How to Buy Dofollow Backlinks For SEO Success

Introduction

If you’re running a B2B revenue team in 2025, you’ve probably heard some version of this from your SEO or marketing agency:

> “We just need more high‑quality dofollow backlinks.”

Then you look at the numbers.

Organic is a big opportunity. Backlinks are still a top‑3 Google ranking factor, and pages with more links consistently get more traffic and leads. source But link building is slow, hard, and expensive. Meanwhile, your SDRs and AEs need pipeline now.

So you Google “how to buy dofollow backlinks” and end up in a sketchy corner of the internet full of $5 DR 70 links and private blog networks.

This guide is the antidote to that.

We’ll break down, in plain English, how B2B sales and marketing leaders can invest money into dofollow backlinks without torching your domain, how to evaluate vendors, what realistic budgets look like, and how to balance SEO with outbound programs so your quarter doesn’t live or die by rankings.

You’ll learn:

• Why backlinks still matter for B2B pipeline
• What “buying dofollow backlinks” really means under Google’s spam policies
• How to evaluate link vendors and offers like a pro
• A responsible playbook for funding link acquisition
• How to connect link building to SDR productivity and booked meetings

Let’s start with the reality check.

1. The Reality of Buying Dofollow Backlinks in 2025

Backlinks still move the needle

Despite AI overviews, zero‑click searches, and endless Google updates, links are still foundational to ranking.

A 2025 roundup of SEO statistics shows:

• 79.7% of SEOs view link building as a crucial component of their SEO strategy.
• 52.3% say link building is the most challenging part of SEO.
• On average, 28-36% of SEO budgets go to link building. source

Another analysis highlights that 95% of web pages have zero backlinks, while the #1 Google result has roughly 3.8x more backlinks than results in positions 2-10. source In other words, most pages are invisible, and links are a major reason why.

For B2B teams, this matters because organic search doesn’t just deliver traffic-it delivers high‑intent, self‑educating buyers that your SDRs love talking to.

• A project management SaaS company doubled organic traffic and grew monthly organic leads 3.5x after building 212 high‑quality links.
• A B2B MarTech platform grew organic leads 10x year‑over‑year with an 87% increase in organic traffic, and achieved similar growth at ~40x lower cost than paid ads by focusing on link building. source source

Those are pipeline numbers, not just SEO vanity metrics.

But Google’s spam policies haven’t gone away

Here’s the uncomfortable part: Google’s documentation is crystal clear about link schemes.

Their spam policies state that any links intended to manipulate rankings can be treated as link spam, whether that’s incoming or outgoing. source source And over the last few years, we’ve seen:

• Dedicated link spam updates that detect and nullify artificial links
• A 2024 crackdown on “site reputation abuse” (parasite SEO), where low‑quality third‑party content rides on big brands’ domains
• 2025 spam policy updates focused on AI‑generated content, fake guest posts, and repurposed expired domains used mainly for link schemes source source

Google’s main response is often to ignore spammy links rather than nuke your entire site, but if they were propping up your rankings, you’ll feel it when they vanish. source In more serious cases, manual actions can partially or completely demote affected pages.

So where does that leave a B2B team that wants to “buy dofollow backlinks” without putting the pipeline at risk?

The answer is nuance.

You can’t remove risk entirely, but you can:

• Stay within the spirit (and as much as possible, the letter) of Google’s guidelines
• Invest money into outreach, content, and PR rather than raw links
• Avoid patterns Google’s link spam systems are designed to catch

Think of it as risk‑managed link acquisition, not “black‑hat blast and pray.”

2. Why B2B Companies Invest Real Money in Dofollow Links

The economics of buying links in 2025

A 2025 survey of 518 SEO professionals found: source

• $508.95 is the average acceptable price for a single high‑quality backlink
• $8,406/month is the average minimum link‑building budget needed to compete in highly competitive niches
• 56% of teams outsource at least some of their link building
• Agencies and in‑house teams both allocate 30%+ of SEO budget to link acquisition

In other words, serious SEO programs treat link acquisition like a proper line item-just like SDR headcount, ad spend, or conference sponsorships.

