When Clients Try to Control Your Content for Links

I want to share something that’s been happening to me more and more lately.

When I collaborate with different link builders, I often provide clear guidelines for how partnerships should work. These usually include things like allowed link types, target pages, minimum DR, and other requirements. Basically, rules that help ensure links are placed in a way that doesn’t harm a site’s reputation on Google.

What’s crazy is that, more often than not, the clients of these link builders completely ignore those guidelines. They come in with their own demands about how their links should be inserted and even ask for changes to article content just to better fit their links.

It’s honestly wild. Many people have no real understanding of how link building strategies actually work, and this kind of behavior is a big part of why link building has developed such a bad reputation.

I’m curious to hear from others in the space. Is this something you’re experiencing as well? How do you handle clients who ignore guidelines and try to control placements or content? Do you push back, adapt, or just avoid working with them altogether?

I personally reject those requests.