Everything you've wondered,
answered honestly.

You're a good fit if: (a) you're past product-market fit (SaaS doing $30k+ MRR, or eCommerce doing $50k+/mo, or B2B services with proven sales motion), (b) you treat SEO as a 12-month investment, not a coin flip, and (c) you want to work with one person who actually does the work. You're a bad fit if you want "cheapest possible" links, expect rankings in 30 days, or are in regulated niches I can't serve safely (gambling, adult, unlicensed CBD/crypto).

30 minutes on Zoom or Google Meet. I'll have already looked at your site, your top three competitors, and your Ahrefs profile before we connect. We'll spend 10 minutes on what your business actually needs from SEO, 15 minutes screen-sharing the live audit, and 5 minutes on next steps. No deck. No pitch. If we're not a fit, I'll usually tell you on the call.

Discovery call: within 5 business days of inquiry. SOW signed: within 7 days of the call. Kickoff: within 14 days of signing. First placements live: within 30 days of kickoff. So from your first email to your first live backlink — roughly 30–45 days end-to-end, depending on slot availability.

8–10 retainer clients, maximum. That's the cap. When all slots are full, the waitlist opens and the next available slot is usually 4–8 weeks out. I keep the number low so I can actually deliver the work myself — not hand it to a junior and call it "managed."

Yes — and ideally one with at least 6 months of content and some existing Google Search Console data. Brand-new sites with no content history are a poor fit for link building (links amplify what's there; they don't manufacture authority from nothing). If you're pre-launch, I'd point you toward the strategy session instead.

Yes. Every placement is on a site with real organic traffic, real editorial standards, and content contextually relevant to your niche. No PBNs. No link injections. No "sponsored content" stamps. If a site looks sketchy in Ahrefs, I don't pitch it — even if you ask me to. Two of my retainer clients have been with me for 4+ years. Their link profiles have survived every Google update since 2021.

Niche-relevant editorial sites with verified Ahrefs organic traffic. For Standard tier: DR 50–59 / 5k–25k organic/mo. Premium: DR 60–69 / 25k–100k/mo. Tier-1: DR 70+ / 100k+/mo. Categories I work in regularly: SaaS, marketing, finance, B2B, DTC, eCommerce, legal, healthcare, real estate, edtech, fintech, HR tech, devtools. On a call I'll show you 5–10 live examples in your specific niche.

I write most of them personally. For technical niches (engineering, deep finance, healthcare), I use a vetted writer in my network — but I still personally edit and approve every draft before it goes to the editor. AI assists with research and outlining; the prose is human. Editors smell ChatGPT drafts, and so does Google.

Yes, at three stages: (1) publisher shortlist before outreach starts, (2) topic + brief before writing starts, (3) anchor text before publication. Most clients trust me to run the process after month one, but the approval gates stay open for whenever you want to use them.

By default no — I target dofollow placements. Some high-DR sites (Forbes, large media) only allow nofollow contributor links. When that's the case I'll tell you upfront and you decide whether the authority signal is still worth it (often it is — Google does pass some weight through nofollow now, and the brand mention has standalone value).

Tough niches are why I exist. Legal (US + UK), fintech, B2B SaaS, healthcare, accounting, insurance, edtech — these are where generic agencies fail because they don't have the publisher relationships. I've placed links in 40+ verticals. If I can't credibly serve yours, I'll tell you on the call and refund the deposit on the spot.

Gambling, adult content, unregulated CBD/crypto, MLM, anything illegal in major jurisdictions, anything that requires deceiving customers (fake reviews, fake testimonials, fake credentials). Most of my publishers won't touch these niches — and frankly, neither will I.

Because I'm not building the same links. Cheap agencies sell PBNs and link farms at $50–$150/placement. Real editorial links from real publishers — manually pitched, hand-written, niche-relevant — cost more to produce. The placements survive every core update. The ranking lift is real. If "cheapest possible" is your buying criteria, I'm not your guy.

One-time SEO audit: $1,500. Single placements: $300 each. Strategy session: $500 (2-hour call). Link-building retainers: 3 months minimum (then month-to-month). Anything shorter on a retainer doesn't give Google time to recognise the profile shape — I'd be taking your money for theatre.

No. Every cost is on the pricing page. Retainer prices are all-in. Two situations where extra costs apply: (1) "publisher fees" if you specifically request a placement on a site that charges an editorial fee — disclosed and approved upfront; (2) content writing on Starter retainer is $150/post, included free on Growth and Authority.