For B2B companies, the question isn’t “Should we ever pay for links?” It’s:

• How do we direct this spend in the safest, most defensible way?
• How do we ensure every dollar moves us towards pipeline and revenue, not just higher DR?

How links turn into pipeline (when done right)

Let’s connect the dots from links to deals.

1. Links improve ranking potential for key pages: product, pricing, feature comparisons, and high‑intent blog posts.
2. Higher rankings bring in more targeted visitors who are actively researching your space.
3. Those visitors convert into demo requests, trials, or content downloads.
4. SDRs work inbound leads that already trust you more because they’ve seen you in search results and on third‑party sites.

We’ve already mentioned a couple of case studies:

• Project management SaaS: 2x organic traffic and 3.5x monthly organic leads from 212 high‑quality links.
• B2B MarTech platform: 87% organic traffic increase and 10x organic leads YOY from consistent dofollow link building, at ~40x lower cost than buying the same traffic via Google Ads.
• A B2B manufacturer that combined technical fixes, content, and targeted link building saw 150% organic traffic growth and a 120% increase in organic leads in just six months. source

In each case, links weren’t magic on their own. They amplified good content, strong positioning, and a solid conversion funnel. But without those links, those companies stay buried under bigger brands.

For revenue leaders, that’s the real business case for link investment: cheaper, compounding, higher‑quality demand that also makes your SDRs more effective.

3. How to Buy Dofollow Backlinks Without Torching Your Domain

3.1 Understand dofollow vs nofollow vs sponsored

“Dofollow” is just shorthand for a normal link that passes PageRank (i.e., ranking power). The opposite is:

• `rel="nofollow"`, suggests Google shouldn’t treat the link as a ranking signal
• `rel="sponsored"`, indicates a paid or sponsored link
• `rel="ugc"`, user‑generated content (forums, comments, etc.)

Google expects paid links to use `rel="sponsored"`. source When you explicitly pay for a dofollow link that passes PageRank, you’re technically outside guidelines.

That said, the real world is messy:

• Many publishers still sell dofollow placements
• Most SEOs believe Google can’t reliably detect or discount all paid links
• 91.9% of link builders think their competitors buy links anyway source

So the game becomes: If you’re going to put budget here, how do you do it in a way that is as natural and defensible as possible?

3.2 Safe(ish) vs dangerous link buying

Relatively safer approaches (still not risk‑free, but far more defensible):

• Paying agencies for outreach and content that earns editorial placements on relevant, real sites
• Sponsoring thought‑leadership content where links fit naturally into in‑depth articles
• Funding digital PR (data studies, expert quotes, industry reports) that journalists actually want to reference
• Working with partners on co‑marketing campaigns that include genuine links

Dangerous approaches (high risk of devaluation or penalties):

• Buying large packages of guaranteed dofollow links on unknown sites
• Getting links from obvious PBNs (private blog networks) or link farms
• Mass inserting links into old content across random sites
• Using exact‑match commercial anchors everywhere
• Leaning on repurposed expired domains used only for spammy content

Recent analyses of Google’s 2024-2025 spam updates call out paid links without proper disclosure, mass link insertions, AI‑generated guest posts, PBNs, and excessive sitewide links as specific risk factors. source source

If a vendor’s pitch sounds like “we control 500 sites and can drop your links anywhere, all dofollow,” assume you’re burning short‑term rankings for long‑term stability.

3.3 Build a link‑buying framework, not a shopping spree

Before you spend a dime, answer three questions:

1. What are we trying to rank for? (Specific high‑intent keywords and pages)
2. Who are we trying to influence? (ICP, personas, industries)
3. How will we measure success? (Organic demo requests, MQLs, pipeline, closed‑won)

Then design your link criteria.

