4 Best Link Building Services to Grow Brand Citations in AI Search

Visibility has always been a battlefield for brands. But the unprecedented rise of AI Search in 2025 has caught everyone off guard: now it's the survival of the most mentioned.

Of course, brand citations aren't backlinks, but they're definitely stealing the show. If your brand gets no mention in AI answers, it's literally invisible to the people searching right now. Meanwhile, the brands that do — grab all the attention.

So how do you get picked up by AI Search for those instant answers?

It comes down to a mix of factors — from your brand's overall authority and credibility, to its presence in listicles (a favorite type of content for LLMs to scan), to mentions earned through digital PR.

This article breaks down the best digital PR link-building services that help your brand kill two birds with one stone — rank higher in traditional search and get cited more often in major LLMs.

1. Editorial.Link

Editorial.Link is a trusted link-building service powering 500+ global brands with premium editorial backlinks and brand mentions from top-traffic sites in competitive niches like SaaS, legal, insurance, tech, real estate, finance and lots more.

Featured among the "Best Link-Building Services" in AI Overviews, Editorial.Link knows exactly how to get your brand seen — in both traditional and AI Search.

⚙️ Services

Editorial.Link helps your brand win Google rankings with premium editorial links, broken link-building campaigns, and linkable assets designed to attract mentions and backlinks organically over time.

All backlinks are earned — never resold — and come from long-standing relationships with trusted websites and editors, averaging a DR of 67.

For larger link volumes, Editorial.Link offers white-label link-building, tailored for enterprises that want to scale their online presence with custom, branded link-building strategies and high-authority citations.

When it comes to AI Search, their expertise lies in digital PR link-building on authority platforms, brand mention outreach across niche blogs and industry hubs, and — most importantly — listicle link-building.

💡 Pro-tip! Getting featured in well-performing listicles is one of the fastest ways to show up in LLM responses — and Editorial.Link has perfected this strategy.

That's because listicles are easy for LLMs to detect and process — they're concise, scannable, and often provide answers to top-searched queries like "How to" and "Best X tools" — a perfect place to get your brand cited.

🔥 Benefits

With Editorial.Link's brand mentions, your business gets cited across ChatGPT and AI Overviews — while every link placement remains 100% white-hat. No link farms, no PBNs, no dead-end directories or ghost sites.

All links are pre-approved by clients before placement — and there are no upfront fees. You'll first receive a trial backlink to see the results in action before making any commitment.

Finally, Editorial.Link offers a 100% link replacement guarantee for any link that drops within six months, along with a 30-day live-link turnaround and a dedicated manager assigned to your specific business case.

👍 Customer Approval

Beyond client testimonials and success stories featured on their website, Editorial.Link has built a stellar reputation on public review platforms like Clutch, where it holds a 5-star rating.

To top it off, Editorial.Link gets annual recognition with awards like "Best Link-Building Agency" from Clutch and DesignRush.

2. INSERT.LINK

INSERT.LINK is a full-scale backlink marketplace with an AI-powered search engine that finds the best link insertions, guest post placements, and listicle mentions within high-performing, existing content.

That gives you an upper hand in competitive niches — you don't need to create content yourself, yet you can be 100% confident your brand is cited on the websites you choose, with the authority, DR, and credibility your business needs.

⚙️ Services

The instant link placement marketplace makes it effortless for teams and freelancers to get their brands cited with trending keywords. Simply open your dashboard, type your anchors, and hit search — done.

With Advanced Filters, you can fine-tune your search by niche, DR, traffic, domain authority, and more. The tool then automatically finds the pages that offer the strongest placement opportunities.

💡 Pro-tip! Agencies can run bulk link and citation searches at scale — with a white-label feature that helps you find the best placement opportunities and manage client links under your own brand.

🔥 Benefits

INSERT.LINK connects you with link and citation opportunities in almost every crowded niche out there.

That's backed by INSERT.LINK's massive pre-vetted database — 38 million pages across 152 locations and more than 45,000 websites ready for link placements.

Transparency is built in — check DR, relevance, traffic, and other vital metrics beforehand, so you always know what you're paying for. Every link is 100% white-hat, safe, and fully Google-compliant.

Turnaround time for links or citations is typically 1–3 days, with flexible volume options to fit your demand.

💡 Pro-tip! With INSERT.LINK's search-and-buy listicle mentions, you're on the fast track to AI search visibility. When your links appear in top-authority listicles, AI notices — and so does Google.

👍 Customer Approval

INSERT.LINK may be new to the backlink marketplace, but it's quickly gaining a solid repute — with great reviews from users on platforms like TrustPilot, G2 and DesignRush.

It recently honored INSERT.LINK with the "Top Link-Building Agency of 2025" award.

3. NP Digital

Co-founded by Neil Patel, one of the most heard voices in modern marketing, NP Digital is recognized as a truly forward-thinking agency shaping the way digital marketing services should be delivered in 2025.

Beyond traditional SEO, paid ads, content, and influencer marketing, they help brands get discovered everywhere — from Google to ChatGPT — across every spot customers are searching, swiping, scrolling, streaming, or shopping.

⚙️ Services

Since NP Digital positions itself as a full-service digital marketing agency, you can pretty much get everything you need to propel your brand — from earned media and multi-channel optimization to large-scale paid media campaigns, creative content production, and deep analytics.

