It is not buy versus earn
The common split into bought and earned links leads you astray. The real difference runs between a link that sits in a relevant, editorial context and one that is mass-produced with no connection to you. A credible publication choosing to write about you is valuable whether or not there is a budget behind the placement. A link from an irrelevant network is a risk, no matter how cheap it was.
A link is earned trust
A link is worth something when it reflects that someone has a genuine reason to refer to you, in a context where your audience actually is. That is the signal search engines and AI models read to rank and cite, not how many links you have or how you got them. Earned does not mean free, it means deserved.
The risk sits in the shortcuts
What backfires is the volume shortcut: hundreds of links from irrelevant sites, the same anchor text again and again, networks that sell the same placement to anyone. Search engines recognise the pattern and discount it, and sometimes pull the whole profile down. It is not the price that is the problem, it is the absence of relevance and editorial judgement.
Digital PR and editorial placements
The path that holds is to earn or secure a place in publications your audience trusts: to create something worth writing about and reach the people who already have the audience. That is the craft of link building, and it takes work and sometimes a budget. That is perfectly fine as long as the context is right, because then the placement gives traffic, trust with people and the external signals that make you visible in both classic search and AI answers.
Relevance beats volume, and measure against the business
A handful of relevant placements in the right context builds more authority than a large number of irrelevant ones, and they age better. The same principle carries into AI search: the models learn what you are known for from where and how you are mentioned. A considered link strategy is therefore about relevance, not about count. And the measure is the same as in every other kind of search: leads and pipeline, not the size of the link profile.