SEO Galaxy is now GetMentioned. The platform stays the same. Want a demo? Book your slot here →
Einleitung
0 %
Top-10 lists do not help with this decision because they answer the wrong question. Provider models compared, five levels of scrutiny and four steps from enquiry to contract.
David Hahn · August 10, 2026 · 15 min read
Kostenfrei starten
Check links instead of guessing
100,000+ publishers with traffic, history and price per domain, all openly visible.
Create your free accountThe short version
Looking for the right agency for link building is usually shaped by uncertainty. The market is full of promises that cannot be checked: guaranteed top-three positions, a hundred links a month, cheap backlinks in any quantity. Between those claims and sustainable link building sits a wide gap. Many companies end up with the wrong partner, lose budget and, in the worst case, risk a manual action.
This guide deliberately skips a ranking. A list of the best providers answers the wrong question, because the right choice depends on your goal rather than on a general order. What follows is about your goals, the provider types that fit them, and the criteria that make proposals comparable in the first place.
Before you contact an agency, the target picture has to stand. In practice we meet two fundamentally different approaches, and they call for different partners. Getting that assignment wrong leads to frustration every time.
You need movement in the short term for specific money pages or for a narrow keyword set.
You want to strengthen brand authority for the long run and establish a profile that stays stable through algorithm updates.
Our take: for short-term goals, agility and throughput count. If you want to secure market share for the long run, prioritise quality and transparency over speed. A good partner shows you both routes and says clearly which one fits your budget and your risk profile.
Not every agency fits every goal. Four models dominate the German-speaking market. The overview below assigns example providers to them so that the differences in approach and scalability become visible. Prices are deliberately absent from the table: they depend so heavily on scope, market and format that any range would create more confusion than orientation.
| Provider | Focus | Strengths | Scalability | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GetMentioned | placement marketplace for editorial placements | curated network, open SEO data and prices per publisher | high | you want to select yourself and see what you are buying |
| SEO Galaxy | systematic, technology-driven link building | standardised routines, high throughput | very high | link building should run as a scalable process |
| Claneo | full-service SEO with integrated link building | holistic strategy, all areas integrated | medium to high | SEO as a whole is to be professionalised |
| Working Digital | performance-oriented link building | data-driven campaigns, short response times | medium | short-term performance goals with clear KPIs |
| Suchhelden | SEO and content | content production and off-page interlocked | medium | content production is already running |
| SEO Profession | link building specialist | depth in off-page, mature processes | high | targeted campaigns that need specialist knowledge |
| Netgrade | broad portfolio across technical work and outreach | technical SEO and placements interlocked | medium | technical work and outreach should run closely together |
Examples are Claneo, Working Digital and Suchhelden. Link building is one module here in an overall package of technical work, content and on-page. The advantage: everything from one source, less coordination, maximum synergy between content and links. The limit: link building is rarely specialised to the maximum, and on pure link campaigns the scaling hits its ceiling sooner. Sensible if you want to professionalise SEO as a whole and have little capacity internally.
Examples are SEO Profession and Netgrade. The focus lies almost entirely on link building, outreach, publisher management and tactics such as broken link building or guest articles. That brings more depth and more mature processes. The limit: you have to make sure yourself that the build interlocks cleanly with your content and your business goals. Sensible for targeted campaigns and where the demands on off-page depth are high.
Here SEO Galaxy and GetMentioned stand for two complementary routes. SEO Galaxy relies on automation, standardised routines and throughput, which suits link building that is meant to run as a scalable process. GetMentioned works as a marketplace for editorial placements, with a curated publisher network and openly visible data per domain. The two combine: standardisation for volume, curated placements for authority.
The fourth route works through stories rather than through placements: data, studies and arguments are prepared so that newsrooms report on them of their own accord. That produces the strongest mentions, and it is the least plannable of the four. For a fixed need of so many placements per month it is the wrong tool.
In a pitch many providers sound alike. They only become comparable across these five levels.