For those particularly focused on success in AI Search, NP Digital offers an AI Search Optimization suite that tracks how your brand appears across all major LLMs — capturing mentions, citations, and sentiment to keep brand visibility strong.

It's all backed by Neil Patel's signature tools — Ubersuggest for deep keyword insights and AnswerThePublic, which listens to Google's autocomplete data to detect the exact questions people are asking online so you can turn them into content and traffic gains for your brand.

🔥 Benefits

A major advantage of partnering with NP Digital is the unified brand positioning that comes from having every marketing service you need under one roof.

They help your brand stand out across all major touchpoints — from AI Search to socials and streaming — so you're seen everywhere.

Another key perk: everything they do — from SEO to content — is intent-driven and perfectly aligned with user behavior and algorithm shifts — one of the smartest ways to keep your brand visible in the long run.

👍 Customer Approval

Due to Neil Patel's trusted expertise and proven success, NP Digital has become a multi-award-winning agency, recognized across the industry as one of the most impactful partners in digital marketing.

It's regularly nominated by respected industry platforms for its excellence in specialized services and meaningful contributions to the marketing community.

4. Go Fish Digital

Go Fish Digital is an award winning digital marketing agency zooming in on SEO, paid media and social commerce.

What truly sets them apart is their early adoption of AI-driven marketing strategies — from optimizing brands for AI Search and conversational platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity to use of AI for smarter targeting and content creation.

⚙️ Services

Go Fish Digital is a full-cycle marketing agency blending earned, owned, and paid media with a powerful social commerce toolkit.

Special attention should be paid to their Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) service.

Made to help brands earn citations in Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Bing Copilot, GEO focuses on expanding a brand's semantic footprint, increasing fact density and structured data signals — all to make content authoritative enough to be recognized and referenced by AI systems.

🔥 Benefits

Beyond its full-funnel capabilities, Go Fish Digital offers extra AI-backed features:

• Semantic Content Audit – aligns your core topics with how AI and search engines define expertise and authority.
• AI Overview Analyzer – tracks your brand's visibility and mention frequency in Google's AI answers, plus gives exact prompts to improve inclusion.
• Similarity Score Extension – sees how closely your content mirrors AI-generated results, so you can reverse-engineer what ranks.
• Barracuda – an AI-driven tool running deep, page-level diagnostics across 14 ranking factors cited in Google's own patents.

👍 Customer Approval

Since 2005, Go Fish Digital has earned the trust of major global brands — yet their strategies deliver just as much impact for businesses of any size or stage.

Year after year, Go Fish Digital lands industry accolades — from Google and Inc. 500 to a growing list of top marketing authorities.

FAQ

Best digital PR link-building services are great to keep in your arsenal, though growing brand citations in AI Search is still uncharted territory for many.

So here are a few quick answers to the common FAQs on the matter worth knowing.

Why Brand Citations Matter in AI Search?

Citations now decide whether your brand shows up in AI results at all. They've become the new "trust signals" for LLMs — the more often your brand is mentioned across the content these systems read, the higher your chances of being featured in AI-generated answers.

And these aren't just assumptions — an Ahrefs study of 75K brands found that branded web mentions showed the strongest correlation with visibility in Google's AI Overviews.

On top of that, a recent Semrush study found something groundbreaking regarding the value of citations: AI Mode responses overlap with Google's top 10 organic results by only 51% at the domain level — and just 32% at the URL level.

In other words, more than half of the sources cited by AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews don't even appear in traditional search results. That's a massive shift — proof that AI search runs on a different logic: one built on citations, not purely rankings.

How AI tools collect and surface brand names

The majority of LLMs are trained on massive datasets — web pages, news, books, social media, forums, product catalogs — where brand names naturally appear and gradually become part of their learned vocabulary.

Structured sources like business directories, product listings, and reviews further strengthen this effect, since they present brand data in condensed, easily recognizable formats that models can absorb and later reproduce.

The more frequently a brand appears across diverse, reputable contexts, the stronger its internal "signal" becomes, making it more likely to surface in AI Search.

💡 Pro-tip! LLMrefs lets you import your keyword and instantly see how your brand performs across major LMMs.

It automatically generates fan-out prompts that mirror real conversations with ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity — tracking which brands those systems cite or recommend for each query.

Basically, it shows you how the frequency and context of your brand mentions translate into real visibility and competitiveness within AI Search.

How Link Building Agencies Help Brands Appear in AI Results

One of the key tactics link-building agencies use is expanding a brand's semantic footprint and fact density across the web — getting it cited as often as possible in relevant, high-quality sources.

Each citation strengthens the web of associations between your brand and the topics, industries, and features you aim to dominate.

The best content formats for citations in 2025 are listicles, expert roundups, and digital PR features. They deliver a double win — expanding your reach across niche-relevant domains while embedding your brand in AI-readable, intent-driven content that LLMs can easily parse, recognize, and reuse.

Just search any AI response for something like "best link-building agency", and notice which brands show up in the responses.

Nearly all of them come from high-performing listicles, guest posts, and expert roundups — the same "Top 10" or "Best SaaS Tools" articles that dominate niche SERPs for the most searched queries.