Paid $300 for a link audit and got a spreadsheet I could have made myself

I hired this agency from a forum rec to do a full backlink audit, mostly because I was drowning in spam links after a bad Fiverr gig. They charged $300 and took 10 days, then sent me a list of toxic domains and said 'disavow these.' No strategy, no outreach plan, just a raw CSV dump. I mean, I could have run that through SEMrush for $99 and saved the rest. Has anyone actually gotten real value from these audits, or is it all just data dumps with a pretty cover page?

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1 Comment

blair_dixon16d ago

The real value isnt in the list, its in the interpretation and the WHY behind each link. Anyone can pull toxic scores, but knowing which links are actually hurting you vs just sitting there doing nothing takes context that a spreadsheet cant give you. If they didnt explain how to rebuild or replace those lost linking opportunities, then yeah, you paid for a data dump with extra steps.