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Every week, a company inbox receives the same offer: “50 quality backlinks for €99”. And every time, the same question comes up in the marketing meeting: do links still count, or are they a relic of SEO from ten years ago? The short answer: they count, but not all of them, and not for everyone. This article from our SEO and AI visibility section sorts out what a link earns from what it really costs.
In short
An inbound link remains a signal of trust for Google, especially on contested queries.
On a query with little competition, a good page can rank without any links at all.
Links bought to manipulate rankings are spam in Google’s eyes: their real cost is the risk.
The best investment is a page that deserves to be cited, then an effort to make it known.
What is a backlink still good for?
A backlink is a link placed on another site that points to yours. For a search engine, it is a form of recommendation: someone, elsewhere, judged your page useful to their readers.
The effect has not gone away. Ahrefs’ search traffic study finds that pages receiving links from more different domains tend to get more traffic, while taking care to point out that this is a correlation and not proof. It also shows the other side: most published pages get no visits from Google at all.
of the pages in Ahrefs’ index get no visits from Google
pages with no inbound links exceeds 1,000 search visits a month
Read these two figures together. A page without links can rank, but it is rare, and almost always on topics where nobody is competing. On the queries where your competitors invest, links remain one of the gaps that separate pages of comparable quality.
What a good link earns
A good link earns three things, and ranking is only the first.
- Visibility on contested queries. This is the classic SEO benefit: a page recommended by recognised sites in your sector starts with a head start.
- Qualified visits. A link in a trade association article, a serious comparison or a specialist outlet brings readers who already have context. That traffic does not depend on the algorithm.
- Material for answer engines. AI assistants that cite their sources rely on what is published and picked up elsewhere. A brand mentioned on sites people consult to form an opinion is more likely to appear in an answer: we covered this in our article on getting cited by ChatGPT.
A link that brings you readers is worth something even if Google ignores it. A link that exists only for Google is worth only the risk it creates.
What a bad link costs
Google is explicit. Its spam policies class as link spam the buying or selling of links intended to influence rankings, large-scale link exchanges and links obtained through automated programs. A sponsored link is still allowed, provided it is flagged as such (sponsored or nofollow attribute), which is precisely what removes its effect on rankings.
So the cost of a cheap bundle of links does not show on the invoice:
What the €99 offer promises
Dozens of links in a few days
An authority score that climbs in the seller’s tool
What it often produces
Links on sites nobody reads
A signal Google knows how to ignore, or penalise
The most common outcome is not even the penalty: it is budget spent for nothing, because the algorithm has learned not to count these links. The most expensive outcome is the manual action, which pushes entire pages down and takes months of clean-up.
Watch out
Beware of authority scores sold with the links
The authority scores shown by SEO tools are indicators of those tools, not Google measurements. A link seller often picks the score that flatters their goods the most.
Where to put the budget in 2026
For a team of 20 to 500 people, the order of priorities is almost always the same.
- Repair before attracting.
A slow, poorly structured site full of orphan pages wastes the links it receives. That is the purpose of an SEO audit.
- Have something worth citing.
A study of your sector, a freely available tool, a reference guide, figures that only you publish: that is what a journalist or a partner wants to link to.
- Make it known to the right people.
Partners, suppliers, trade associations, specialist media, events where you speak: the strongest links come from relationships that already exist.
- Measure on visits and enquiries.
A link is judged by what it brings, not by the number shown on a dashboard.
This approach costs more in time than in money, and that is precisely what protects it: what cannot be bought in bulk does not lose value in bulk. It is part of in-depth work on your content, like the work described in our article on what an SEO agency should deliver in the age of AI.
Our view
Links are neither dead nor magic. A link amplifies a page that deserves to be found; it does not replace a page that does not. If you have to choose between buying links and improving your pages, improve your pages, then give others a reason to cite them.
That is the approach of our SEO and GEO offer: start from your customers’ queries, build the pages that answer them, and look for links where your customers already read. And if you want to know what serious support is worth, our article on SEO agency pricing gives the benchmarks.
Frequently asked questions
Are backlinks still a ranking factor in 2026?
Yes. Google still makes use of links in order to understand which pages are recommended by other sites. Their weight depends on the competition on the query: decisive on contested topics, often secondary on niche queries where a good page is enough.
Can you buy backlinks without risk?
A paid link is allowed if it is flagged as sponsored, but it then no longer counts for rankings. Buying unflagged links to influence Google is link spam under Google’s own rules, with the risk of the links being ignored or of a manual action.
How many backlinks do you need to rank well?
There is no number. A few links from recognised sites in your sector carry more weight than hundreds of links from sites nobody reads. Look instead at the pages that already rank on your queries, and where their links come from.
Is a link that Google does not follow worth anything?
Yes, if it is placed where your customers read. It brings visits, awareness, and mentions that AI assistants can pick up. A link is judged first on the people it brings, and only then on what an algorithm thinks of it, which may change its mind tomorrow.
Sources
- Google’s spam policies for web search (new tab)developers.google.com
Jim · founder of Brain Plus AI
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