Placing a link on abovethink.com

This is the band where a placement pays for itself through relevance instead of reach: 34k visits, most of them arriving from long-tail queries.

There is a second job these placements do that is worth naming: they make a young or thin profile look normal. A domain that acquires 35-level links from a spread of ordinary publications, in drips, over months, looks like a business that has been around. A domain that acquires forty links from aggressive networks in a fortnight looks like a campaign, and it is the pattern rather than the individual link that gets noticed.

Within the General section of the index — 1,576 listings, 39 median DA, 5k median traffic, $70 median price — this placement is 21% above the median on cost and about 6.2× the index median on audience. Listings in that section range from $30 at the cheap end, so the question is not whether $85 is high for a link, but whether it is high for this one.

Generalist inventory also varies more than any other kind, which is why the numbers in this brief matter more than the label. A 35 DA domain with 34k estimated monthly visits and Do-follow links is a different product from the same DA with a tenth of the traffic, and they are priced too close together in most catalogues.

Our observation on this host is do-follow outbound links in editorial content. That is the attribute, not the value: the 35 DA and 34k monthly visits are what the attribute is attached to.

Two comparisons decide whether abovethink.com at $85 is a good buy: this listing against the 1,576 other General entries we index, and against the whole 2,000-site index. The gap between those two answers is where a price is either justified or inherited from a rate card nobody revisited.

Ranked against the 2,000 listings we index, abovethink.com sits in the top 85% for audience and the top 15% for authority, at $2.50 per thousand monthly visits. Inside the DA 30-39 band (892 listings) that price ranks 124th for value, which is the comparison to use: nobody competes with the whole index, they compete with the sites a buyer would book instead.

abovethink.com out-ranks 85% of the index on audience size (about 6.2× the index median) and 15% on authority. The placement costs $2.50 per thousand estimated visits, and cheaper per visit than 86% of the DA 30-39 band. Those two figures, not the DA column alone, decide whether $85 is a good trade or just a listed one.

• Thin profiles where diversity matters more than raw authority.
• Agencies filling a monthly quota with links nobody will object to.
• Anyone testing guest posting before committing to a premium title.
• Do not buy this if the site's topical distance from your market needs three paragraphs of explanation. Relevance has to be obvious to a crawler reading the neighbourhood.
• Do not buy this if the page it would sit on is already crowded with five other commercial links — we will usually flag that at the availability check and offer a different section.

Pitch angle: a comparison of two options a reader is choosing between. That is the shape we take to a General audience, because it is the version the host's own editor has a reason to keep.

• Send the anchor text in the draft Not afterwards. Once the editor has set the copy, changing the anchor is a new request and a new reason for the link to end up in a bio block.
• Keep the tone flat No superlatives, no promises about outcomes, no invented before-and-after. The style that survives editorial review in General is the style that sounds like someone reporting on their own work.
• Name a real author A person with a title and a bio. Anonymous contributions on General sites are the first thing an editor distrusts, and the first thing a reader discounts.

Anchor plan for this host

• a descriptive anchor that repeats a phrase the article already uses naturally
• one brand or URL anchor in the first half, and nothing else

• Editorial activity. A site with 34k monthly visits and nothing published in six months is a decaying asset, and decaying assets get dropped from the index in batches.
• Template stability. Redesigns and CMS migrations kill placements. We check the age of the site's oldest surviving article as a proxy for how long a page there tends to live.
• Ownership. Several of the listings in our index turn out to share a publisher or an ad network. Relevance does not multiply when five links come from one hand, so we check the footer, the registration and the ad slots.
• Disclosure policy. Whether the host labels paid contributions. A label costs you nothing in link value and protects the host from the penalty that removes the page.

1. You send the target URL and your angle The page you want the link to point at, the subject, and any author you want credited. Five minutes of input.
2. We confirm availability on abovethink.com Publisher slots move week to week, including on 35 DA properties. Nothing is promised until the section and the placement URL are confirmed, and we tell you before you pay if the slot has gone.
3. You approve the brief and the shortlist Where the host gives a choice of section or existing article, we send options with the numbers that matter: traffic, indexation, neighbours.
4. The article is drafted and edited for the host Written for abovethink.com's audience rather than for your keyword, then checked against the site's own style before submission.
5. The host publishes; we verify the live URL Placement live, correct target, link attribute as recorded, indexable. Only then does the order count as delivered.
6. You get the report, and the replacement cover starts PDF and CSV with the live URL, anchor, placement date and target page. Twelve-month replacement on the link itself, no ticket required.

If the article you want published needs expert authorship, data or photography, that work is included; if it needs a regulated-industry review, say so early, because it changes the timeline rather than the price.

What comes with this placement

• White-label PDF + CSV report — forward it to a client unchanged.
• 12-month replacement cover: if the link drops, we rebuild it.
• Anchor and target page exactly as approved in the brief, or the placement is not counted.
• Live-URL verification, with a dated record of the placement.

Browse the index: all 2,000 briefs · General listings · domains beginning A (96) · DA 30-39 band (892)