01
Never
Paid link placements
Including the polite versions: sponsored posts with a follow link, "editorial fees", guest-post marketplaces.
They are detectable and they age badly.
Authority & Digital PR
Earn the citations every engine already trusts
Links still decide what Google trusts, and third-party consensus decides what a language model is willing to say about you. Both are earned the same way: by publishing something worth referencing, then putting it in front of people whose job is to reference things.
DA 45 → 72
authority built for a client over eighteen months, no purchased links
0
link schemes, PBNs or paid placements in our entire practice
Tier-one
placements built on original data, not pitch volume
Why bought links stopped working
I
The detection got better than the buying
Link networks are pattern-matched at scale now. The risk profile inverted years ago: the downside of a manual action outweighs any ranking benefit a purchased link still carries.
II
Models read the mention, not just the link
A language model weighs unlinked brand mentions in credible places heavily. A trade publication describing you accurately can matter more than a follow link from a directory.
III
Nobody links to a landing page
Journalists and operators link to information. If you have not published something worth citing, no amount of outreach volume will fix it, which is why authority work starts with the asset, not the pitch list.
The Rule
We do not pitch anything we would not be comfortable seeing quoted back to us in a competitor deck. Every placement rests on something we actually made.
That constraint makes the work slower and the results considerably harder to take away from you.
No paid links
No PBNs
Data-led pitching
How authority actually gets built
Asset first, relationships second, volume never.
A survey of your customer base, a dataset from your own operations, an index you compute and republish quarterly. Journalists need numbers with a named source and a defensible method. Give them that and outreach becomes conversation instead of cold pitching.
Survey design
Index and benchmark
Methodology page
A short, researched list of writers who cover this specific beat, approached with the finding rather than the brand. We work relationships over quarters, not campaigns, and we would rather land four genuine placements than four hundred syndicated reprints.
Beat-level targeting
Finding-led pitch
Relationship cadence
Your founders and practitioners quoted in the places your buyers read, contributing to journalist source platforms, and speaking where the transcript gets published. This is what builds the Person entity that models rely on when deciding whether your company knows anything.
Source platforms
Bylines
Podcast and panel transcripts
Each research asset is re-cut for the surfaces that matter: an industry roundup, a Reddit discussion where it is genuinely relevant, a LinkedIn breakdown, a citation-ready summary page. Then we track who picks it up and follow the second wave.
Re-cutting
Second-wave follow-up
Citation tracking
What we will not do
Stated plainly, because the industry standard here is quiet.
02
Never
Private blog networks
Rented authority on sites nobody reads. A liability sitting on your domain waiting for an update.
The cleanup costs more than the links did.
03
Never
Fabricated statistics
The most common trick in digital PR: a "study" of thirty people presented as an industry finding.
One debunk erases years of trust.
04
Never
Astroturfed community posts
Sockpuppet Reddit accounts praising a client. Communities detect it, and so increasingly do the models.
See our Reddit approach instead.
The cadence
- 01 Authority audit Current profile, competitor gap, and an honest read on which of your assets could already be pitched. Week 1-2
- 02 Asset build The research or dataset the campaign will rest on, with a published methodology. Week 3-7
- 03 Targeted outreach A researched list, approached with the finding. Slow, personal, low volume. Week 7-12
- 04 Amplify Re-cut for secondary surfaces and follow the pickup wherever it goes. Month 3+
- 05 Repeat quarterly One serious asset per quarter compounds faster than monthly campaigns nobody remembers. Ongoing
Next
See where your authority actually stands
We map your citation profile against your three closest competitors and identify the one asset that would move it fastest. Free, one week.