Open Secret

Link Building · Infrastructure Providers

Link building for Infrastructure Providers

The standard playbook assumes publishers who will not return your emails. This is the version that works when half the internet declines the outreach on principle.

Infrastructure Providers specifically

What is different about payment, age verification, hosting and content-protection providers

The method below is the same whichever industry you are in. These are the parts that are not — and they are usually what decides whether the programme works.

Your integration partners are your best links

Every platform you integrate with has a partner directory, and most vendors never ask to be listed properly. These are high-authority, permanent, free, and they are citation sources as well as ranking signals.

Trade media will publish you

Unlike consumer publishers, industry trade press covers this category as a matter of course. It is a smaller universe than mainstream outreach and the acceptance rate is a different order of magnitude.

The method

How link building works, in any category

01

Rejection is the default, so the strategy has to assume it

Mainstream outreach in this category converts at a fraction of normal rates, and most of that is category refusal rather than anything about the pitch. Programmes built on volume outreach fail here. Programmes built on a smaller number of genuinely receptive source types work, and the resulting profile is harder for a competitor to copy precisely because it was harder to build.

02

Where the links actually are

Industry media and trade publications. The comparison and roundup ecosystem, which is also the layer AI engines cite most heavily. Partner and integration pages, which are frequently the highest-authority links available and cost nothing but a conversation. Original data and tooling that gives someone a reason to cite you. Conference and association listings.

03

The same work feeds the AI layer

A roundup that links to you is a ranking signal and a citation source simultaneously. This is the strongest argument for running link building and AI visibility as one programme rather than two: in restricted categories the source lists overlap almost completely, and buying them separately means paying twice for one outreach motion.

04

What a bought link costs you later

This category is saturated with vendors selling placements on networks that exist only to sell placements. They work until they do not, and the cleanup is more expensive than the original programme. We will tell you when a competitor is visibly buying, and we will not match it.

Category specifics

What this looks like for infrastructure providers

The method does not change between industries. The questions buyers actually ask, the sources the engines trust, and the rules you have to advertise inside all do.

Prompts we run for this category

  • best age verification provider
  • high-risk payments vendors compared
  • most reliable hosting and cdn for adult platforms
  • alternatives to the leading content protection provider

Rules this category advertises inside

  • Age verification rules differ by US state and by country
  • Payment network rules for high-risk categories
  • Record-keeping obligations vary by jurisdiction
  • Claims about compliance coverage must be substantiable

Citation layer

Where the engines look for a infrastructure provider

Each engine resolves a local recommendation through a different set of sources. These are the ones that decide whether a infrastructure provider gets named — and most of them are not your website.

  1. All engines G2 and Capterra category pages
  2. All engines Industry media — XBIZ, YNOT, trade press
  3. ChatGPT / Copilot Comparison and roundup articles
  4. Perplexity Reddit and operator communities
  5. All engines Conference and association listings
  6. Gemini / AI Overviews Organization and Product schema on your domain
  7. All engines Partner and integration directories

Scope

What the engagement covers

Specifics rather than adjectives — and an equally specific list of what it does not cover, because unclear scope is the most common cause of a bad first quarter.

Included

  • Link gap analysis against named competitors
  • Prospect list built by source type, not scraped by volume
  • Industry media and trade publication outreach
  • Roundup and comparison-page placement — the layer AI engines cite
  • Partner and integration page audit, usually the fastest wins available
  • Original data or tooling development where the category lacks it
  • Monthly reporting on referring domains, authority and citation overlap

Not included

  • Paid links, private blog networks and placement marketplaces
  • Guest post farms
  • Any volume guarantee — a fixed monthly link count is a promise you can only keep by buying

What to expect, when

Timeline

  1. Weeks 1–2 Gap analysis and prospect list by source type
  2. Weeks 2–4 Partner and integration wins — the fast ones land first
  3. Month 2+ Media and roundup outreach, running continuously
  4. Month 3–6 Authority compounds and commercial terms open up

3 questions

Common questions

How many links per month?

We do not quote a number, because a guaranteed monthly count can only be met by buying placements. We report referring domains earned, the source type, and whether the same source shows up in your AI citation map.

Our competitors are clearly buying links. Why should we not?

Because you inherit the cleanup. We will show you what they are doing and what it is worth, and you can make the call knowing the downside is a recovery project rather than a penalty notice.

Is adult link building really different?

Yes, and mostly in who says no. The tactics are ordinary; the prospect universe is a fraction of the size, so selection matters far more than volume and a scraped list is close to worthless.

Also for infrastructure providers

Start with the number.

Before any retainer, we run fifty prompts across four engines and show you exactly where you stand against the operators being named instead.

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