Link building packages: what do they include and what do they cost in the UK?

A link building package is a fee for getting other websites to link to yours, and one published UK pricing guide from April 2026 puts link building for small businesses at £500 to £1,500+ a month. The price matters less than how the links are won. Links bought to push up your rankings break Google's spam policies, so the only package worth paying for earns links from relevant sites that have a real reason to mention you.

Here's what link building is, what Google says about it, what a cheap package hides and what a sound approach looks like.

What is link building, and why does it matter?

Link building is the work of getting other websites to link to yours. Google uses links as one of the signals of how well known a business is. Its Business Profile help page Tips to improve your local ranking on Google, checked in October 2026, describes prominence as how well known a business is and says it's "also based on info like how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have." So links aren't only a concern for national brands. They feed into where a local business appears on the map too.

Not every link is equal, though. A link earns its value from the site it sits on and the reason it's there. A trade body listing its members, a supplier naming you as a stockist, a local paper covering a project you delivered: each of those is a real site pointing to you because you're relevant to its readers. A link on a site that publishes anything for anyone who pays has no reason to be there except the payment, and that's exactly the kind of link Google's rules are written to catch.

What does Google say about buying links?

Google is clear. Its spam policies, last updated in August 2026, define link spam as "creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings." The first example Google lists is buying or selling links for ranking purposes, and that covers swapping money, goods, services or free products for a link or a post.

The same policy names the other tactics cheap packages rely on: automated programs or services that create links, low-quality directory and bookmark links, links with optimised anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites, and links spread across the footers or templates of many sites. The consequence is spelled out too: "Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all."

Paid links aren't banned outright. The spam policies call buying and selling links "a normal part of the economy of the web" when it's done for advertising or sponsorship, as long as the links are qualified. Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links, last updated in December 2025, says to mark adverts and paid placements with rel="sponsored", and that rel="nofollow", which it recommended for these links before, is still acceptable. A labelled paid link is advertising, and it's fine to buy for the visitors it sends. Paying for an unlabelled link to lift your rankings is what breaks the rules.

What's inside a cheap link building package?

A quantity of links, sold by the month. The April 2026 pricing guide says the key driver of price is the number of backlinks you want, and that placement prices are driven by the publisher's domain authority. Neither of those measures asks whether the site has anything to do with your business. The same guide puts placements on spammy domains at £10 to £50 and says they are "unlikely to deliver any SEO value."

Before you sign anything, check for these warning signs:

• A fixed number of links every month, whatever your business or market.
• Sites picked from a price list rather than for their relevance to you.
• Guest posts on blogs that publish for anyone who pays.
• No report showing where each link sits and how it was won.

The risk sits with you. If Google treats those links as spam, it's your site that drops in the results, not the seller's.

What does a sound approach to link building include?

It starts with your own site. Nobody links to a thin service page, so the first job is giving people something worth linking to: clear pages for each service and area, useful answers to the questions your customers ask, and facts about your business that match everywhere they appear.

Then the links come from the places your customers and your industry already trust. That means trade bodies and accreditation registers you belong to, suppliers and partners you work with, local and industry press, and directories your customers use. Each of those links has a reason to exist beyond SEO, which is the opposite of the link spam Google's policies describe.

Finally, you see every link. A sound approach reports where each one came from, checks the links already pointing at your site for problems, and labels anything paid as sponsored.

What does link building cost in the UK?

The same published UK pricing guide puts link building for small businesses at £500 to £1,500+ a month, editorial placements at £150 to £1,000 per link, and fully managed link building at £2,000 to £15,000+ a month. Remember that a price per link is a price for placements, so ask any seller how each link is earned and whether paid ones are marked as sponsored.

What decides the cost for your business is the work involved, not a link count. Four things drive it: how competitive your market is, how many towns or services you want to rank for, how much your site needs before anyone will link to it, and how much content has to be written to give other sites a reason to mention you. A local trade in one town and a firm chasing searches across several cities face very different amounts of work.

How does DLR Media handle link building?

We don't sell link packages. Links are one part of our SEO service, alongside technical SEO, daily content and GEO, so the pages being linked to are worth the link. We earn links from relevant, trusted sites, report them to you each month and never buy links, because bought links put your rankings at risk.

All of it runs inside the DLR Growth Engine: daily SEO and GEO, technical SEO and backlinks, Google Ads, Meta Ads and a free custom website worth £4,500 that's yours after the 12-month term, for £1,499 a month + VAT. The approach is the same in every market, and you can see how we apply it to one city on our page on SEO in Sheffield.

Worried about what's already pointing at your site? A standalone SEO audit checks your existing links along with your technical set-up, content and Business Profile, and sets your link profile against the businesses ranking above you. Scope and price are agreed before we start, there's no ongoing contract, and every audit we run is listed on our audits page.

Frequently asked questions

Are link building packages worth it?

Not if the package buys links to lift your rankings, because Google's spam policies class that as link spam. Pay for work that earns links from relevant sites, with every link reported.

Is it against Google's rules to buy links?

Yes, when the link is bought to influence rankings. Paid links for advertising or sponsorship are fine when they're marked with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".

How many backlinks does a small business need?

There's no set number. What counts is links from sites relevant to your business and area, and how you compare with the competitors ranking above you, which an audit measures.

Do you sell link building on its own?

No. Link building sits inside our SEO work in the Growth Engine, at £1,499 a month + VAT. To review the links you already have, book a standalone audit.

Talk to us about your links

Worried about links a past supplier built, or want to know what your site needs to rank? Call us on +44 1382 699595 and we'll talk you through your options.