Week by week
Local link building budget: twelve weeks and two sums
What to expect from a small spend, week by week, and how $100 or $1,000 might be split. Prices below are examples, so check the rows before you buy.
Weeks 1 to 12, as a hypothetical plan
Claim and fix
Verify Google, Bing and Apple profiles and settle on one way to write your name, address and phone.
Choose the page
Pick one service page to support. Spread links across five pages and none of them gets help.
Order two or three placements
Fill the basket, review it, pay. Most placements go live about 24 hours after payment.
Watch, do not touch
Check Search Console impressions for that page. Crawling and re-evaluation take time, and nothing here is instant.
Decide on a second round
If the page gained impressions, add one or two links. If it did not, look at the page itself before spending more.
Rough budget estimate
Enter what you plan to spend and see roughly how many links it covers. It is a local estimate only; the real price is on each row.
What we would do with $100
Treat $100 as a test. Choose one service page and three relevant sites.
Say the three links cost about $25 each, an example price, because prices scale with authority, traffic and niche and yours will differ. That leaves $25 in reserve for a fourth link once the first ones show up in Search Console.
Choose relevance first and read the free DR checker steps while the basket fills.
What we would do with $1,000
Split it into rounds. Spend about a third in the first round, and keep the rest until you have seen Search Console move, or fail to.
A second round can go to a different page, or to a different type of site. Local news, trade blogs and supplier sites each tell you something.
Never spend the whole sum in a week. A pause is cheap and teaches a lot.
Why we split the spend
One big order feels efficient. It hides which link did anything.
Rounds give you a reading after each, and Ahrefs or Search Console data from the first round tells you what to buy in the second, so the money follows evidence rather than hope.
$100 or $1,000, with example prices
| $100 | $1,000 | |
|---|---|---|
| Aim | Test one service page | Support three or four pages across a quarter |
| Typical split | 3 links plus a reserve | 10 to 12 links in two or three rounds |
| Pace | All in weeks 3 to 4 | A round every month, adjusted after each |
| Free work first | Profiles and NAP | Profiles, NAP, reviews, rival audit |
| Biggest risk | Judging too early | Buying the same kind of site ten times |
How to read the first signs
Open Search Console and filter to the page you supported. Look at impressions before clicks.
Impressions for the queries tied to that page, such as 'emergency dentist' plus your town, are the first thing to move, if anything does. A flat line after eight weeks is information too.
Do not compare a single week against another. Compare four-week blocks, and note any Google core update dates, since a 2024 or 2025 update can swamp a small change like this.
Things the plan leaves out
Reviews, photos on the profile and answers to questions asked on it often do more for map visibility than links do. They cost time and no cash.
Check the plan against the red flag list before each order.