Link Building
Link building is the process of earning links from other websites to your own. Because Backlinks remain one of Google’s strongest ranking signals, link building is a core part of Off-Page SEO, particularly for competitive keywords.
Earning vs building links
The safest mindset is to earn links: create content, data and relationships that make other sites want to link to you. Tactics that manufacture links, such as buying them or swapping them at scale, break Google’s spam policies and put your site at risk (Black Hat SEO).
Effective, white hat link building tactics
- Create linkable assets: original research, surveys, statistics, free tools, calculators, templates and definitive guides. Resources like this SEO Encyclopedia attract links from people who want to reference a clear explanation.
- Digital PR: pitch newsworthy stories, data and expert opinions to journalists and bloggers.
- Expert commentary: respond to journalist requests on platforms that connect reporters with experts.
- Guest articles: write genuinely useful articles for respected publications in your field. See my guide on what guest posts are and how they help SEO.
- Broken link building: find broken links on relevant sites and suggest your content as a replacement.
- Unlinked brand mentions: ask sites that mention you to add a link.
- Partnerships and associations: suppliers, clients, industry bodies, sponsorships and local organisations.
- Resource page outreach: suggest your content for curated lists of resources where it genuinely fits.
- Local links: chambers of commerce, local news, events and community groups for Local SEO.
- Speaking and podcasts: appearances usually include a profile link.
Link building tactics to avoid
- Buying links that pass ranking value.
- Private blog networks (PBNs) and link farms.
- Large-scale link exchanges.
- Automated directory, comment or forum spam.
- Low-quality guest posts on sites that publish anything for a fee.
- Insisting on exact-match commercial Anchor Text.
How to choose link targets
Prioritise sites that are:
- Relevant to your industry or location.
- Trusted, with real traffic and editorial standards.
- Linking to competitors but not to you, which shows they link to similar content.
Look at quality, not just third-party scores such as Domain Authority.
How to measure link building success
- Growth in Referring Domains from relevant, trusted sites.
- Rankings and traffic for the pages receiving links.
- Referral traffic and enquiries from the links themselves.
- A natural mix of anchor texts.
How long link building takes
Links usually take weeks to months to influence rankings, as Google discovers and evaluates them. Consistent effort over time works better than a short burst. Combine link building with strong Internal Linking so the value reaches the pages that matter most.
Key Takeaways
- Link building works best when you earn links rather than manufacture them.
- Original data, useful resources, digital PR and relationships produce the strongest links.
- Relevance and trust matter more than third-party authority scores.
- Avoid buying links, PBNs and forced exact-match anchors.
- Combine new links with good internal linking so value reaches priority pages.
Related Terms
Want help putting this into practice? Get a free SEO check, or keep learning in the SEO Encyclopedia.