White label link building is a math problem. If your client’s target page requires 40 high-authority backlinks to boost their search engine rankings, they’ll never reach their goal with just three links a month.
I’m Travis Bliffen, CEO of Stellar SEO, a 2024 Inc. 5000-ranked white label link building agency. We’ve built over 25,000 links since 2012, including thousands of links per year for other agencies that use our white label link building services.
In my previous Search Engine Land articles, I covered how to find the link building services for you, followed by how to calculate link building ROI.
Now, let’s discuss how to deliver at scale, whether you’re an SEO agency owner or managing an in-house team for a national brand.
Why most agencies fail to get high-quality backlinks at scale
The breakdown usually stems from flawed systems, overwhelmed generalists, or a lack of manpower. In talking with several agencies, we have noticed that three issues seem to emerge almost every time:
- Automation dependency: Pitchbox and Buzzstream can be helpful, but good link outreach requires building relationships and nurturing industry connections. Bad inputs lead to bad outputs, and automation will only compound the problem.
- Hiring generalists: Delivering high-quality links requires specialized skills at each step of the process, including outreach specialists, content creators, and editors. Don’t expect one or two digital marketing experts to handle everything. Henry Ford’s assembly line technique works great for link building, too, and no, that doesn’t mean low-quality links.
- Lack of velocity planning: You must outpace your competitors with high-quality links while still adhering to search engine guidelines. This requires a sustainable approach to acquiring backlinks that considers the overall return on investment (ROI) of each link. Before starting a campaign, you should know the volume and pace required to rank. If you don’t, just ask us and we’ll help you figure it out.
If you want to keep link building in-house and scale without burning out your team, you need the right team structure in place.
How we build scalable white label link building campaigns at Stellar SEO (without cutting corners)
Here’s the structure we use to support large-scale, white label link building services for dozens of agency clients simultaneously:
The 7-part team system
- Prospectors: These team members manually identify reputable sites that align with a client’s niche, traffic goals, and topical relevance. We never use bulk lists, link farms, or third-party databases for our white label link building. Each site is reviewed for historical traffic patterns, publishing activity, and link profile health before it is even added to the outreach list.
- Contact researchers: Once we identify high-quality link building prospects, researchers track down accurate contact information, including direct emails, LinkedIn profiles, and editorial guidelines.
- Outreach writers: Our SEO efforts rely on effective personalization. Our pitches are tailored to the tone, voice, and audience of the prospect, conveying a sense of collaboration rather than a transaction.
- Content strategists: These team members represent the heart of our SEO strategy development. They assign anchor text, recommend landing page targets, and align each pitch with SEO priorities to ensure optimal results.
- Writers/editors: High-quality content is key to our white label link building services. Rather than relying on AI, we focus on creating content tailored for the publisher. Editors will then ensure each piece contains a natural and contextually placed backlink.
- Outreach coordinators: These project managers oversee the day-to-day execution of link building. They run follow-up sequences, negotiate publication terms, and track progress across campaigns to ensure no opportunities fall through the cracks.
- QC leads: Before delivery, every link is checked for proper indexation, on-page placement, outbound link density, anchor accuracy, and relevance. This final gate ensures that what we deliver holds up to scrutiny and delivers long-term SEO value.
What link quality looks like at scale
Our white label link building services rely on a stringent 27-point review process that goes far beyond domain authority or page rank, which ensures that only the most high-quality links are selected. This includes some of the following filters.
- Domain Rating (DR): A DR of 30 is our minimum threshold, but we also consider traffic and content quality. Sites with sudden traffic drops are flagged and removed from our prospect list.
- Organic traffic: Minimum 1,000 visits/month, verified with Ahrefs or Semrush, but we also look at traffic trends and historical growth.
- Top countries: Links from high-traffic sites are worthless if all their visitors are from countries irrelevant to your market.
- Topical relevance: Even a DR 70 site won’t help your personal injury client if it’s a food blog. Every placement has to make sense.
- No spam history: Anchor text abuse, shady outbound patterns, or evidence of past penalties? That site’s gone.
We also reject:
- Sites that publish off-topic guest content just to collect payments.
- Pages with poor content-to-link ratios or AI-spun fluff.
- Domains showing any pattern of expired reuse or manipulation.
Some SEO firms solely focus on DA or DR, and such agencies rarely deliver great results. Our comprehensive link building services examine the entire picture, naturally filtering out low-quality links to ensure search engine success.
The tools that can scale white label link building (when used correctly)
Tools don’t build links, people do. But when your people know how to leverage the right tools, you can scale effectively while maintaining quality control.
