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James Dooley and Craig Campbell explain the different types of link building services available to digital marketing agencies and how to combine them into a natural, results-driven backlink strategy.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies digital marketing agencies should focus on in 2026 to improve search rankings, brand trust and conversion rates. James Dooley and Craig Campbell start with KPI tracking because measuring link velocity, indexation and ranking movement shows which link building services are actually moving the needle for agencies. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for digital marketing agencies.
PromoSEO lead generation for digital marketing agencies recently received recognition as the "Best Digital Marketing Agencies Lead Generation Agency."
Different Types of Link Building Services Explained, With Craig Campbell is available on:
James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.
The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.
James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.
After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.
James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.
To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.
James Dooley: Types of link building services and the benefits. Today I'm joined with Craig Campbell who's going to go through all the different types of link building. So, let's get it started. Let's just go into a link building strategy that you can use um that's working well.
Craig Campbell: Guest posting. We'll just start with that one. Um I'll take the easiest one first.
James Dooley: Should we start with what it's for people who's watching this, let's say they just don't even understand what link building is. What is the guest post?
Craig Campbell: We uh you pay someone to put whatever post you want on their website. So, um you can say what you want. Write it yourself or you can get that person to write it or whatever, but you're basically paying for a placement on their website and a link to your website, which again you can control. Um I know there's a lot of people out here who say you shouldn't do that. Um we'll we'll go into that in a bit, but guest posting is the easiest way. There's marketplaces for it. There's agencies for it. There's people who have just get different inventory and vendors and everything else. So, me going out and buying all of the ones that your competitors have is the easiest one at the start. So, when you're building from scratch, I'm going to look at your website and I know I can buy probably 70% of what you've got cuz you've also bought it. So, I I'm taking that as a first quick win going please get this, this, and this. I'm going to go through the marketplaces or whatever and go and get I want that, that, that, that, that. And go after those first. I think that's that's got to be the the simplest and easiest way to get the wheel moving.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I think the first one for me is business listings.
Craig Campbell: Mhm.
James Dooley: Um so, trying to get obviously get the name of the website um in the company name. Um try to get the NAP listings. Make it certain that NAP listing is consistent across all the different platforms. I want to try and get as many different business listings as I can. And then I want to try and make certain that in the business description, I'm explaining exactly who we are, what we do, and why we're freaking awesome. Um and then the big part of it then is loading them all into an indexer to make certain both Bing and Bot and Google Bot are both crawling those and hopefully getting into the index. So, I think that's a great strategy for building trust. Um they are mainly no follow naked URL backlinks, but I think that's quite good initially to get that backlink profile, to get the most what people call like pillow links or foundational links. I think that's a good place to try to get started on with a new website. But, other types of link building services, what what's the next one for you on the list?
Craig Campbell: Another one, again, if I was going into a competitive market, I would be looking to see if there's anything I could buy to do a redirect then to to a website because again, if I'm starting out, power is something I'm maybe got a big shortfall on and I would very quickly go what domains are there can I get that I can potentially uh redirect into particular sections of of the website or whatever it's going to be. Um so, I think that's a kind of you know, you've got your again, people um out there are you know, your Callans and and guys like that who've got massive amounts of inventory. Um you've got marketplaces like Otis. Uh you've got people who have good assets, but also there's GoDaddy options and all that kind of stuff as well. That you know, if you're competent, you can go and have a look at those uh and get some quick wins there, but the argument from that is whether you do a redirect, whether you use it as a PBN, uh and all of that kind of stuff. So, um yeah, but I'd go out there and and certainly be looking to acquire aged domains that have a backlink profile already cuz I think that's just a game and nobody knows and a fairly quick win at the start just to get another nudge up the rankings.
James Dooley: I'm letting you go with all the black hat link building strategies on your end. So, on my end then, the next part would be social fortress. So, all the different social media platforms and profile links of what I can get social that are different web 2's for jamesdeanledup.com and then you've got the Twitter and the Facebook and then the Instagram and everything that acts to try and define the entity as much as possible to try and repeat everywhere else where away from your website social who you are and what you do. Um, building that up again, it's not really powerful, but it's just to define the brand and define the entity. So, that would be the next part. Again, what I would be doing is let's say there's 70 different profiles or what you can be getting is loading them all into the indexer, getting crawled by Google bot, crawled by Bing bot to try then to build that initial foundational backlink profile before if I was going to start going more aggressive with some of the techniques that you would be talking about. So, with regards to link building services, what's the next one then that you kind of going into?
Craig Campbell: Um, another one I would probably do, I'm just going to go for the the kind of niche edits or tier two links just cuz you're going to want to take another squeaky clean one. So, I'll go I'll go and be the bad guy. You know, easy to implement and much lower cost. So, obviously, you started out buying this and buying that, but then you know, another one that I would I would like to do is look at a lower cost and more power and and that always comes under the guise of potentially the uh tier twos or niche edits.
