Netlinks

Netlinks · Authority by Atômico Press

Link building agency that places on outlets with readers.

Your link profile against your competitors', a target for every page, newsroom prospecting, editorial writing and publication. You approve each outlet before we pitch, and the App logs the URL, date, anchor text and destination page of every link earned.

We work in English, Portuguese and Spanish. Headquarters in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

A network of glowing nodes connected across a dark map, one node highlighted in pink at the center

01Overview

Link building agency

A link building agency exists to solve the slowest part of SEO: convincing other websites to cite yours. There is no automated shortcut for that. There is a good story, a relationship with the person who edits, and the patience to negotiate editorial space week after week.

Netlinks runs this operation through Atômico Press, the group's digital press arm, with Gabriel Raposo, Chief Authority Officer, leading curation. The team works in three languages, with native writers in each market, and has been operating since 2017 for more than 200 companies, from regional retailers to investment banks.

The work starts with an honest baseline: how many referring domains you have, how many the category leader has, which of your pages receive weight today and which are orphaned. The target comes out of that comparison. Without that math, link building becomes volume buying, and volume without direction does not move rankings. The full discipline is covered in what is link building.

200+
companies served since 2017
3
outreach languages, with native writers
4
countries where Netlinks operates
24h
of live link reporting in the App

02Definition

What a link building agency actually does

The visible part of the work is the published link. The part that decides the outcome happens earlier, and it is where most operations fail.

  • Profile diagnosis. A pull from Ahrefs, Semrush, Majestic and the Google Search Console links report: how many domains point at you, with what anchor text, to which pages, and how many of those links are still live.
  • Competitive gap analysis. The same numbers for the three competitors fighting for your terms. The distance between the two columns becomes the quarter's target, with a size and a deadline.
  • Target page map. Not every page deserves a link. Weight goes to pages already sitting between position 5 and 20, where a push turns into page one, and to money pages that carry no authority yet.
  • Outlet curation. Every candidate domain is screened: is there a newsroom, is there an original editorial line, is there verifiable organic traffic, is its own link profile clean, and does the subject overlap with yours.
  • Editorial production. The piece is written for that outlet's reader, not for a crawler. Text that only exists to carry a link gets rejected by good newsrooms, which is precisely why it does not work.
  • Publication, logging and monitoring. The URL enters the App the day it goes live, and monitoring flags it if the link drops or changes attribute.

It is a people operation. There is a tool at every step, and none of them replaces the editor who decides to publish or not.

03Scope

The formats inside an engagement

Each company's plan mixes formats differently. Young categories need volume; traditional categories need weight; regulated companies need layered approvals.

Editorial link building

Manual, contextual, permanent backlinks on outlets relevant to your industry. Every link is born inside a piece that covers the subject.

Digital PR

Angles worked with press newsrooms, with the brand appearing as a source. Detailed in digital PR.

Authority dossier

Deep research built on proprietary data, a long-form piece and distribution across selected outlets. The heaviest asset in the arsenal, used when the category has an open debate.

International outreach

Prospecting in English and Spanish, with native writers and outlets from the destination country. Non-negotiable for ranking outside Brazil.

Backlink audit

A read of the inherited profile: what is good, what is irrelevant, what is toxic. Includes broken link and unlinked mention recovery.

Communities and forums

Genuine presence on Reddit, vertical forums, YouTube and LinkedIn. These are sources the AI models consult constantly.

04Curation

How we choose each outlet

The screen has been the same since our first client and it does not loosen under deadline pressure. An outlet joins the list when it clears every item below, and leaves the list at the first bad signal.

Domain authority above 40 is the floor, measured in more than one tool so an inflated score cannot pass. Then comes what no tool measures on its own: whether there is a real newsroom, whether the site publishes original reporting, whether its organic traffic is consistent with the authority it displays, and whether its own link profile is a closed loop among sites with the same owner.

We automatically discard private blog networks, sites publishing bulk generated content with no editing, pages openly selling space, and reactivated expired domains. This is not fussiness: a contaminated profile takes months to clean and can pull down rankings you already earned.

  • Domain authority from 40 up, cross-checked in Ahrefs, Semrush and Majestic
  • Real organic traffic, consistent with the displayed authority
  • Topical relevance to your industry, not just to the anchor text
  • A clean link profile on the outlet itself, with no closed loop
  • Editorial track record: original reporting, named authors, publication dates
  • Extra weight for outlets the AI models cite as sources
A curation desk with publication clippings arranged in rows and a magnifying glass resting on one of them

05Cadence

What happens in month 1, month 2 and month 3

Link building has a predictable ramp. Saying so up front prevents the month-two frustration, when the heavy work is done and the chart has not moved yet.

