Site owners who are told to “strengthen the site with links” usually hear the same advice: buy a few articles on other websites. Where to pay, who answers for the result and what happens if the article is taken down are rarely explained. So here is a short look at the service we use ourselves to place articles for clients: Collaborator.
The limits of this text are as follows. Everything about the service’s terms comes from collaborator.pro pages that I opened and read on 10 November 2026: the home page and the questions and answers section. They exist only in English, and the wording is taken from there. What is not written there, I do not claim. Anything marked “from our practice” is the agency’s experience, not statistics and not a promise of results.
What this service is
It is a marketplace where owners of websites and Telegram channels sell space for other people’s material. On the day I looked, the home page showed counters of 45,628 websites and 3,189 channels. The figures change, so treat them as an order of magnitude, not an exact number.
The scheme is simple. You register, create a project, pick a site in the catalog using filters and set a task. The site owner replies, publishes the material, and you check it and approve it. You can bring your own text or order one from the service’s copywriter. Payment is possible in hryvnias, dollars, euros or pounds. There is a separate requirement for sites: they must open in Ukraine, and in a dispute about availability the terms say the decision goes in the customer’s favor.
Why bother, and what Google says
Google’s documentation says links are used as a signal: search uses them to judge how relevant a page is and to find new pages. Hence the logic of buying articles: a mention of your site on someone else’s topical resource.
There is a flip side, and it is worth knowing before you pay. In Google’s spam policies, buying or selling links to influence rankings is named as a violation, and among the examples are paid articles with optimized anchors (the anchor is the words you click in a link). At the same time, it says paid links themselves are not a violation if they are marked with the nofollow or sponsored attribute.
What do the marketplace’s terms say? The site owner chooses the link type: dofollow, nofollow or sponsored, and, according to the service, most customers prefer dofollow. So the same purchase looks borderline in Google’s documentation yet is routine on the marketplace. How much risk this carries for your site, none of the sources I read estimates. The decision is yours: do not treat a link as a magic button and do not spend all your money on them.
Money: how a deal works
The service states that funds are protected throughout the deal and that arbitration handles disputes. The terms show this:
- When you set a task, the money is frozen, and the publisher receives it once you approve the work.
- You get 72 hours to review. If you have not decided by then, auto-acceptance happens, so do not put it off.
- The marketplace takes a 10% commission on balance top-ups (and 15% on withdrawals, but that concerns publishers). Account for that 10% in your budget.
- You can get money back from your balance by asking support, and only by the same method you paid with.
- In a dispute, the arbitration decision is final and cannot be appealed.
Guarantee: what is actually covered
It is easy to get this wrong, because the pages describe the guarantee differently. The home page speaks of protection against deletion and non-indexing, free for 3 months, plus a paid guarantee for a year. In the questions section the free protection is described more narrowly: as protection against link deletion for three months; if the article is gone or the site does not respond, you should contact support chat. What exactly you get under the free guarantee, the terms do not spell out, so ask before paying.
The extended guarantee is described in detail:
- It costs 10% of the placement fee including writing the text and lasts 12 months.
- You must choose it when ordering; it cannot be added later.
- There are three insured events: the article has not entered any search engine’s index within two months; it dropped out of the index and did not return within 25 days; the article or a link was deleted and not restored within 7 days.
- Payout: the placement fee plus the cost of the text, if it was written on the site’s side, goes back to your balance. The service says it will try to resolve the matter within 25 days and, if it cannot, refund the money within a further 7 days.
- The guarantee is not offered on all sites, only on those with which the marketplace has an established relationship. For sites from Russia and Belarus the guarantee has been withdrawn.
What happens to your money if the article is deleted and you did not take the extended guarantee, I did not find in the terms, so I promise nothing.
How to pick a site
In the catalog you can filter by subject, country, monthly traffic and placement speed, and also see metrics from SEO tools, for example DR from Ahrefs. On the home page the marketplace says some sites have verified Google Analytics and Search Console data. There are also reviews from customers about sites.
From our practice, authority numbers are not enough. Here is what else we check:
- Real readers from your region. If you want customers from your city, look for visitors from exactly there. A mention of your city in a site’s description does not mean it is read in that city: the catalog search catches any mention. For a client’s site we also compare the audience with their Google Analytics: do gender, age and interests match.
- The site opens. Open it yourself, on a phone too. A closed, slow or “dead” site will not do, and we do not bypass site protection: if it did not open, we skip it.
- Topic. Articles about everything at once and not one comment under them are money down the drain. A link to your site should sit where similar things are written about every day.
- Reviews. Read what other customers write, at least about your type of service.
How to place the article
Marketplace rules worth knowing in advance:
- At least 2,000 characters without spaces, at least 75% uniqueness, up to three of your links per article. The recommended length is several thousand characters.
- The description, title, URL and keywords you specify are treated by the site owner as recommendations and may be changed.
- The site owner may add up to five external links of their own besides yours, but not to your direct competitors.
- After publication, the link type or anchor cannot be changed without your request.
- The administration may reject an article without giving a reason.
From our practice: we place as many links as the site allows, usually two or three. Most are anchorless, that is, just the site’s address or name, and some use keywords so that the profile does not look artificial. About 2,000 characters with a picture is enough for an article.
What to check before paying
- Does the site have readers from your country and city?
- Does it open, and does it write about your topic?
- Is there a guarantee on this site, and which one? Choose the extended one when ordering.
- How many links are allowed, and of what type?
- How much will actually leave your balance, counting the 10% commission?
- Are 72 hours enough for you to review?
Summary
Collaborator is a convenient intermediary: a catalog, filters, protection of funds during the deal and a guarantee. It will not answer whether you need links, and it will not remove Google’s reservations about paid links. Buy few, on sites with a live audience from your region, and compare the result with your analytics data. You can try it here: collaborator.pro.
If a contractor is already buying links for you, look at their report critically; the article “Lots of Links Bought, Zero Results: 5 Questions for Your Contractor’s Report” will help. Whether to invest in SEO at all is covered in “Google Ads or SEO: Pros and Cons for a Business Owner” and “SEO Not Working? Check Which Pages Google Visitors Land On”. How we run campaigns is in the sections on search advertising and Performance Max.
Not sure what your contractor is buying for you? Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request — we will look at your account and tell you what is going on with the numbers.