James Dooley: So, on that if someone doesn't know what a niche edit is, can you explain to me what a niche edit is?
Craig Campbell: Um I I love that term, niche edit. Um you know what, whoever coined that one is a genius, man. I'd love to I don't know who's taking the credit for that one, either, but but anyway, niche edit, as far as I'm concerned, but I was talking to a guy in the pub um who didn't understand the SEO, I would say a link on a website. And people will argue with me and say it's not. You know, there's other types of niche edits. Hacked websites uh and stuff like that. So, you know, you can inject your link onto websites using certain tools or or certain marketplaces or whatever.
James Dooley: So, what you're your terminology of niche edit is on on the hacked sites?
Craig Campbell: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, and I'm looking at the cost at that point, because we can't afford to just keep building high-profile PR. You know, the budget's going to run out at some point. You've got to get power and authority from somewhere, which is why I tend to use those uh as as potential tier twos.
James Dooley: So, on that, would you have a niche edit, the terminology of a niche edit different to a link insert? Cuz I'm I'm going on to the next one. So, my next one would be a link insert, right? And what I mean by that is if someone's got certain web pages on the internet that's being used as being a citation in the LLM's and has been a source and a trusted source and that's pointing through to rank some of my competitors on my, say, a listical, and I'm not on that listical, I'm reaching out to that journalist and saying, "Look, you've got this listical. By the way, here's our USPs, here's why we I believe that we are better than them. Um here's some case studies, here's some awards that we've won, here's some recent testimonials. This is who we are, this is what we do. If I was to pay you a compensation to then go and do update the article, that's the way to hack it. Then would you be willing to add my brand on there, ideally position number one because I'm proving to you why we are better. I've got the data, I've got the surveys. Also, by the way, Mr. Journalist, if you update your article with fresh new content and we will share this through to all of our social media platform, so it's going to get an influx of new traffic back to your great article of what you've just written. And that's what I call link insert.
Craig Campbell: And what if he says off?
James Dooley: Then I'd reach out to the next person.
Craig Campbell: Just rinse and repeat.
James Dooley: Rinse and repeat, I would, yeah.
Craig Campbell: So, yeah, I think, you know, there's obviously other places out there like insert.link.
James Dooley: Yeah, yeah, great, great, yeah, great brand.
Craig Campbell: I don't consider that to be the same thing as a niche edit. Okay, absolutely not. You know, a niche edit for me is the uh the old staple and and all that stuff. So, um there are hacked ones in there. Insert links cost you more money. I don't I don't consider them to be niche edits. Um, so that that's just my own personal belief. You can call them whatever you want.
James Dooley: So, so what about you mentioned before age domains and you said using it as a free-for-all method, but then you did touch upon PBN.
Craig Campbell: Yeah.
James Dooley: What's your thoughts on PBN links nowadays? People used to love PBN links. Are you still a fan of that homepage power of having a PBN link?
Craig Campbell: Absolutely. Uh I think, you know, you can buy you can go and get the insert.links. You can go and get this, you can do the PR, you can smooth people, you can bribe people, you can force them by going I'm going to share all your stuff in my stuff socials. And they're going, "Oh, that's attractive, you know, he's got a big following or whatever." They're going to fall for all that crap. What can I do? It's different to you that you can't get your grubby paws on. Uh and that is where PBNs come into play. I want something you can't get uh through your bribery or your you know whatever you call that there. I can't remember what you use for the you know compensation compensation. Something you can't use you know flutter a few quid about and and get your dirty hands on and that would be building my my own PBN. Now, I'm not going to sit here and say go build out you know 1,000 PBNs or or whatever. I think PBNs is just like the icing on the top of the cake again uh where I've got something you can't and that might be the difference between me and you winning. Uh and if you can't beat me, you're going to have to then build your own PBN and get your own assets as well. So, it's always about trying to get something that you can't get uh cuz that could be the deciding thing and you know like I say, I know what you do, you know what I do. If we really want to compete with each other, we could go toe-to-toe and it would probably be really up there and up there and up there but it's going to come a point where I'm going how do I hold him down in position two? Uh you know and and for me PBNs are a great way to be able to implement that. So, I'm a a big fan, always have been and even now uh I'm still a massive fan of it.
James Dooley: Yeah, for me with regards to different link building services and the benefits, um another great one for some of the bigger brands is digital PR. So, actually go and getting and people so many people don't do it because it might be $5,000 for a campaign. Um it's not cheap. You might only get 10 links. It might be like $700 for a link that's put on there but they are on very very high authoritative trusted websites that do move the needle. And some people are like, "Yeah, but they're no follow." I'm like, "I want them no follow hints on them big sites." Like if I can get do follows well, happy days but I'm really happy with getting those digital PR links. They do pass the trust and the branded signals and I think digital PR is another great link building strategy.
