The easiest way to buy backlinks is to sort a spreadsheet by DR and price.
That is also one of the easiest ways to ignore the things that actually matter.
Third-party metrics can be useful.
They can indicate whether a domain has links and some historical authority.
They cannot tell me whether a specific placement makes sense.
I start with relevance.
Does the publication belong in the same subject area, or would the article exist only because someone paid for it?
Then I look at the site itself.
- Does it appear to have a real audience?
- Does it publish material for readers or mostly sponsored articles for SEO buyers?
- Does it rank for anything meaningful?
- What kinds of sites does it link to?
Context matters as well.
A link from a strong domain inside an irrelevant article can be less useful than a link from a smaller specialist publication that reaches the right audience.
I also consider the destination.
Why should this page receive the link?
Is it a commercial page, a guide, original research or another useful resource?
Anchor text is part of the decision but not the entire strategy.
A healthy profile should not look as though every external reference was engineered around exact search terms.
For international projects, location matters too.
A site written in English is not automatically relevant to the United States or another English-speaking market.
The question is whether the publication belongs in the information environment of the audience being targeted.
A backlink is not good because a metric says so.
It is good when there is a defensible reason for the connection.