Quality criteria for B2B link prospects

From recent surveys:

• 84.6% of SEOs say relevance is their #1 backlink quality signal
• 68.3% also look at domain authority metrics
• 68.3% care about site traffic source

Borrow their playbook:

• Topical relevance: Is this site clearly in your space (or adjacent)?
• Real traffic: Does it get steady, organic visits-not just a big DR score?
• Audience overlap: Would your buyers realistically read this site?
• Content quality: Would you be proud to show your CEO this article?

Yes, DR/DA still matter, but only in context.

Anchor text strategy

That same 2025 survey found partial‑match anchors are the top choice for 41.7% of SEOs, with exact‑match and branded anchors trailing. That’s not an accident.

For a natural profile:

• 60-70% branded or URL anchors (e.g., SalesHive, yourcompany.com)
• 20-30% partial‑match (e.g., outsourced SDR team, B2B link building strategy)
• <10% exact‑match commercial (e.g., buy SOC 2 compliance software)

If a vendor tries to stuff exact‑match anchors into every article, push back.

3.4 Vendor due diligence: questions to ask

Treat link vendors the way you’d treat any critical go‑to‑market partner.

Ask them:

1. Where do your links come from?
• Look for real publisher relationships and targeted outreach, not “our private sites.”
2. Can you share 5-10 recent placements in B2B niches?
• Manually check traffic (via Similarweb/Ahrefs), content quality, and relevance.
3. Do you use PBNs, expired domains, or link farms?
• If they dodge, that’s your answer.
4. What are your minimum traffic and DR/DA thresholds?
• Many solid providers target DR 40-80 with 5,000+ organic visits/month in your key markets.
5. How do you handle `rel="sponsored"` and nofollow?
• A realistic partner will admit some placements are sponsored or nofollow and explain why they still have value.
6. What happens if a link is removed or deindexed?
• There should be a replacement or refund policy.

Given that 69% of SEOs rate Ahrefs’ DR as the most reliable authority metric, it’s fair to expect vendors to share Ahrefs screenshots. source

If you wouldn’t let this vendor run your brand’s social channels or speak on your behalf at a conference, don’t let them control your backlink profile either.

4. A Responsible Step‑by‑Step Playbook for B2B Link Buying

This is the practical part-how to buy dofollow backlinks in a way that prioritizes safety, relevance, and revenue.

Step 1: Audit your current backlink profile

Before adding new links, understand what you already have.

• Pull data from Google Search Console (used by ~45% of SEOs) and an SEO tool like Ahrefs. source
• Identify:
• Toxic/spammy domains (irrelevant, low‑quality, language mismatches)
• Over‑optimized anchors (too many exact‑match commercial phrases)
• High‑value pages (pricing, product, key blogs) with few referring domains
• Ask: are we already at risk if Google tightens link spam detection again?

If you find clear garbage (link farms, hacked sites), ask the linking sites or your past vendor to remove them. Use Google’s disavow tool sparingly for links you truly can’t control.

Step 2: Define business‑level KPIs

Rankings are a means, not the end.

For B2B teams, the KPIs that matter are:

• Organic demo requests or trials
• Qualified inbound MQLs
• Pipeline and revenue attributed to organic

Real case studies show why this matters:

• One B2B analytics SaaS saw a 150% increase in qualified demo requests and a 220% jump in revenue from organic search after a coordinated content and SEO push. source
• Another B2B company grew organic leads 300% and made SEO their largest lead channel, with 61% lower customer acquisition cost than paid ads. source

When you budget for backlinks, frame them as: “We’re funding X links per month to Y pages, aiming for Z additional demo requests and $N in pipeline over 12-18 months.”

Step 3: Choose tactics where money buys speed, not manipulation

Instead of paying directly for “a list of links,” you’re paying for processes that produce links.

Some of the safest and most effective:

4.3.1 Digital PR and data studies

Digital PR is consistently rated as the most effective link‑building tactic, ahead of old‑school skyscraper campaigns. source

For B2B companies, this usually means:

• Original research (benchmarks, salary reports, industry trends)
• Data‑driven stories from your platform
• Expert commentary on trending topics

Examples:

• A B2C cannabis brand earned 180+ media placements and a 92% increase in linking root domains via data‑driven PR, with a 15% boost in organic impressions. source
• B2B healthtech and affiliate marketing brands have seen dozens to hundreds of authority links and meaningful lead growth from similar digital PR programs.

