// ABOUT //

About $15,000 lost
because nobody was watching

Not a one-time mistake. Not a single bad decision. Just 18 months of link building without proper monitoring — and no system to tell us when links disappeared.

Here's how I found out.

2019

The Discovery

I was running marketing for a fintech company in Ukraine. Our SEO team and link building department kept spending budget on backlinks — niche-relevant sites, DA 40-60, proper outreach. The kind of links that should move rankings.

But results never matched the investment.

We kept noticing the pattern: significant effort, significant budget, underwhelming results. SEO promised one thing, reality delivered another. Something wasn't adding up.

As the marketing lead, I initiated a deep audit of everything we'd done over the past two years. Every link purchase, every placement, every dollar spent — and whether those links were still there.

About $15,000 worth of links had vanished.

LINK INVESTMENT LOST
~$15,000
Period 18 months
Problem No monitoring
Discovery Manual audit
Links removed before contract end — nobody noticed
// THE PROBLEM //

Why did this happen?

No Tracking System

SEO team bought links, submitted expense reports, and moved on. No spreadsheet, no follow-up checks. Buy and forget.

Too Late to Recover

Pages were gone. Contacts had moved on. The money was just... gone. Discovery came months too late.

Scattered Disappearances

A site went down here. A page deleted there. New owners wiping content. Slow, silent destruction.

"The audit results hit hard. Months of link building work, gone. And we only found out because someone finally decided to check." — That someone should have been automated.
// THE SEARCH //

Why I built this instead of using something else

Ahrefs / Semrush
$200-400/mo
Paying for 90% of features you don't need if you just want monitoring
Monitor Backlinks
Varies
Okay but felt abandoned. Interface from another era.
Linkody
Varies
The interface made me want to close my laptop.

All of these tools were built by companies that do a million other things. Backlink monitoring is their side feature, not their focus.

Started

A simple Python script that checked links daily and sent Telegram alerts

Shared

Showed it to a friend who runs an SEO agency. She asked if she could use it.

Spread

Then her contacts wanted it. Then their contacts. Word got around.

Today

Somewhere along the way, the script became a product.

// WHY WE WENT PUBLIC //

From Internal Tool to Something Bigger

The Results Started Showing

Once we started monitoring, something changed. Links that disappeared? We caught them within hours, not months. We contacted publishers, got links restored, even got refunds when they couldn't fix it. The ~$15,000 loss became a ~$2,000/month savings.

Polishing the Rough Edges

That "simple Python script" went through dozens of iterations. Better parsing. Smarter alerts. A proper database instead of JSON files. Real-time dashboards instead of command-line output. Months of testing on real campaigns, real clients, real budgets.

The Decision to Go Public

At some point, I realized: this thing actually works. It's battle-tested. It's solving a real problem that I know thousands of other link builders face every day.

Why keep it locked inside one company when it could help the entire industry?

Packaging It Right

So I took everything we'd built, wrapped it in a proper UI, added team features, built the billing system, documented everything. Turned a scrappy internal tool into a SaaS platform anyone can use.

Let's Be Honest About the Money Part

Yes, I want to earn something from this. I'm not pretending this is pure altruism. Revenue from LinkGuard funds future development, pays for servers, and gives me resources to build other tools that might help the SEO community.

But here's the thing: I only earn if the tool actually works for you. Pay-as-you-go means if it's not valuable, you just stop using it. No long-term contracts, no guilt-trip cancellation flows. The only way I succeed is by genuinely helping.

So here it is — a tool born from losing $15,000, refined through years of real use, and now available to anyone who needs it.

Welcome to LinkGuard. Let's stop losing links together.

// WHO'S BEHIND THIS //

Andrii Andrievskii

SEO and digital marketing since 2011 — started as a freelance web designer who learned SEO because clients kept asking "but will anyone find this site?"

SEO & Growth Marketing

Took rankings from nowhere to top 3 for main keywords. Helped grow a company from zero to profitability in 10 months with a 30-person team.

Fintech Consulting & Marketing Audits

Co-founded a consulting firm focused on marketing channel analysis — deep research into every traffic source including SEO. Audited ~15 companies in Ukraine and internationally. Every single one had the same gap: link building tracking was non-existent. Half of them didn't even record links in Excel. SEO teams would buy links, submit expense reports, and that was it. No follow-up. No monitoring. No idea if the links survived a month later.

CMO & CEO Roles

Built marketing departments from scratch multiple times. Learned that most SEO problems aren't about strategy — they're about execution.

Based in Kyiv, Ukraine. Still here despite everything.

I'm not a developer by training — I taught myself enough Python to be dangerous, and I work with actual engineers for the complex stuff. But I understand the SEO side deeply, and that matters more for a tool like this.

