Niche edit (link insertion)
A niche edit, or link insertion, is a link added to an article that already exists on someone else's site, instead of to a new post written for the link.
Updated , every quotation and figure read in its source that day.
Because the host page is already published and indexed, and may already have links and rankings of its own, a niche edit can pass value sooner than a new guest post that starts from nothing. "Link insertion" usually names the act of adding the link and "niche edit" the placement that results; sellers use both names for the same product.
They are asked for more often than they are offered. In BuzzStream's 2026 data, a link insertion cost about $179 on average, against $461 for a guest post bought through a vendor, but only about 14% of the sites in its vendor database offered insertions at all (BuzzStream). When Ahrefs asked 450 sites to sell a link on an existing page, only 12.6% agreed (Ahrefs), and the average price quoted was $361.44 (Ahrefs).
The line between an editorial update and a paid placement is the money. Google's spam policies list "exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links" as link spam, so a paid insertion stays within the rules only when the link carries rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". Two practical risks come on top: you do not control the page, so the link can be removed or the post deleted later, and sites that sell insertions in bulk often carry dozens of similar links, which makes them a poor neighbourhood. Check the page's traffic and outbound links before agreeing to anything.