- Ahrefs: Our core link building research tool. We utilize it for backlink gap analysis, verifying domain ratings, anchor text profiling, tracking traffic trends, and link velocity modeling. It helps us pinpoint high-value targets and avoid toxic domains.
- Pitchbox: This powers our outreach engine. It’s where campaigns are sequenced, templates are tested, and follow-ups are automated. But it’s only effective because we manually review and manage every opportunity inside it.
- Hunter.io: Our go-to for scraping and verifying contact data. We often pair it with manual research and tools like Apollo to fill in the gaps, especially for editorial contacts.
- Google Sheets: Sounds simple, but our outreach tracking, campaign approvals, and guest post content schedules all run through layered and permissioned Google Sheets. It gives our team and clients complete visibility into every stage of the process.
Tools only create leverage when paired with a sound strategy and skilled execution. Without that, you’re just automating failure.
Competitive intelligence for white label link building
For white label link building at scale, guessing won’t cut it. You need to reverse engineer what’s working for top-ranking sites and understand why it’s working, not just what they’re doing.
- Backlink gap analysis: Begin by comparing the number of referring domains your client has with those of their top competitors. Then filter by quality, topical trust, and placement type. This tells you how far behind you are.
- Anchor text review: Look at the distribution of anchor text types: branded, exact match, partial match, and generic. Avoid generalized best practices and create a numbers-driven anchor text strategy based on what is working in the niche. A local contractor vs. an ecommerce store, for example, would have a vastly different anchor text mixture.
- Link type inventory: Classify links by type: guest posts, forum links, press mentions, podcast appearances, HARO-style links, niche edits, and editorial links. This helps you determine the best way to pitch each site.
- Velocity trends: Examine competitor link velocity over the past 6-12 months. This tells you how quickly you must create content and place links.
Avoid these traps:
- Mindlessly copying competitors with low-quality links.
- Falling for inflated DR numbers from domains repurposed after expiring.
- Overweighting search engine metrics like DA/DR and ignoring traffic, indexation, and link context.
We don’t copy other websites when link building. We dissect what works, strip out the noise, and build smarter campaigns to surpass them.
Scaling white label link building services without losing clients
Scaling white label link building isn’t just about volume; it’s about trust, communication, and execution. Agencies want to expand their offerings without compromising visibility or control, and a strong white label partner bridges that gap seamlessly.
What makes a good white label link building partner?
- Handles link prospecting, content creation, outreach, and reporting end-to-end.
- Offers transparent reporting and regular updates without overwhelming your team.
- Understands how to protect client brands through editorial-quality placements.
- Delivers links that move the needle, not just check boxes.
A quick note on site approval: At Stellar SEO, we don’t provide pre-approval lists of linking domains. Here’s why: those lists get circulated, then abused. We manually vet sites in real-time for each campaign, ensuring the links we build are fresh, relevant, and not overused.
Our white label link building services
- Write custom content tailored to each site, naturally including a link to your client.
- Manually vet every publisher for topical relevance, traffic, and link history.
- Offer tiered pricing so you can align cost with client value.
Pricing models that make sense at scale
Pay-Per-Link pricing seems to be the ideal fit for most agency partners. It enables simple planning, cost forecasting, and flexibility for adapting to changing client needs. Here is how we’ve priced our services.
- Flat rate per DA/DR range: Our pricing starts at $297 for DA/DR 30+ placements and scales based on authority. We also offer DR 40+, DR 50+, DR 60+, and DR 70+ tiers.
- Volume-based discounts: Agencies ordering in higher quantities benefit from tiered price breaks, improving your profit margins and client ROI.
- No minimum order size: Choose how many links you need. You can access one quality link or hundreds.
- A la carte or bundled options: You can choose only link building services or access the full digital marketing package, which includes strategy development, high-quality content creation, and detailed reports. All of this will be tailored to your own branding.
This pricing model offers service providers complete control, predictable costs, scalable growth, and flexible service levels that support both boutique and enterprise clients.
Tips for agencies:
- Build in your margin (typical resale margin = 30–50%).
- Set client expectations early (time to index, results lag).
- Know when to go bundled vs. modular based on team capacity and client needs.
Scaling link building for SEO agencies is a process, not a plugin
Scaling for white label services requires systematic execution, consistency, and campaign alignment. This all stems from an agency that functions like an extension of your in-house team.
Our white label link building services never compromise on quality. With our in-house team, we can own the entire process, including prospecting, creating content, placing editorial links, and reporting.
Book a strategy call with Stellar SEO and let’s see how our link building agency can help you deliver quality links at scale.