your brand gains a reference you can show to prospects. And, somewhere in that article, there is usually a link.
For a long time the industry treated the link as the product and everything else as decoration. I think it is the other way round. The link is a side effect of being worth mentioning in a place people trust.
Why the old conversation broke
Three things made it impossible to keep selling «links» with a straight face:
- Google is explicit about paid links. It asks for them to be labelled as `sponsored` or `nofollow`, as set out in its guidance on outbound links. If the value of a paid article were only the link, labelling it would make it worthless. It does not, because the value is the publication and its readers.
- AI search changed the prize. When ChatGPT or Gemini answer a question about your category, they draw on sources they trust. Being in those sources matters whether the link is followed or not.
- Clients needed something they could explain internally. «We bought twenty links» is hard to defend to a board. «We appeared in the five publications our buyers read, and here is what changed» is not.
What «selling authority» means in practice
It sounds like a slogan, so let me be concrete about what changed in how we work:
| Before | Now |
|---|---|
| Packages of links by metric | A list of named outlets chosen for the client's buyers and market |
| The client sees the URL at the end | The client sees the outlet, its metrics and the price before buying |
| Success measured in number of links | Success measured in positions, readers, mentions and AI visibility |
| One-off orders | A steady presence in a few relevant outlets |
| SEO, PR and AI handled separately | SEO, digital PR and GEO planned together |
The platform we built reflects this. You choose from more than 130,000 outlets in 64 countries, filter by country, topic, metrics and price, approve the text and receive the published URL, usually within one to three working days.
What changed inside the team
The biggest change was not in the sales deck. It was in how the team talks to clients every day. Account managers now start by asking who the client's buyers are and what they read, before any conversation about metrics. Editors spend more time on the article itself, because a piece that a publication is happy to run, and that readers actually finish, is worth more than a piece written only to carry a link. And we report on outcomes the client can explain to their own boss.
What did not change
We still care about links. Search engines still use them, and a well-placed link from a relevant publication still helps a page rank. We still check domain metrics, traffic and relevance. We simply stopped pretending that the number is the goal.
What I would ask any supplier, including us
- Which publications, by name, before I pay?
- Who reads them, and in which country?
- Will the content be labelled correctly?
- How will we measure whether it worked, beyond counting links?
If a supplier cannot answer those four questions, the conversation is still about links. If you want to see how we answer them, start with our media catalogue or our backlink service.
This article was drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by Gustavo Cáceres.