People also ask
In practice
The value hierarchy follows reader attention: a link inside the article’s prose — placed in a paragraph genuinely about the topic — carries context, relevance and a real chance of being clicked; an in-content link in a “further reading” block still has some; sidebars and footers repeat on every page of the site and are treated as site-wide furniture, heavily discounted as signals and ignored by readers. Comments and forum signatures are near-zero. The consequences for buying are concrete. “Site-wide footer link” offers are priced like placements and worth like wallpaper — and a profile full of them reads as a pattern.
When negotiating a placement, the position is part of the deal: the paragraph it goes in, whether it appears above or below the fold, and whether the publisher guarantees it stays in the article body through future edits — because publishers redesign, and a body link migrated to a footer is a silent downgrade only monitoring catches. For guest posts, the link belongs where the argument needs it, typically at the first substantive mention of the product. For insertions into listicles, the row and its description sentence are the placement — and the description is written, not pasted.
The context around the link does as much work as the anchor: engines read the surrounding sentences to understand the link, and AI engines quoting the page inherit that context verbatim. Placement is negotiable on nearly every paid engagement; it is the cheapest upgrade in the whole market.
See also: Link context, First link priority, Contextual backlinks.
