Which link building services still work now that buyers ask ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews before they ever click a result? The ones that chase relevance instead of volume. Jeremy Moser of uSERP and Ben Wills of OppAlerts both told me that on the Unscripted SEO Podcast, from opposite ends of the job. One runs a link building agency. The other builds a link prospecting database scored by meaning, not keywords. Below are seven services and tools I’d actually spend money on, what each one does, and where it fits.
Here’s the short version, so you don’t have to scroll for it: pick an agency when you need the links built for you, pick a tool when you have someone to do the outreach, and judge both by whether the links they find are about the same thing your page is about.
AI search rewards the same relevant links Google always did
Every vendor in this space wants you to believe AI search needs a whole new playbook. Well, the truth is that the people doing the work keep landing on the same answer. Moser put it plainly on the show: “whenever we do good stuff in SEO, it shows up better in AI search and increases visibility there.”
Ben came at it with data. In his October 2026 study he prompted 18 AI channels across 100 industries, then compared the sites they recommended against the pages linking to and mentioning them. His finding: the top-suggested sites have backlinks that are, on balance, more relevant to their industry, and unlinked brand mentions showed an even stronger pattern. It’s his own study, run on his own company’s index, and he says so. He also says “I believe we can call it causality,” which is a belief, not a proof.
My own number points the same way. When I scored 303 ranking pages across 46 Google results in September 2026, exact-match anchors predicted nothing. Anchors that were recognisably about the query did. So when you evaluate any service below, ask one question first: will these links come from pages about my topic?
7 link building services and tools that still work in AI search
Two of these I know from long recorded interviews with their founders, so they get the most detail. The other five I checked against their own sites in November 2026. None of them can promise an AI model will recommend you, and the honest ones don’t try.
| Pick | Type | Best when you… |
|---|---|---|
| uSERP | Agency | want editorial links and AI visibility built for you |
| OppAlerts | Prospecting tool | want prospects ranked by semantic similarity to your business |
| Respona | Managed placements | want to pay per placement that goes live |
| Pitchbox | Outreach platform | run outreach at agency volume |
| BuzzStream | Outreach CRM | need to track relationships across a team |
| Qwoted | Journalist requests | have an expert who can answer reporters |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | AI visibility tracking | need to measure whether any of it shows up in AI answers |
1. uSERP: a link building agency that ties links to AI visibility
uSERP is the link building agency Jeremy Moser co-founded about eight or nine years ago, after he found that the promotion side of content was the part of SEO he liked most. Most of its clients are B2B SaaS, and its site names monday.com, Robinhood, CrowdStrike, Freshworks and ActiveCampaign. Links are, in uSERP’s words, “earned by outreach, never bought,” and lost links get replaced within six months at equal or better metrics.
What I trust more than the homepage is how Moser vets a link. He told me he checks three things, in order: is this a real company that will still be around, does it have healthy authority and traffic for relevant terms, and does the link make sense in context. Anchor text comes after all of that. That’s the same order my anchor study ended up ranking them. He’s also blunt about shortcuts. Gray-hat tactics “can work on maybe a one to six month basis,” he said, but “it’s a ticking time bomb.”
On AI search specifically, uSERP sells it as a GEO agency service alongside link building, with the stated goal of getting cited in ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Claude and Perplexity. Moser’s warning is that you can overdo it:
His point: if an AI-first tactic tanks your traditional traffic, you’ve also shrunk what the next model trains on. Budget-wise, uSERP’s own FAQ puts quality link building at roughly $5,000 to $25,000+ a month on six-month engagements with a 60-day opt-out, so it’s built for companies with real marketing teams. If you want to see how they think before you talk to them, their annual State of Backlinks report is free.
Hear the full conversation: Jeremy Moser on why AI search still comes down to good SEO.
2. OppAlerts: link prospecting for AI, scored by meaning
OppAlerts is Ben Wills’ answer to a question most link tools skip: is this prospect actually about my business? When you set up a campaign, it builds a vector that represents your business, then gives every prospect a similarity score. You can set a minimum score and throw out everything that isn’t close. That’s what link prospecting for AI looks like in practice. Keywords match words. Vectors match meaning.