Andrii Andrievskii - Founder of LinkGuard AI

Get in touch

@andreii0 info@linkguard.ai LinkedIn Facebook

I read everything and usually respond within a day.

// WHAT LINKGUARD DOES //

Simple, Reliable Monitoring

I'm not going to pretend this is revolutionary technology.

It checks your links. On a schedule you set. And tells you when something changes.

That's it.

Link disappears? You get an alert.
Dofollow → nofollow? You know about it.
Page deindexed? You see it.

The magic — if there is any — is that it's reliable, fast, and doesn't cost you $300/month.

Flexible Scheduling

Hourly for important links, daily for regular ones, weekly for directory junk you don't really care about.

Smart Alerts

Email works. Telegram is faster. Webhooks if you're building custom workflows.

Historical Tracking

Trends, patterns, complete history. Know what happened and when.

Team & Projects

Project organization for agencies. Team permissions so interns don't accidentally break things.

// COMPLETE CONTROL //

You Decide Everything

Most monitoring tools tell you how to monitor. We believe you know your links best.

Choose Your Link Groups

Organize links into projects, campaigns, or client accounts. Each group can have completely different monitoring rules. Guest posts from premium sites? Check hourly. Directory submissions? Weekly is enough.

Set Your Own Check Frequency

From every 15 minutes for critical links to once a month for low-priority ones. You decide how often each link or group gets checked. No forced schedules, no wasted checks.

Control Your Budget

Only you decide how much you spend each month. Same number of links can cost different amounts depending on how you configure them. Tight budget? Check less frequently. Need real-time? Pay for what matters.

Pick Your Parsing Types

Need just link presence check? Use basic parsing. Want anchor text, surrounding context, and nofollow status? Enable deep parsing. Different links, different needs, different costs.

Real Example: Same 1,000 Links, Different Budgets

Here's how different configurations affect your monthly cost:

Budget-Conscious
Weekly checks, basic parsing
~$15/mo
Perfect for stable, established links
Balanced
Daily checks, standard parsing
~$45/mo
Good for active link building campaigns
Real-Time
Hourly checks, deep parsing
~$120/mo
For high-value, mission-critical links

Same links. Same tool. You choose the investment level that makes sense for your business.

No forced monthly minimums
Change settings anytime
Pay only for what you use
Pause anytime without penalty

LinkGuard is for you if...

  • You're managing 100+ links and manually checking them takes half a day
  • You're an agency handling multiple clients and need organized tracking
  • You've bought expensive links and want to know immediately if they disappear
  • You're tired of discovering link losses three months after they happened

Built for people who already understand link building and just need the monitoring handled automatically.

Not for you if...

If you have fewer than 50 backlinks, you don't need this.

Seriously. Google Search Console plus a spreadsheet will work fine. Check it once a month. Save your money for actually building more links.

// PRICING PHILOSOPHY //

Why I'm not trying to charge you $300/month

Enterprise SEO tools love subscription pricing. Pay monthly forever, whether you use it or not.

I get why — recurring revenue is nice for business.

But from the user side? I hated it. Paying $400/month for Ahrefs when I only used 10% of the features. Forgetting to cancel trials. Paying for months when I was barely using the tool.

Pay-as-you-go tokens instead

  • You buy tokens when you need them
  • They work until you use them
  • If you don't check links for a month, you don't pay for that month

Is this worse for my recurring revenue? Probably. But I'd rather have users who actually like paying because they're getting value, not users who resent me every month when the charge hits.

What I'm not promising

  • This tool will save your rankings or make you money
  • It's a magic solution for all SEO problems
  • Instant detection of 100% of everything

It monitors links. That's a small piece of the SEO puzzle. If your content sucks, if you're building spammy links, if your site has technical problems — monitoring won't fix any of that.

What I can promise

  • About 95% of cases handled reliably
  • Constant improvements to edge cases
  • Enterprise SLAs available if you need 100%

The remaining 5% is weird edge cases — JavaScript-rendered content, sites blocking crawlers, unusual configurations. We're constantly improving these.

// THE ACTUAL GOAL //

Something SEO people actually enjoy using

Most SEO tools are painful:

  • Cluttered interfaces
  • Confusing pricing
  • Features nobody asked for
  • Support that takes three days to respond

I want LinkGuard to be the opposite. Open it, see what matters, get back to real work.

That's it. Not disrupting an industry. Not building the next unicorn. Just making one small part of SEO work less annoying.

We're listening

Every link builder, every SEO manager, every agency owner who spends hours tracking links in spreadsheets — we understand your pain.

We're building LinkGuard not just as a tool, but as a solution to the exact problems we've faced ourselves. Your feedback shapes what we build next.

Share your pain points Email us

LinkGuard is built in Ukraine by a small team of people who spent too many years tracking links in spreadsheets.

We made this so we wouldn't have to do that anymore.

Maybe it'll help you too.

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