The HOTH Review (2025)

What is The HOTH?

The HOTH is a link-building service. It also offers many other SEO services, from content creation to technical SEO and even PR.

The HOTH was founded in 2010, offering SEO services. The HOTH stands for “Hittem Over The Head,” an acronym representing the company’s vision to bludgeon the SEO industry.

While the HOTH provides a range of services, we only focus on their link-outreach service in this review.

Our Review

Criteria	Details
Expected delivery time	30 days
Actual delivery time	5 days
Expected site traffic	1K+
Actual traffic (Semrush estimate)	896
The HOTH’s Price (with copywriting)	$230
Price on other platforms (excluding copywriting)	$50
Estimated copywriting fee (500 words)	$20
Value for Money	Low

Pricing

We decided to go ahead with The Hoth’s Link Outreach for link-building.

Here’s what their pricing looks like:

The link pricing depends on three main parameters: Moz DA, Ahrefs DR, and traffic (taken from Semrush). The users can choose which site parameter they want to base the pricing upon.

So, a link from a publisher site with a Domain Rating (DR) of 50+ costs $375.

But here’s the thing:

Any site can inflate its DR and DA score to 50+ by just spending around $75. We did it. It’s too easy to manipulate these metrics.

Buying a link based on DA or DR makes absolutely no sense. Link builders jack up these metrics and sell links for high prices providing no real value to the buyer.

The traffic metric is the only legible parameter here to base the link price on. And that’s what we used for our link placement.

What We Ordered

The HOTH provides link pricing based on site traffic as well – that’s a relief. So, we went ahead with the traffic parameter. We placed an order for a link with at least 1,000 monthly traffic for a price of $230.

The HOT link pricing based on site traffic

We noticed a front-end glitch with the pricing. The price won’t update correctly as you move on the slider scale and shows wrong pricing sometimes. A small improvement the HOTH could address.

We went ahead with the order, and here’s what the HOTH promised for this link placement:

Site traffic (monthly) – 1,000+
Word count – 500 words
Expected delivery time – 30 days

What Was Delivered

Now, here’s what we think about the link delivered:

#1. Delivery Time

The HOTH delivered the link within five days.

We placed the order on 15 January 2025 and received the link on 20 January 2025.

Took them just five days, while the expected timeline was 28 days. So good job on delivery!

#2. Published Article Quality

We checked the article on the publisher’s site that’s linking to us.

The article is around 500 words, as promised. But it reads like AI content. At least to the human eye.

We checked with AI detector tools. Here’s what the Copyleaks says:

AI content detected in The HOTH article - copyleaks

Copyleaks thinks the article is completely AI-written. We also checked with another detector, Originality.ai:

AI content detected in The HOTH article - orignality AI

It says “Likely AI” but with lesser confidence. AI detector or not, the article reads like AI content for a human reader.

The anchor text is fine, though, and the article links to our intended website.

#3. Site Quality

The publisher site has a Moz DA of 54, Ahrefs DR of 36, and Semrush AS of 19.

No wonder link-building sites prefer DA and DR over AS to market and price their links.

Moz DA of The HOTH link website — *Source: Moz*

Let’s check the traffic.

The HOTH promised the publisher site would have a minimum monthly traffic of 1,000.

Here’s what Semrush says:

Semrush traffic of The HOTH publisher site — *Source: Semrush*

Semrush says the site traffic is dying, and is less than 1K monthly.

To the HOTH’s credit, the site did have a higher monthly traffic, and it nosedived in January. We ordered the link on 15 January 2025, and Semrush shows traffic of 896 on that date.

We don’t hold this against The HOTH, though. The site had 1k+ traffic in December 2024, and we caught them at a bad time.

But the bigger concern is relevancy. The site does not rank for keywords relevant to the industry we wanted it to be in. The publisher site category seems to be celebrities and gossip, while our site categories are SaaS, software, and marketing—both completely different.

In short, poor link relevancy.

#4. Value for Price

We also checked the link price from the same publisher site on other platforms.

A link from the same site is available for $50 in other marketplaces.

Collaborator.pro, a reputed guest-posting marketplace, offers this link for $50.

Considering the content cost (500 words and likely AI), we expect it to cost around $20. (Zero if it’s completely AI).

The link was definitely not outreached. They just definitely placed it via a marketplace.

So, a total of $70 cost for the HOTH, which they sold us for $230.

To sum up:

First, The HOTH delivered the link within five days. That’s a fast turnaround. Good job there!

Second, the content quality is poor and seems to be AI-written.

Third, the site is dying, with the monthly traffic going below 1,000. Moreover, the site is not relevant to my site category, making the link irrelevant.

Overall, the backlink is pretty useless.

Bottomline

We consider The HOTH to be a decent link-building service. Their Link Outreach service has an easy-to-use interface and a clear pricing band. Link placement is quick as well.

However, the link pricing is based on easily manipulable metrics like DA and DR. The link delivered was subpar—poorly written and likely AI content, dying site traffic, and an irrelevant site category—making the acquired backlink useless.

Our rating: 3.5/5

Note: This article may contain affiliate links. Please read our full disclaimer.

Have something to say? Join the discussion on LinkedIn or subscribe to stay tuned: