References worth having.
Claims the firm can stand behind.

Create a placement register from the firm’s known profiles, membership listings, previous publicity and available backlink reports. Record the referring page, destination URL, page owner, placement type, any payment and the date checked. A backlink export is a discovery aid, not proof that every record is current or valuable.

Open each page. Check whether the firm’s name, office, practice areas and linked destination are accurate. A correct homepage link may be less useful to a reader than the relevant practice page, but change the destination only when that page genuinely answers the reader’s next question.

Separate factual corrections from new outreach. Fixing an old office address or a broken destination is a bounded task; buying another listing does not resolve the stale one. Keep requests and responses so the firm knows which corrections were actually made.

Google’s spam policy identifies links created primarily to manipulate search rankings as link spam. Its examples include buying or selling links for ranking purposes and excessive exchanges. The policy also recognises advertising and sponsorship links when qualified with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".

For a paid placement, ask the publisher how the link will be qualified and inspect the published HTML afterwards. Qualification addresses a search-policy issue; it does not establish that the advertisement, referral arrangement or professional claims meet the firm’s other obligations.

Avoid offers built around guaranteed rankings, undisclosed paid endorsements or a network of near-identical articles whose only purpose is carrying links. Record the exact concern rather than labelling every unfamiliar directory unsafe. Relevance, disclosure, accurate claims and the actual arrangement all need inspection.

A paid listing is not automatically an acceptable advertisement, and an unpaid link is not automatically risk-free. These are separate review questions.