  1. Month 1

    Diagnosis and list

    Full profile audit, competitor comparison, target page selection and quarterly goal. The candidate outlet list goes to you for approval. First angles written and pitched to newsrooms.

  2. Month 2

    First placements

    Negotiations opened in month one start turning into published stories. Each URL enters the App the same day. Anchor text is distributed deliberately: brand, generic and exact match, in that proportion.

  3. Month 3

    Cadence and first movement

    Volume stabilizes and the first ranking movements appear on pages that sat between position 5 and 20. Higher tier outlets enter, with longer decision cycles.

  4. Month 4 onward

    Compounding and expansion

    New pages join the queue as they climb the keyword map, and the authority dossier is triggered when the category needs a reference piece.

  5. Quarterly

    Executive review

    A read with leadership: what gained ground, how competitors responded, how much authority gap is left and what changes in the next 90 days.

  6. Always

    Monitoring

    Removed links, links switched to nofollow, outlets that went offline. All caught by continuous monitoring and replaced within the contracted period.

06Volume

How many links per month, and why that is the wrong metric

The question comes up in every first meeting and deserves a straight answer: standard delivery runs between 8 and 20 high authority backlinks per quarter, which is 3 to 7 a month, depending on the difficulty of the target outlets and the outreach language.

That is still the wrong yardstick for judging the work. One link on a portal your customer actually reads beats a hundred links in directories nobody opens. And four links spread across four different pages move less than four links pointing at the page that was sitting in position 7.

The metrics Netlinks uses to say whether a month was good are different:

  • New referring domains, not repeat links from the same site.
  • Remaining distance between your profile and the competitor you intend to overtake.
  • Rankings of the pages that received links, compared with the week before publication.
  • AI citations for the questions that matter, tracked in AI monitoring.
  • Link survival: how many of the links delivered are still published six months later.

That read stays open in the Netlinks App all the time. You do not wait for month-end to know where the work stands.

07Integration

Links do not work alone

Link building in isolation is the most expensive way to achieve nothing. The authority arriving at the domain has to land on a page that answers the question well, on a site that loads fast and that a crawler can read from end to end.

So the authority practice shares one plan with technical SEO, structured data and content production. Which pages get links is decided by SEO consulting, starting from keyword mapping.

That is what happened in the Nobre case: the site was repositioned as a holding company, coverage on major portals tracked the change, and organic traffic grew 300%. Neither half would have worked on its own.

Dashboard screen with a rising rankings chart, a list of published links and site speed indicators

08Comparison

Agency, freelancer or link marketplace

All three exist and they cost very different things. Worth choosing with the table in front of you rather than by the price on the first proposal.

Netlinks agencyOutreach freelancerLink marketplace
Target page selectionComes from the keyword map and consultingDepends on the brief you writeYou pick alone from a cart
Outlet curationSix-criteria screen, outlet disclosed firstVaries with that person's contact listCatalogue with vendor-declared metrics
WritingNative-language writer, editorial review, your approvalUsually subcontractedGeneric copy, when it exists
ReportingURL, anchor, destination and authority, live in the AppMonthly spreadsheetProof of publication
Replacing dropped linksContinuous monitoring, replacement in contractRarely coveredOut of scope
Risk to your domainLow, with written and auditable criteriaMedium, depends on the operatorHigh, the profile can get contaminated

09The deliverable

What you receive

Finished work, approved by you in the App and shipped. Not a report that only describes the problem.

Link profile audit

Every domain pointing at you today, with anchor, destination page, authority and status. Includes the comparison against three competitors.

Per-page acquisition target

How many referring domains are missing, for which URLs and in which authority tier. With deadlines and an order of attack.

Approved outlet list

Candidate domains presented before the first newsroom contact, so you can veto anything that does not fit the brand.

Published coverage

Editorial content live, with a contextual link, agreed anchor text and permanence under watch.

Link report in the App

URL, outlet, date, anchor, destination page and authority, updated 24 hours a day, with no month-end wait.

Recovery plan

Broken links, unlinked mentions and removed content become their own queue, which usually pays off faster than new acquisition.

10How it works

From the audit to the page going live

The same path on every project, with an owner and a date on each step.

  1. 01

    Diagnostic call

    One meeting to understand the category, the pages that need weight and what has been tried before. No commitment.

  2. 02

    Audit and comparison

    Your link profile and your competitors', side by side. The gap becomes the quarterly target.

  3. 03

    Curation and approval

    Target outlets presented with authority, traffic and rationale. You approve before any outreach starts.

  4. 04

    Angle and writing

    Written for that outlet's reader, reviewed internally and approved by you before it reaches the newsroom.