Ben spent 13 or 14 years on engineering before coming back to marketing tools, and it shows. The prospect index holds over 100 million pages (it adds about 500,000 a day), filtered by signals like guest post and sponsorship indicators plus PageRank, and you can check a site’s PageRank history to spot authority that’s only a short-term spike. It also finds pages that link to your competitors but not to you. On the show he was careful about what vectors can and can’t do. Describing how he ranks pages in his own news index, he said the similarity score is “just one ranking factor,” weighted alongside about a hundred other phrases and terms, because vector search alone “is pretty muddy.” Where it wins is catching relevant pages that a keyword search would never surface.
Two limits to know up front. OppAlerts does the prospecting and monitoring, and you send the outreach from your own email or outreach tool. And it can’t control which businesses an AI recommends, which its own FAQ says outright. There’s a 14-day trial on every plan.
Ben is also the guy who tests LLMs by changing one word at a time, which is a good habit to steal before you pay anyone to “optimize for AI”:
Hear the full conversation: Ben Wills on testing LLMs directly. He also joined our SEO SaaS panel with Patrick Stox and Ben Senescu.
3. Respona: managed placements you pay for per result
Respona sells done-for-you placements on a pay-per-result model, so you only pay for links that go live. Standard turnaround is 28 days, with a 14-day express option for an extra fee. It’s a fit if you want predictable unit costs and don’t need a strategist in the room. Ask to see sample placements and check whether those sites are actually about your industry.
4. Pitchbox: outreach at agency volume
Pitchbox calls itself an AI outreach platform for link building and AEO. You enter a topic, keywords or competitor sites, it returns prospects with contact data, and it drafts personalized emails for each one. You can plug in your own Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz or Majestic account for metrics. It’s built for teams sending a lot of email, which means you have to supply the relevance filter yourself.
5. BuzzStream: an outreach CRM for teams
BuzzStream is the relationship-tracking layer. It researches prospects, finds contact details and metrics, builds press lists for digital PR, monitors the links you win and keeps every conversation in one place so two people on your team don’t pitch the same editor. It won’t tell you who to pitch for AI visibility, but it keeps the people you do pitch from slipping through the cracks.
6. Qwoted: earned mentions through journalist requests
If Ben’s finding about unlinked mentions holds, getting quoted in the press matters even when you don’t get a link. Qwoted connects experts with reporters looking for sources. Its free Basic plan gives you two pitches a month and a daily opportunities email, and Pro is $149.99 a month. It only works if you have someone who can give a reporter a real answer fast.
7. Ahrefs Brand Radar: measure whether any of it shows up
None of the above matters if you can’t see the result. Ahrefs Brand Radar tracks how often your brand is mentioned in AI answers and how often AI cites your pages, across AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. It also helps you find the AI citations worth going after next, which turns it into a prospect list of its own.
Agency or tool: the choice comes down to who does the outreach
You can buy links built, or you can buy better prospects and do the asking yourself. If nobody on your team will send 50 personal emails a month, a tool will sit unused, and you need uSERP or Respona. If you do have that person, OppAlerts for finding relevant prospects plus BuzzStream or Pitchbox for running the outreach gives you more control for less money. Either way, put Brand Radar or your own prompt testing on top so you’re measuring AI visibility instead of guessing at it.
Whatever you choose, run the prospects through a relevance check before anyone sends an email. Our SOP for vetting links by relevance, not DA is the version I hand to teams.
Link building for AI search starts with one question per link
Is the page linking to you about the same thing you are? Moser asks it as someone vetting a domain. Ben answers it with vectors. My anchor study answered it with 303 ranking pages. If a service can’t explain how it answers that question, it isn’t built for AI search, whatever the sales page says.
And if you’d rather earn links from conversations than from cold email, here’s how SEO Arcade’s podcast-powered link building works.