Most link building advice assumes you have unlimited time. Write something remarkable, email two hundred people, wait. For an agency with a dozen clients, or an owner with a business to run, that is not a plan.
A more useful question, for each link you are missing, is a simple one: should we build this, or buy it? Asked carefully, it saves months. Asked carelessly, it gets sites penalised. The difference is knowing what buying is allowed to mean.
What buying can and cannot mean
Google's spam policies are plain about it: buying or selling links to manipulate rankings is a violation. Paying a site to slip a followed link into an article is exactly what those policies are written to stop, and the risk is real.
There is still a great deal you can pay for honestly: a sponsorship, a listing in a trade directory, a placement marked as sponsored, a PR firm, a piece of research worth citing. Google asks that paid links carry a rel="sponsored" or nofollow attribute. They may pass little ranking credit, and they still bring what you actually need, which is the right people seeing your name in the right place.
When to build
- The topic is yoursYou have data, experience or a point of view that nobody else can publish. That earns links money cannot.
- It compoundsA guide, a tool or a study that will keep earning for years is worth the slow start.
- Rivals earned theirsIf the sites ahead of you were linked editorially, the realistic route to the same link is editorial too.
When to buy
Paying makes sense when the placement is valuable for its audience, not only for its link. A sponsored slot in the newsletter your customers read. Membership of the trade body whose directory everyone checks. A local event with your name on it.
Ask one question before you spend: would this be worth the money if search engines did not exist? If the answer is yes, buy it and label it properly. If the answer is no, you are buying a link, and you should walk away.
If a placement would not be worth paying for in a world without search engines, it is not worth paying for in this one.
Why mentions now count alongside links
AI assistants appear to weigh how often, and where, a brand is talked about when they decide who to recommend. A sponsored placement with a nofollow link still puts your name in front of readers and into the sources those engines read. That widens the choice. You are no longer only collecting links. You are building the reputation that both kinds of search rely on.
Nalza makes this call gap by gap. It compares your links with your competitors' and marks each missing one as a link to build or a placement to buy, with the reasoning shown, and you approve the plan. To see where your site stands today, the free audit takes about a minute.