Yes, you’re paying for PR and outreach, not a guaranteed number of dofollow links-but in practice, many of those placements are dofollow on real, high‑authority domains.

4.3.2 HARO and press‑request platforms

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) and similar services connect journalists with expert sources. When done well:

• Some campaigns see 20% response rates to pitches
• Over 50% of placements historically carry dofollow attributes
• Many articles publish within 1-2 weeks source

The catch is volume and relevance; most businesses only find a few good opportunities a month. This is a supplement, not a complete link strategy-but a very safe one.

4.3.3 Thought‑leadership guest posting

Guest posting became dirty when marketers spammed low‑value sites with templated posts and exact‑match anchors. Google has explicitly warned against that.

But high‑quality, expert‑driven guest content on legitimate industry blogs is still one of the best ways to:

• Get your leaders in front of your ICP
• Earn contextual, in‑content links
• Build relationships that can lead to more links

The key is to treat it like real publishing:

• Pitch topics that are genuinely useful to the host’s audience
• Put your best SMEs forward (CTO, Head of Product, top AE)
• Let the publisher edit anchors and mentions

4.3.4 Sponsored content with transparency

Sometimes you’ll pay for exposure on high‑authority sites that insist on `rel="sponsored"`. Strictly speaking, those links won’t pass PageRank in the way SEOs hope-but they can still:

• Drive referral traffic that converts
• Increase brand searches (which correlate with rankings)
• Improve overall trust in your brand when prospects research you

Think of these as brand and demand plays with side SEO benefits, not pure link equity investments.

Step 4: Budget and timeline planning

Recent data gives us some realistic guardrails: source

• Average acceptable price per high‑quality link: ~$509
• Minimum competitive monthly budget in tough niches: ~$8,406
• 57% of SEOs expect results within 1-3 months for link campaigns

Another survey found 49% of marketers see ranking and traffic improvements 1-3 months after link building, and 30% see them within 3-6 months. source

Translate that to B2B planning:

• Month 0-2: Strategy, content, prospecting, first links land
• Month 2-4: Rankings and traffic start moving for targeted pages
• Month 4-9: Lead and pipeline impact becomes obvious

In other words, link investment won’t rescue this quarter’s pipeline. That’s why smart teams keep outbound humming alongside SEO.

Step 5: Operationalize with roles and process

To make this sustainable:

• SEO/Content: Own keyword strategy, page selection, on‑page optimization, and editorial standards
• Marketing Ops/RevOps: Track attribution from organic to pipeline & revenue
• Sales/SDRs: Feed in objections and questions that should drive content; use new content and third‑party mentions in outreach
• Vendors: Clearly scoped agency or freelancer roles for content, outreach, and PR

Set monthly cadences:

• New links acquired and where
• Rankings and traffic for target pages
• Organic demo requests and MQLs
• Any spam‑risk signals (sudden spikes in low‑quality links)

Now you’re not just buying backlinks-you’re running a controlled acquisition program with clear revenue guardrails.

5. Risk Management: Staying Ahead of Spam Crackdowns

Google is rolling out spam updates like clockwork-multiple times a year since 2021, including link‑specific updates and broad spam sweeps in 2023-2025. source source

Updates in 2024-2025 put special focus on:

• AI‑generated content made only to rank
• Expired domains repurposed for SEO abuse
• Fake guest posts and link placements designed purely for PageRank
• Off‑topic affiliate or casino/crypto content on otherwise trusted sites source

From a B2B revenue perspective, you care about two things:

1. Avoiding sudden drops in organic leads when spam systems nullify or penalize links
2. Keeping your brand off spammy sites that erode trust with buyers

Practical safeguards

• Set hard rules for vendors: No PBNs, no hacked/expired domains, minimum traffic and relevance thresholds, limited use of exact‑match anchors.
• Monitor new links monthly: Check referring domains for quality, topical fit, and geographic relevance to your ICP.
• Respond quickly to bad links: Ask for removal; if that fails and risk feels real, consider disavow.
• Diversify channels: Never let more than, say, 40-50% of your new pipeline come from organic alone. Keep a healthy mix of outbound, partner, and event‑driven opportunities.

