Link Programme Governance for Regulated Practices

The first thing this engagement usually produces is an invoice you stop paying. Across the nine link programmes this practice has taken over since 2023, a median of 38 percent of monthly link spend was going to placements that were paid and undisclosed, sat on sites with no measurable readership, or both. In two of the nine, the firm's own compliance function had no idea it was happening. That number gets established and put in front of whoever signs the budget before a single new vendor is briefed. What this engagement is: You already have link building going on: an inherited agency, two freelancers, an in-house marketer, or all three at once. This is the layer above it. The standard, the acceptance test, the vendor management and the reporting that survives contact with a general counsel. It is not another vendor placing links. The standard: Written for your firm, owned by your firm, approved by your legal function. It states what may be paid for, which is nothing that affects editorial. What disclosure is required. Which verticals and link types are refused. What happens when a vendor delivers a placement that fails the test. Who has authority to approve an exception. For a regulated practice this document is what turns a link building arrangement from something discovered during due diligence into a policy somebody signed. The acceptance test: Every link a vendor delivers is checked before it is paid for. Live on the page, not merely in a screenshot. Followed, and where it is not, recorded and unpaid. Indexed, verified in Search Console and by direct fetch rather than a site query alone. On a page carrying some evidence of readership rather than a URL that exists to hold links. And a look at the page's other outbound links, because a page selling to you is selling to eleven other people. Vendors are paid on links that pass. In the first quarter of a takeover, pass rates typically start between 50 and 70 percent and settle above 85 once the vendors understand the test is real. Vendor management: Briefing, negotiating scope away from volume and towards named outlets, and ending relationships that cannot survive the standard. Vendors were removed from four of the nine programmes. Twice we recommended keeping an agency the client had already decided to fire, because the problem was the brief rather than the agency. Reporting: Referring domains that passed the test, by target page and by campaign, with the editor or journalist named where there was one. Movement on the pages the links were aimed at. What was rejected and why. No Domain Rating column, no link value expressed in euros, no chart of estimated traffic. A board reads it in four minutes and a general counsel reads it without flinching. What we refuse: We will not manage a vendor who will not name the placement site before publication. We will not sign off a programme carrying a monthly link quota, because the quota is what causes the buying. We will not audit our own placements and call that independent; where we also run acquisition for you, it is stated in the first paragraph of the report and a second reviewer signs the acceptance tests. And we will not write a disavow file to make a report look tidier. Who this is not for: Firms whose real request is somebody to carry the blame for links they intend to keep buying. Also not for programmes under roughly eight thousand euros a month of vendor spend, where the governance costs more than it saves; in that case you should read the invoices yourself, and we will show you how in an hour.