  5. 05

    Negotiation and publication

    Editor relationship, angle adjustment and publication. The URL enters the App the same day.

  6. 06

    Monitoring and replacement

    Continuous checks on permanence and attribute. Any link that drops inside the contracted period is replaced.

11Who leads

Who leads your project

The three of them own the process and manage the team on every account. No senior who shows up at kickoff and disappears: they sign off on the plan, review the work and talk to your team.

Digo Garcia, founder and CAIO at Netlinks

Digo Garcia

Founder and CAIO

Over 20 years in digital. Built and scaled Letras.mus.br, then worked at Méliuz and in the joint venture with Globo.com. Owns AI, technical SEO and engineering inside every project.

Letras.mus.br · Méliuz · Globo.com

André Mousinho, Chief SEO Officer at Netlinks

André Mousinho

Chief SEO Officer

Comes from Rock Content, Tray/Locaweb and LWSA. Designs the keyword mapping, the content architecture and the GEO strategy that turns a brand into the answer.

Rock Content · Tray/Locaweb · LWSA

Gabriel Raposo, Chief Authority Officer at Netlinks

Gabriel Raposo

Chief Authority Officer

Leads link building and digital PR at Netlinks and ran, for Netlinks, the authority programs for BTG Pactual and Agibank. Before that, a career at Ambev. Owns the authority that holds up both rankings and citations inside AI answers.

Link building and PR · BTG Pactual and Agibank for Netlinks

And the team behind them: Nathália Barcala (cofounder and COO, governance), Roberto Murta (CTO), Marcelo Ligere (senior advisor, 30+ years, formerly Grupo Globo) and Alfred, the artificial intelligence that runs the day to day: delivery queue, reporting and 24/7 support on WhatsApp.

12Who it is for

Where this work pays off the most

A site stalled on page two

Good content, clean engineering, flat rankings. When authority is the bottleneck, links are what unlocks it, and the diagnosis proves it.

A new brand in an old category

Competitors with fifteen-year-old domains and hundreds of outlets pointing at them. Here the math is compounding, with quarterly targets and patience.

Companies selling abroad

Selling into the United States, the United Kingdom, Chile or Spain requires authority built in those markets, with native writers.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What does a link building agency do?

It audits your link profile and your competitors', decides which pages need weight, screens outlets against written criteria, produces the editorial content, negotiates publication with newsrooms and monitors every link afterwards. At Netlinks all of it shows up in the App with URL, outlet, date and anchor text.

How many backlinks do you deliver per month?

Standard delivery runs between 8 and 20 high authority backlinks per quarter, which is 3 to 7 a month, depending on outlet difficulty and language. Quantity matters less than origin: one link on a portal your customer reads beats dozens in directories.

Are the backlinks permanent?

Yes. We work only with editorial content that stays published, never rotating banners, footer links or space rented by the month. If an outlet removes a piece during a migration or an editorial change, monitoring catches it and replacement happens within the contracted period.

What is the difference between link building and buying backlinks?

Link building is an editorial operation: angle, writing and negotiation with whoever publishes. Bulk buying is a space transaction, usually on sites without readers, and it tends to become a liability. We explain the tiers, the risks and the curation in buy backlinks.

How do you choose the sites you publish on?

Domain authority from 40 up, cross-checked in more than one tool, real organic traffic, topical relevance, a clean link profile and an editorial track record with original reporting. Outlets that AI models cite as sources get extra weight in prioritization.

Does link building help me show up in ChatGPT and Perplexity?

It does, increasingly. Models pick sources by reputation, and a brand cited by credible outlets joins that shortlist more easily. Citation tracking sits in AI monitoring, inside the same engagement.

Do you run link building in English and Spanish?

We do, with native writers and outlets from the destination country. Netlinks operates in four countries and works in three languages. The Leo's Marble & Granite case, in Massachusetts, is authority built from zero in English.

How much does a link building agency cost?

It depends on the authority tier of the outlets, the outreach language and the quarterly volume. The link profile diagnosis is done with no commitment, and the proposal arrives next to the acquisition target so you can weigh investment against estimated opportunity.

Next step

Get a diagnosis of your case

Tell us what your company sells and to whom. One of the three looks at your scenario, points out what is holding organic back today and shows where we would start.

  • A review of your site and your market, with no commitment
  • An answer from a senior specialist within 24 business hours
  • A direct conversation: what can be done, in what order and how deep

Prefer WhatsApp?

Chat directly with a Netlinks Expert on WhatsApp.

Rather talk now? WhatsApp is answered by the team, with Alfred covering the rest of the day.

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