Google will keep moving the goalposts. If your backlink strategy is built on obviously manipulative patterns, each update becomes a roulette spin. If you’re buying editorial, relevant, human‑read content, updates are more likely to help you by knocking out spammy competitors.

How This Applies to Your Sales Team

So far we’ve talked a lot about SEO and risk. How does all of this show up for your SDRs and AEs on the ground?

1. Strong backlinks make outbound easier

When your backlink strategy works, your brand:

• Shows up on page one for important keywords
• Appears in third‑party articles, comparisons, and industry blogs
• Feels familiar when a prospect Googles you after a cold touch

That familiarity lifts reply and connect rates on cold calls and emails. Prospects think, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen these guys,” instead of “Who is this random vendor?”

Your SDRs can also use:

• Digital PR features as credibility assets in follow‑ups
• High‑authority guest posts to answer objections
• Data studies (that you built for PR) as hooks in outbound campaigns

2. High‑intent inbound changes conversations

When backlinks push rankings up for pricing pages, product tours, and comparison content, inbound demo requests go up-and they’re different from SDR‑generated leads.

Those buyers:

• Already understand the problem
• Often know your brand and 1-2 competitors
• Come in with higher urgency and shorter sales cycles

Multiple case studies show SEO‑sourced leads with higher close rates and larger deal sizes than other channels. That lets Sales focus its energy on better opportunities instead of grinding entirely cold accounts.

3. Outbound is the safety net while SEO compounds

Even with the best backlink strategy on earth, it’ll take months before your SEO investments show up in the CRM. And Google can change the rules mid‑flight.

That’s why many B2B leadership teams do two things in parallel:

• Fund a steady, responsible link‑building program that builds authority every month
• Run a robust outbound engine (internal SDRs or an outsourced partner like SalesHive) that generates predictable meetings every week

Outbound becomes the control system-the thing you can throttle up or down quickly-while SEO and backlinks change the baseline demand level over 6-24 months. Together, they give your sales org both stability and upside.

Conclusion + Next Steps

You can absolutely allocate budget to dofollow backlinks in 2025—but you can’t afford to be casual about it.

Backlinks are still a backbone ranking factor. Most pages on the web have none, and the #1 results hoard several times more links than the rest of page one. At the same time, Google’s spam systems are smarter and more aggressive than ever, and cheap, manipulative links are a liability, not an asset.

If you’re a B2B sales or marketing leader, your job isn’t to micromanage anchor text. It’s to:

1. Set clear business goals for SEO and link investment (demos, MQLs, pipeline)
2. Fund responsible acquisition tactics-digital PR, real guest thought‑leadership, and targeted outreach to real sites
3. Vet vendors hard and give them strict guardrails
4. Monitor risk and results in the same dashboards your revenue team already lives in
5. Keep outbound strong so no single Google update can wreck your quarter

If you want help on the outbound side while your SEO matures, SalesHive can plug in a proven SDR engine-cold calling, email outreach, and list building-so your team is never waiting on rankings to hit their number.

Next steps:

• Have SEO/Marketing run a backlink audit and present a 12‑month, revenue‑tied link plan
• Align Sales, Marketing, and RevOps on how you’ll measure organic’s contribution to pipeline
• Spin up or strengthen your outbound SDR motion (in‑house or with a partner like SalesHive) to protect near‑term revenue

Play the long game on backlinks, and you’ll build an organic growth engine that makes every SDR more effective. Pair it with disciplined outbound, and you get a revenue machine that’s resilient to algorithm drama and built to scale.