For orientation: for solid trade publishers, realistic prices usually sit at a few hundred euros per placement. Offers below a hundred euros per link are a warning sign, because editorial work cannot be done for that.
Send a short, standardised brief to five to eight providers: goals, markets, target URLs, budget range, accepted risk and preferred methods. The point is less the proposal than the test. Who understands the brief, proposes something that fits, and does not counter immediately with a standard package?
Keep two or three providers who offer a stocktake instead of selling a package straight away, who disclose their routines and quality criteria, and who communicate realistic expectations, that is, probabilities rather than ranking guarantees.
The pilot tests the process, not the volume. Agree a defined number of new referring domains, the quality criteria, a documented anchor mix and fixed reviews. The most telling part is how the provider handles the first problem.
What worked in the pilot belongs in the contract. Four points should be settled explicitly:
Plus the two questions that often turn expensive at the end: who owns the placements once the engagement is over? And how do you get out without paying for a year?
So the comparison does not end on instinct, a weighting helps. This distribution has worked for us. The exact numbers matter less than the fact that you set them before the conversations rather than after.
There is no universally best agency, only the one that fits your goal, your budget and your maturity. If you need scale and efficiency, technology-driven approaches are the right place. If you are after editorial quality and a curated network, marketplace or PR models are. If you want to professionalise SEO as a whole, a full-service agency is. And if you need maximum depth in off-page, the specialists are.
In our experience the most common wrong call is not the wrong provider but no scrutiny at all. Set the grid beforehand and you hold different conversations and make a decision you can still justify in six months. Create your free account if you want to make the choice yourself and see what you are buying.
The price depends on domain quality, relevance, format and effort. Editorially clean placements cost more and last longer. For solid trade publishers, a few hundred euros per placement is a realistic frame. There is no blanket answer, it always depends on the market and on your risk profile.
It is, if you pay transparently for research, content, outreach and placement, and the links come about in real, relevant surroundings. You recognise high-quality placements by traffic, topical fit, editorial context and a clean profile on the publisher side.
By guaranteed rankings, fixed prices set without any knowledge of your target pages, missing domain transparency, and prices for which editorial work cannot be done. One more signal: when the question about indexing checks gets no concrete answer.
First effects often show after four to eight weeks, noticeable change rather after three to six months, depending on the competition and on your starting point. What decides it is continuity and natural growth in referring domains.
A classic agency fits when you want to outsource off-page delivery and strategy and on-page are strong internally. A technology-driven approach pays off when you want to standardise and scale heavily. A marketplace fits when you want to select yourself and see the data per publisher before budget moves.
Not necessarily. If strategy, target pages and quality criteria stand internally and only the delivery is missing, a marketplace or a selective engagement is often enough. An agency pays off when the steering is to be handed over as well.
At a minimum: goals and time horizon, prioritised URLs and keywords, an export of the link profile from an SEO tool or Search Console, a competitor list, the budget range and notes on legacy issues such as earlier packages or an existing disavow file. The cleaner the basis, the more reliable the result.
About the author
Managing Director, GetMentioned
David has been building link acquisition and digital PR processes since 2016, first as an agency under SEO Galaxy, today as a platform with GetMentioned. He has scaled his own projects from zero to seven-figure monthly traffic and delivered thousands of campaigns for clients. Here he writes about what works in practice, and about what only costs budget.
Compare publishers, SEO data and prices in one place and book the placements that fit.
Link building rarely fails on method, it fails on missing prioritisation. Nine steps from analysis through target pages, assets and publishers to measurement, with a scorecard, a 90-day roadmap and a KPI set.
August 10, 2026 · 20 min read
Tool comparisons usually end up as feature lists. This overview sorts the tools by the bottleneck they solve instead: prospecting, outreach, placement or monitoring.
July 7, 2026 · 17 min read
When rankings stall despite good content, external authority is usually what is missing. Seven steps from prioritising target pages to measuring the effect, with a method comparison, anchor text spread and the KPIs that show what worked.
August 10, 2026 · 16 min read