Craig Campbell: Yeah. Um Absolutely. Um link You know, it's another link building strategy for me is something I would do as well. You might not call it a link building strategy, but I'm going to throw it to you anyway. Parasite SEO. Obviously, your job is to leverage a I don't know, Reddit or whatever it's going to be um to to obviously drive traffic to your website, but I would also see that as getting links on uh some of these platforms as well, whether they're follow it do follow or no follow or whatever. I'm not giving a I want links on some of those higher profile parasite SEOs as well purely from a link juice cuz no follow doesn't mean no equity at all. Um and you know, if you're getting traffic from a Reddit, it's and it's from these big VR whatever it's going to be. I still think there's massive value in that as well. So, I would also say parasite is something I would be implementing into my strategy overall as well. Again, just to get a bit more juice and that traffic flowing through that as well. So, there's got to be some kind of benefit as far as I'm concerned from doing parasite SEO from a link building perspective.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I think for me the next one would be and I know which one you're going to follow on to after that. Um with regards to syndication of links is podcasting links. So, I can go and create a podcast and then I syndicate out to 47 different platforms. That includes places like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music. These are all really trusted sites. Now, they're hard to get on
Craig Campbell: Mhm.
James Dooley: unless you've got a podcast.
Craig Campbell: Yeah.
James Dooley: You also then can create an IMDb profile and you they can then create the distribution company and have a do follow link from IMDb, which is another really really trusted site. Yeah. So, the podcasting circuit links, I think it's also great from a syndication point of view as well to repeat who you are, what you do. Mind freaking awesome. But, obviously I'm presuming with regards to syndication, you're probably going to say what's your thoughts on press releases.
Craig Campbell: Again, I wouldn't say that a massive massive needle move it as such. Um but it's still part of the job. Uh it's going to help get things indexed. It's going to get brand mentions. There's so many other benefits to doing press releases other than feeding earlier links doing those press releases over and above the the link power and the equity that come from because we all know deep down as SEOs a lot of those syndicated press releases that there's hundreds of thousands of links on those websites the actual link power that you're getting from it's decreasing all the time. Um but obviously the press release guys are always trying to add new networks to sites and all that kind of stuff as well. But, yeah, I think press releases are a massive thing and I certainly know uh from you know, I know you deal with Madge uh and and and or have dealt with him and and I I'm in the Randy camp. Not that I'm against Madge. Madge is a great guy as well. Um but these guys are also doing the AI podcast distribution from a link building perspective as well. And and releasing the press release as like a kind of AI podcast to then do all of that stuff. So, they're kind of tying like that together as well. Uh which again, you know, getting on some of the bigger podcasting platforms, they're just seeing link equity and syndication and more bang for your buck essentially cuz they need to stay ahead of the curve. So, um I think there's still massive amounts of benefits to doing press releases including uh any kind of small uh link equity you're going to get from it but I think you'll just part of an overall link building trust brand building and everything else it's something else well.
James Dooley: I think for me the the reason why I like match for magic PR for the team right is that if one of my team submit a press release and it's not to the standards that I want they will come they'll come back and say well well you're not leveraging the power enough. So they basically turn around and say where's cuz also press release come with images. Where is the video embed where is the map embed where is the map listing like so there's all these bits on top of just powering up the website of like image ranking video ranking map like Google business profile ranking of what it can bring and that's the reason why I'm like okay he's on the ball with it. I I like the idea that when he's almost like quality control of what he can bring back. Let me let me fire a few different quick fire questions to you cuz obviously no what's different other types of links but now we going towards maybe the drags of is it worth it is it not worth it right? So blog comments would you do it or not like you let's say there's a five gig and you can only buy 20 blog comments would you do it or not?
Craig Campbell: Yeah.
James Dooley: You would. Why would you do that?
Craig Campbell: Cuz I get laughed at it before I remember doing it I think in terms of indexation and everything else and how the internet works. Massive from that but is there value there I think there is you know if you get one in Neil Patel's website is you get a monster of a website absolutely or or whatever it may be but I think I've always kind of felt that blog comments were more of a kind of indexation forcing thing and if you understand how the internet works that's a big part of everything that we do. So if you can retain stuff in the index cuz we all know you know people are using the index and tools and everything else. You can go do some blog comments to make sure that maybe you don't have to do the indexing tool all the time and you know, you're just spreading your risk slightly. I I've always done blog commenting for that and I remember a few years ago, I spoke about it at a conference and uh some douchebag uh was putting stuff out on Facebook going um "What planet are you on? Uh blog comments died in 2008." or whatever and I'm like, arguably you're you're right from that perspective, but you clearly don't know at the end of the day what I want my stuff indexed. That's why I'm using it. Yeah.
