What does a link building service actually do?

Short answer

A good one assesses your existing links, works out who has a real reason to link to you, creates or identifies something worth linking to, does personal outreach, and reports every live link honestly. A bad one buys placements from a list and sends you a monthly count. They charge similar prices, so you have to ask how the links are actually obtained.

“Link building service” covers two businesses that look identical from the outside. One does research and outreach to earn links. The other resells placements on sites that sell to anyone. Their websites use the same words and their prices overlap. The difference shows up a year later, in whether the links still count.

What the work involves, done properly

Assessing your current profile. What links you have, which help, which are ignored, and whether anything is holding the site back. Sites with a history of paid links often need cleanup before new links are worth building.
Competitor gap analysis. Who links to the sites above you and not to you, and why. This often explains a ranking gap that looked mysterious.
Choosing the pages to support. Not the homepage by default. The service pages, categories or guides that need help and can turn links into rankings.
Finding or making linkable assets. Pages with a genuine reason to be cited: data, tools, better guides. Not everything on a site can earn links, and pretending otherwise wastes outreach.
Prospecting. A list of specific sites with a stated reason each would link to you, not just a metric.
Outreach. Personal emails to the right person, with something useful to offer. Most go unanswered. That is normal.
Reclamation. Turning unlinked mentions into links and fixing links that point at pages you have moved.
Internal linking. Making sure the authority from new links reaches the pages that need it.
Reporting. Live URLs, the anchor text used, and what each one took.

What a reseller does instead

Takes your target pages and anchor text, picks sites from a price list sorted by authority score, pays for placements, and sends a report. The work is fast and the count is predictable, which is exactly why it appeals. Google’s spam policies name buying or selling links for ranking purposes, and large-scale guest posting with keyword-rich anchors, as link spam. Most of these links end up discounted.

Questions that separate the two

Google’s own guide to hiring help suggests asking any SEO whether they follow Google Search Essentials, what results they expect and in what timeframe, and how they measure success. For link building specifically, I would add:

How are the links obtained? Listen for “outreach” with specifics, not “our network”.

Can I see examples of links you built recently, and the sites they are on? Open them. Ask whether a real reader would see that page.

Do you guarantee a number of links per month? Real outreach cannot promise a count.

Do you pay sites for placement? Ask directly. A clear no is a good sign. Evasion is an answer too.

What would you not do? A good provider has firm boundaries and states them before you start.

What a realistic engagement produces

Fewer links than you expect, from better places than you expect. Some months produce several placements and some produce one. Each one is on a site with a reason to link to you and readers who might click. Alongside that, a cleaner profile, better internal linking, and usually one or two assets on your site that keep earning links after the engagement ends.

The results build over quarters, not weeks. Anyone promising ranking movement from links within a month is either taking credit for something else or selling something that will not last.

When you do not need one

If your pages do not yet match what people search for, fix that first. If your link profile already looks similar to the sites ranking above you, links are probably not your gap. And if you have strong relationships with suppliers, partners and local organisations, you can earn the first round of links yourself with a few emails.

How I run it

Relevance first, then authority, then volume. I assess what you have, fix what is broken, build or identify the pages that can earn links, then do outreach steadily and report every live URL. No PBNs, no link farms, no packages priced per link.

What to expect in the first ninety days

Month one is mostly assessment and research: your profile, your competitors’, the pages to support and the prospects worth approaching. You may see no new links at all, and that is fine. Month two is when assets go live and outreach starts. Month three is usually when the first placements land. If someone is reporting dozens of new links in the first fortnight, they skipped the first two steps, and the links almost certainly came from a list rather than from outreach.

If you want to know whether links are actually your gap before paying anyone to build them, my link building service starts with an honest assessment of your profile against the sites you are trying to outrank.