After the first 90 days: yes, with 14 days' notice. Before 90 days you're inside the minimum commitment because that's how long Google takes to recognise the new profile — leaving earlier means we paid for groundwork we never harvested. After 90, you can pause, downgrade, or end. Your dashboard stays accessible for 60 days after cancellation.

Retainers: Stripe auto-charge on the 1st of each month (card or ACH). Audits & one-offs: wire transfer or Stripe, 50% on signature / 50% on delivery. Currencies: USD primary, but I can invoice in GBP, EUR, AED, CAD, or AUD on request. Net-30 terms available for established agency partners.

You'll see new placements within 30 days. Ranking shifts within 60–90 days. Meaningful traffic compounding starts month 4–6. Money-keyword breakthroughs typically month 6–9. Anyone promising top-3 rankings in 30 days is selling you something that'll get clawed back in the next core update.

No — and run from anyone who does. Nobody controls Google. What I guarantee is the deliverable: real links from real publications at the DR you paid for. The ranking lift comes from those links plus a sane on-page foundation. If we don't move the needle in 90 days, you get month four free while we re-strategise.

Week 1: kickoff call, dashboard provisioning, full audit. Week 2: strategy + anchor plan + publisher shortlist agreed. Week 3: outreach launches, first editor responses come in. Week 4: first 1–3 placements typically land. Loom update every Friday. Full 30-day breakdown lives on the Compound Method page.

Slack — whenever you want, average reply 90 minutes. Friday Loom — every week, 5 minutes. Monthly strategy call — Growth and Authority tiers. Quarterly strategy review — every tier. Beyond that, I deliberately don't schedule recurring meetings. Most clients say less synchronous time is the best part.

On the discovery call: yes. I'll screen-share 5–10 live placements I've landed for clients in your niche this quarter — actual URLs, Ahrefs DR proofs, anchor text, traffic data. I don't post them publicly because clients prefer their backlink profile stays their advantage, not someone else's competitive intel.

Nothing dramatic, because the links are real editorial placements that Google has no reason to devalue. I've taken clients through every major update since 2021 — no clients have lost rankings to a core update or spam update during my engagement. If anything, white-hat profiles tend to gain ground during updates because spammy competitors get demoted.

For 12 months from placement date, I replace it free — same DR tier, same niche relevance. Retainer clients get this rolling forever as long as you're an active client. I track every placement monthly to catch drops before you notice them.

No — that's the entire point. Anchor distribution is modelled against your top-3 SERP competitors. Publisher mix is diversified. Link velocity is steady. Topics rotate naturally. If you sent your backlink profile to a Google engineer over coffee, they'd see a brand earning attention, not a brand buying spam.

In the audit, yes — I flag toxic links and prepare a disavow file. I generally recommend filing it only when there's clear evidence of a penalty or pattern (Google handles most low-quality links automatically now). For retainer clients, we re-audit toxic links quarterly.

AI assists me — I don't ship AI-only writing. I use Claude and ChatGPT to brainstorm angles, structure outlines, and pressure-test arguments. The prose, the voice, the editorial judgment — that's all human. Pure AI drafts fail at three stages: editors smell them and pass, readers don't engage, Google's helpful-content classifier devalues them. Not worth the corners cut.

Me. Every email I send is from my inbox. Every Loom is recorded by me. Every Slack message is typed by me. I do use a vetted writer in my network for technical-niche article drafts (which I personally edit), and I have an assistant who handles invoicing and dashboard provisioning — but every strategic and creative decision is mine. That's why client cap stays at 8–10.

Karachi, Pakistan — GMT+5. My working day starts at 09:00 PKT, ends around 19:00 PKT. That's 04:00–14:00 UTC. Overlap windows: 06:00–14:00 UK time, 04:00–10:00 East Coast US, 13:30–19:30 Sydney. Slack messages outside those hours still get a reply by next morning. I take calls in your time zone.

I take 3 weeks off per year, announced minimum 30 days in advance. During those weeks the dashboard stays live, my assistant monitors Slack for urgent issues, and the publisher pipeline I've pre-loaded keeps placements landing. Retainer cadence never breaks.

Yes. About a third of my book is white-label work for SEO and growth agencies. NDA on file. Your brand on the dashboard. My work in the background. Your clients never know I exist. Custom volume-based pricing — see the white-label page for full details.

I'll help you do it. Every brief, every publisher contact (where I'm allowed to share), every report — it's all in shared Drive folders you own. When you're ready, we can do a 4-week handoff sprint where I train your new outreach hire. Honest version: most clients keep me on as the senior strategist while building junior outreach in-house, which is usually the right answer.