Link Building Cost Per Link: What I Charge and Why

The link building cost per link on my price list is $240 to $495, and it is priced per link rather than per month because a link is the unit you are buying. That is the number most people searching for this want, so it goes first. The question it does not answer is whether links are the right next spend for your business, and that one takes a conversation.

I am Devian Chard, an AI automation and SEO consultant at devianseo.online, working remotely with clients worldwide. If you are weighing links against the rest of your marketing list, book a call and we can look at it together. The strategy session is free and runs for 30 minutes.

What does link building cost per link?

$240 to $495 per link. That is the range on my price list and the figure I quote against.

Links are rarely bought on their own, so here is the whole price list. Most decisions are a comparison between these lines rather than a single purchase.

The link line is the one this page is about. The rest are here so you can see what links sit beside: an ongoing retainer, a one-off tune-up, an audit, or automation work that takes a task off somebody’s desk for good.

Why does the price sit in a range?

Because the work behind a link is not identical from one project to the next. The list carries a range, $240 to $495, and where a particular piece of work lands inside it is something I would rather settle with you directly than guess at on a page. That is what the free 30-minute strategy session is for.

I would rather answer that question with your site, your market and your competitors in front of us than write a paragraph here that pretends every link is the same. If you want a single figure, the fastest route to one is a conversation.

Who is this price list for?

It is written for owners of small businesses and lean teams — the people who have to decide, this month, whether money goes into links, into content, into automation, or nowhere. That is a different decision from the one an agency makes on behalf of a large marketing department.

If that is you, the useful thing is not a longer explanation of link building. It is a straight answer about what the different lines cost, so you can compare them against what you are trying to do.

Is link building worth paying for?

My honest view: links are worth paying for when there is something worth pointing at. If a page does not answer a question a buyer is already asking, a link to it does not fix that, and no price per link makes it worthwhile.

I have written about the approach in link building that still works, and it is the version of link building I am willing to sell. I would rather talk you out of a batch of links than take the money and watch them sit on a page that was never going to convert.

How do links fit with content and the rest of SEO?

Links are one input. A cluster of pages answering related questions, on a site that reads as though a person wrote it, is the other half. If you are planning that structure, planning a content cluster is the place to start, and using AI for content without slop covers how I keep the writing from sounding like a machine wrote it.

The SEO, link building and content services and their prices are all on the services page, so you can see the whole list in one place rather than three.

Should links be a one-off or part of a retainer?

The price list carries both, as separate lines: link building at $240 to $495 per link, and SEO retainers at $1,000, $2,000 and $3,200 a month. Those are different purchases with different jobs.

A retainer is ongoing work across a site. Links are individual units. Some people need links because a specific page needs support. Some people need the ongoing work first, because there is nothing coherent for links to point at yet. Which one you are is not something I can tell you without looking.

Do links still matter when AI answers the question?

Increasingly, buyers get their answer from an AI assistant rather than a page of blue links. Being the business mentioned in that answer is a related problem to ranking, and the two overlap more than people expect.

I wrote about getting cited in AI answers, and if you want to know where you stand today, the AI visibility audit is $950 and shows how AI answers see your business. That is a different question from what a link costs, and often the more useful one to answer first.

What this looked like in my own business

I do not sell link building and automation from a slide deck. I run my own business on a system I built, and the numbers from it are in the open.

Devian OS is the system my business runs on. It runs 14 agents, with 70 tools behind permissions. Between 12 and 25 September 2026 it recorded 811 traced runs, 241 of which failed and stay in the log rather than being tidied away. There are more than 1,300 automated tests. The approval gate stopped 10 actions: 4 were approved, 2 were rejected, and 3 failed after approval.

Those failures are the point. They are visible, they are counted, and they are kept, which is why I talk about approvals and logs as much as I talk about prices. You can read the whole thing in the Devian OS case study.

If you want the thinking behind that system rather than just the numbers, The Agentic OS is a free 178-page book on running a business with a team of AI agents and staying in charge.

What I would ask before spending $240 to $495 on a link

Before you buy a link at any price, ask yourself four things about your own site.

• Does the page the link points at answer a question a buyer is asking right now?
• Is that page part of a cluster of related pages, or is it standing alone?
• Would you send a customer to that page today, as it is?
• Do you know whether AI answers currently mention you at all?

If any of those answers is no, the link is not the next thing to buy. Content, a tune-up or an audit usually is. That is a conversation worth having before you spend anything, and it is the one I would rather have with you in the free 30-minute session than after.

The short version

• Link building is $240 to $495 per link on my price list.
• SEO retainers are $1,000, $2,000 and $3,200 a month, and a one-off on-page tune-up is $750.
• The AI visibility audit is $950 and shows how AI answers see your business.
• AI automation projects start at $3,000 with a fixed quote after a free strategy session, and care plans start at $750 a month.
• Whether links are the right next spend for you is worth 30 minutes.

If you are deciding whether your next $240 to $495 goes into a link or somewhere else entirely, book a call. It is free and it takes 30 minutes.

Frequently asked questions

How much does link building cost per link?

On my price list, link building is $240 to $495 per link. Where a specific piece of work sits inside that range is something I would rather talk through with you in the free 30-minute strategy session than guess at on a page.

Are links included in an SEO retainer?

The price list carries SEO retainers at $1,000, $2,000 and $3,200 a month, and link building at $240 to $495 per link as its own line. Which of those you need is part of the conversation.

Do I need a strategy session before buying links?

The strategy session is free and takes 30 minutes. I would rather understand what you are building before quoting anything, and tell you plainly if links are the wrong next spend for you.

Do links still matter if AI answers the question?

AI answers are now part of how buyers find businesses, and content and links both feed into that. The $950 AI visibility audit shows how AI answers see your business today.