Unfair Links Launches Innovative Local SEO Backlink Service

I got the press release for a new SEO company in my inbox this morning. It’s called Unfair Links. The name alone made me stop scrolling.

Most pitches for link-building services try to sound professional. They use phrases like “premium placements” and “authority networks.” This one called itself unfair. My first thought was the same as yours. It sounded like a spam operation bragging about it.

Then I read the details. Founders Rollo Unden and Oliver Fish are making a specific argument. They say most bought links fail because they are obvious. A generic blog post in English linking to a Swedish cleaning service page does not look real. It looks like a transaction. Search engines are built to spot transactions disguised as recommendations.

Their solution is straightforward. They only build links on websites that are attached to real, local businesses. Each site has a live Google Business Profile with reviews, an address, and history. The content is written in the local language. The link is meant to look like a genuine local endorsement.

This is not a new idea. It is the old idea, the one Google’s algorithms were originally designed to reward. A recommendation from a real peer in your market. What is new is the attempt to systemize it as a service. They have built a network of these local business sites. A customer pastes a URL. Their system finds matches based on the page’s country, language, and topic. You see the business type, location, and a match score before you pay.

From a pure business mechanics perspective, it is a classic play. They are productizing a labor-intensive process. Building one of these links yourself means:

• Finding a relevant local business
• Securing a domain
• Building a simple site
• Creating content
• Maintaining the property
• Waiting weeks for the link

Unfair Links has done that groundwork at scale. They are selling the output.

The economics hinge on that scale. The value for a customer is speed and a specific type of relevance. The risk is inherent to any “private network” model. If Google determines the links are not genuinely independent, the entire network could be discounted. The founders are betting that the authenticity of the underlying business profiles provides enough cover.

I spoke to a former Google search quality analyst last year, under condition of anonymity. They told me a consistent truth. The hardest signals to fake are real-world ones. A physical address, customer reviews over time, a phone number that answers. These create a paper trail outside the web. A throwaway blog domain has none of that. Unfair Links is explicitly tying its product to those harder-to-fake signals.

This is a service built for SEO professionals, not beginners. The pricing is not listed, but building these properties is not cheap. This is for agencies and in-house marketers who need a certain type of link for specific local pages. They are the target customer.

The name “Unfair Links” is a marketing gamble. It frames the service as a competitive advantage, an “unfair” one. In their FAQ, they stress it does not refer to breaking rules. It refers to building something a competitor cannot easily replicate. This is a common concept in venture capital and startup circles. You look for an unfair advantage. It is just rarely applied to SEO.

Will it work? That depends on execution and scale. The principle is sound. A link from a relevant local business in the right language is a strong signal. The question is whether this can be delivered consistently without the patterns that search engines learn to detect. The founders claim each site stands alone. If that is true, the model has a chance. If the sites share templates, hosting, or other footprints, it becomes just another network.

The service is in beta. They are taking sign-ups on a waitlist. For anyone in the SEO industry, it is worth watching. Not for the links themselves, but for the underlying premise. It is a bet on the enduring value of local, real-world business signals in a digital ranking system. That is a bet with a long history. Sometimes the oldest ideas are the ones that come back around.