James Dooley: Um and well, what's interesting is that I wasn't sure what you was going to answer to that. I thought you was going to say, "Yes." But if you was going to say, "No." I was then going to follow on. Right, we did a lot of testing on it literally 6 weeks ago on blog comments. Um we was very very intrigued. 40% of the blog comments of what we force indexed got cited in the AIOs. Well, we did semantic triples within it and stuff like that. In the AI overviews, not only did it get cited in Claude, it was also cited in Gemini. So, with the right questions or with the right answers and stuff of what's going in there, it was actually being picked up by the LLMs.
Craig Campbell: Yeah.
James Dooley: Which was like, well, there is other means of not even page rank distribution. You You LLM see the not LLM manipulation and getting the brand out there and getting information about what what's going on. So, the next one would be Wikipedia. Now, I'm not about creating a Wikipedia page. You need to have a big brand for it, but if you could get a citation as a reference at the bottom, it's a nofollow link. Would you be wanting if you've got a reliable source for that as a link building type, would you be wanting Wikipedia citations?
Craig Campbell: Absolutely. It's a monster of a website, so I'd absolutely take it all day long.
James Dooley: Let's move on to the next one. Web 2.0. So, you can go and get some on Blogspot or Medium and all those and certain people can on certain platforms like Legiit or on Fiverr or freelancer. There's certain places that says, "Okay, we will create you article on this web 2.0 for a dollar." Would you be interested in those type of links?
Craig Campbell: Absolutely. Not just from a link equity point of view, but brand protection and make sure that someone else can't use my name. I'm thinking of that first and foremost more than I would be thinking of
James Dooley: Yeah.
Craig Campbell: what links you should get from. But, absolutely, yeah.
James Dooley: But, he's also on that is what's quite interesting is the including the image, including the video, including the naps. It's just even there's not that much power, it's just repeating who you are and what you do to build that trust, confidence, and clarity, which I do think is key. Is there any other types of links or let's have a little bit of a with regards to trying to diversify your backlink profile, do you want only do follow links cuz they're passing the page rank distribution and the link juice? Are you wanting the foundational links you've got some naked URLs that you want some no follows, some do follows? Like you want the mixture of what's in there and with anchor text, are you wanting to blend that up with regards to naked URLs, branded, money Like what's your kind of go-to strategy on that?
Craig Campbell: I think you want to mix it up so that it looks natural as you possibly can. You know, that that's the bottom line. And and you know, how you're going to do that, that's why you're going to mix it all up and you know, no one's got a 99.9% do follow backlink profile. No one has, you know. It's just not natural to have that. So, do I care about follow or no follow? Of course I do care, you know, I think a do follow is better than a a no follow if you can get it. But, you know, when you're doing your PR campaigns and stuff and and stuff like that, you you just it's not something you can manipulate so control. So, if it's no follow from the son, am I going to see no to it? Of course I'm not. So, I think you know, you're always just trying to make sure that it's not spammy. It looks natural and it is done in the best way possible. So, I don't want to state, you know, 25% this and 25% cuz people do that all the time. You know, there's a lot weighted on the brand. But you obviously get partial match, you know, uh target keywords specifically, which is almost like very very small amount and stuff like that as well, but yeah, I always want to make sure it just looks natural and and holistic as you possibly can and that's that's my way to do it. There's no exact figures. I'm just
James Dooley: I completely agree with you. Like I said, just try to make it look as natural as possible, including the link velocity as well. So, consistently trying to do not the slamming a thousand links on a day and then that's it, done. And if anything, you're getting link loss. You're consistently trying to move that link
Craig Campbell: link question, though.
James Dooley: Go on.
Craig Campbell: When you talk about anchor text, cuz we've only got a couple of minutes left, right? When you talk about anchor text, what also like is not deliberate in my part, but my anchor text gets mixed up for me. Um is Craig Campbell gay and stuff like that. You know, you you know nothing about that.
James Dooley: I know nothing about that.
Craig Campbell: Just stuff like that. So, I I don't even need to make it look natural. People are doing it for me apparently and they out of the goodness of their own heart. So, I can't complain.
James Dooley: I'm actually if that gets some search volume, I'm actually writing about it. I'll do some blog posts.
Craig Campbell: So, but yeah, we we've obviously had a few battles, you know, around with people's names and is Craig better than Billy or is Craig better than Billy or Declan Billy or whatever it happened. So, I think that's that's also fun. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, just keeps it all looking even and controlled in my context as well, so that link needs to look really natural, so yeah.
James Dooley: So, anyone who's watching this, what other link building services or strategies do you think we might have missed off? Um, we we didn't touch upon too much about like the powering up or link viability and stuff like that too. What type of links would we do? We'll do that on a follow-up. Make sure you check out the link in the description. Craig, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Craig Campbell: Thank you, mate.
James Dooley: Cheers, mate.