SaaS link building service

Every link has a serial number, a stage, and a date you can check.

Most agencies show you a report at the end of the month. We show you the production board: what is being prospected, what is pitched, what is drafted, and what went live yesterday — with the reason code beside anything we killed.

Get a production plan See the schedule

Billed on live, indexed links · 12-month replacement · 30 days' notice

Production boardweek 14
  1. LF-2418Vertical trade weeklyLive
  2. LF-2417Operator newsletterLive
  3. LF-2421Practitioner blogDraft with editor
  4. LF-2423Category review sitePitched
  5. LF-2419General business titleKilled — R-03
  6. LF-2425Regional tech titleProspecting

R-03 — page traffic under threshold. Every kill carries a code.

5stages

every candidate passes, in order

31days

median from prospect to live URL

62%

of candidates killed before a pitch

96%

still live at twelve months

The line

Five stages, and what you see at each one

The point of publishing this is not the process. It is that you can ask "where is LF-2421 today" and get an answer that is checkable rather than reassuring.

  1. 01

    Prospecting

    We build the candidate list from your category, not from a database of sites that accept posts. Page-level traffic, topical overlap and outbound profile are recorded before anything else.

    You see: the candidate list, with the numbers we scored it on.

  2. 02

    Screening

    Nine checks, each with a reason code. Sixty-two percent of candidates die here. A killed candidate is written to the log with its code — it is not quietly dropped.

    You see: the kill log, code by code, updated as it happens.

  3. 03

    Pitching

    One editor, one angle, written to their beat. No sequences, no follow-up chains. If a pitch gets no reply in fourteen days it is closed rather than chased.

    You see: which titles were pitched and which replied.

  4. 04

    Drafting

    Our writers produce the piece; your nominated approver signs it before it is submitted. The link sits inside the argument, in a sentence the article would be worse without.

    You see: the draft, before the publication does.

  5. 05

    Live and monitored

    Recrawled weekly. If it disappears inside twelve months we replace it free. Anything not indexed by day thirty is not billed — that moves host quality onto our side of the ledger.

    You see: the live URL, the index date, and the weekly status.

Plan it before you buy it

What actually ships, month by month

The most common reason a programme gets cancelled is not the work. It is that month one looked empty. Set the volume and watch where the first live link actually lands.

45 domains

Building the list First links land Steady production Gap closed

First live link
—
Gap closed
—
Total placements
—
Programme cost
—

Month one produces prospecting and pitches, not links — the median lead time from first contact to a live URL is thirty-one days, and editors do not answer in week one. Any schedule that promises links in month one is selling inventory it already owns.

Three records

Pulled from the board, including the run we stopped

RUN 214 · workflow automation, Series A

Forty-one domains, eleven months, one rewritten plan

The gap on their category page was forty-one at page level. At ten a month with a sixty-two percent kill rate, the honest schedule was eleven months, not the two quarters they had budgeted. They took the longer plan.

In month five we stopped pitching trade press and moved the volume to operator newsletters, which converted worse on authority and considerably better on demo requests.

Volume
10 a month
Shipped
103 placements
Killed
171 candidates
Rate
$2,900/month

RUN 187 · developer tooling, seed

The category had thirty-one reachable titles, and we said so

Their list was genuinely small. Fifteen a month would have exhausted it in under three months and then started buying inventory nobody reads. We capped the run at six a month and put the rest of the budget into one benchmark that has earned links on its own since.

Lower monthly volume, lower monthly invoice, and a programme that is still running.

Volume
6 a month, capped
Shipped
68 placements
Asset
1 benchmark, 71 domains since
Rate
$1,900/month

RUN 203 · analytics platform · stopped in month two

We stopped the run and refunded the second month

Two months in, their referring domains already matched the two competitors above them. The constraint was the page, not the profile — it had no pricing and no comparison, so authority was moving a ranking and nothing else.

We sent the analysis, stopped production and refunded month two. They rewrote the page and the head term moved four positions with no new links at all.

Shipped
9 placements
Refunded
1 month
Outcome
page rewritten, +4 positions
Restarted
not yet, and that is correct
The repeating grid of a building facade

Why the board is public

An agency that will not show you what it rejected is telling you something

The kill log costs us money to keep honest — every code on it is a placement we could have billed you for and did not. That is exactly why it is the only part worth reading.

Rates

Fixed monthly volume, billed on what went live

A month that underdelivers carries the shortfall into the next one. It is never quietly invoiced at full rate.

Run 5

$1,600/month

For a gap under forty domains, or a first quarter you want to judge before committing further.

  • 5 editorial placements a month
  • Full board access and kill log
  • Weekly recrawl, 12-month replacement
Start a run

Most runs

Run 10

$2,900/month

For a forty to ninety domain gap you want closed inside a year rather than inside three.

  • 10 editorial placements a month
  • Round-up and comparison placement
  • Quarterly anchor-profile review
  • Everything in Run 5
Start a run

Run 15

$4,200/month

For a contested head term where the gap is ninety plus and competitors are still acquiring.

  • 15 editorial placements a month
  • One linkable asset a quarter
  • Named producer, fortnightly call
  • Everything in Run 10
Start a run

Blended unit cost runs $280 to $320 a placement. Across the market, credible B2B SaaS placements sit roughly between $150 and $500 — below about $150 the delivery arithmetic stops closing, so the inventory is coming from somewhere else.

Before you start a run

The questions worth asking any link building service

Ours are answered here. Ask the same ones everywhere else.

What does a SaaS link building service actually cost?

Linkforge runs $1,600 to $4,200 a month for five to fifteen placements, a blended $280 to $320 each. Across the market credible B2B SaaS placements run roughly $150 to $500. The number to interrogate is not the monthly fee but the implied unit cost: a $1,200 retainer promising fifteen links is buying at $80, which is below what a real editorial placement costs.

When does the first link actually go live?

Median thirty-one days from first contact. Month one produces a candidate list, a kill log and pitches — it does not produce links, and a schedule that claims otherwise is selling inventory it already controls. Set the volume in the schedule above and it will show you where the first live link lands.

What is a reason code, and why does it matter?

Every killed candidate is written to the log with a code: R-01 shared footprint, R-02 anonymous byline, R-03 page traffic under threshold, and so on. Anyone can show you what shipped. The kill log is the only artefact that proves a standard was applied rather than a quota filled, because it is the part that costs the agency money to keep honest.

Can we see the draft before it is published?

You have to. Your nominated approver signs every draft before submission. It is the single cheapest safeguard against a placement that is technically fine and commercially wrong — the wrong claim, the wrong comparison, the wrong page linked.

What happens when a link disappears?

Recrawled weekly, replaced free inside twelve months. Attrition runs about four percent in the first year. Anything not indexed by day thirty is not billed at all, which puts the cost of a bad host on us rather than on you.

Would you ever tell us to stop?

Run 203 above is one of three we stopped last year. If referring domains already match the competitors, the page is the constraint and more links move a ranking without moving pipeline. Stopping a run costs us a retainer and saves you four.

On the blog

WHAT IT COSTS, WRITTEN DOWN

All 9 articles

07 — Start

GET A PLAN

Tell us the page you need to move and the term it should win. We will run the gap audit for free and come back with the real number — the domains between you and the top of the page, which package closes it, and how long that takes.

  • Written reply within one business day. No call needed to get it.
  • The gap audit is free and yours to keep either way.
  • If your budget is better spent elsewhere, we will say so.

08:00–18:00 MT, Monday to Friday

Studio

999 W Main St
Boise, ID 83702
+1 (986) 800 9412

No newsletter. No sequences. No sharing your details with anyone.