No one looks forward to waking up and sending cold messages to people to get their link. But that is exactly what you are doing if you are doing link building. It is one of the most powerful but also the most underestimated SEO practices there is. You can write the most perfect article on the planet, optimize it correctly with the proper headers and keywords and still get it ranked on the fourth page of Google because of a lack of proper backlinks.
It is because search engines value content which are linked to by other sites. That is the whole point behind link building, and the reason why it has been an ongoing practice since the inception of the search engines. Nothing about the fundamental idea has changed, but the way it is executed has evolved exponentially in the last few years. We all remember 2012 when we would just leave anchor texts in a hundred comment sections and our rankings would skyrocket. Google learned to adapt, and now with AI searches also dominating the market, you have to get your content in front of not only regular search engines but also chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity if you want to get anywhere.
Therefore, in the following article, we will be looking at what Semrush and Yoast, two of the most respected authorities on the subject, had to say about link building in 2026, and what kind of strategies are considered viable in the post-AI era.
What Link Building Actually Means
Link building is the process of obtaining incoming links from other websites. This activity, which seems simple, actually has many intricacies. Any given link is a vote of confidence, because it signifies your page’s credibility in the eyes of search engines, as well as artificial intelligence.
Yoast defines link building as the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other sites to your own because search engines and, increasingly, artificial intelligence use them to determine the reputation and credibility of your site. Semrush SEO toolkit defines link building in a similar vein, describing it as a process of attracting backlinks from other resources in order to increase relevance and visibility in search results, as well as in AI results.
The thing that people often forget is that links help search engines to find your pages in the first place. Thus, if your web pages are not linked to anywhere on the web, then they might as well not exist for Google. Yoast mentions that without them, a site can be much more difficult to find and, therefore, hard to rank. Hence, building links is not only a means to improve your page rankings. They literally make your pages visible on the Internet.
A link consists of two parts – the URL address and the anchor text, which is the text that the user actually sees and clicks on. Both are important because they tell the reader what to expect from the linked page and help search engines to understand the context of the link. “SEO copywriting guide” would be a decent anchor text, whereas “click here” is virtually useless.
Links can be of different kinds, but the main division is between internal and external ones. The former refers to links connecting pages on your domain, whereas external links are links from other sites pointing to yours, which also means that they are backlinks. Both are important, but external links are often more valuable, because they represent other websites’ trust and credibility in your content, whereas internal links serve to indicate the structure of your site and its page hierarchy.
Why Link Building Still Matters in 2026
If you have been in SEO for more than five minutes, you have heard someone proclaim link building dead. It is not; it has just become pickier about who to follow.
- The case for search engines
Search engines (Google) are ranking sites against each other, so if credible sites are linking to your site, this acts as a validation that your site is also credible and should, therefore, show up in search results. While this might sound like an old argument, it is one of the reasons why SEO is still so tied to link building, even if Google’s algorithm became more sophisticated.
Yoast points out that Google still relies on backlinks as a significant ranking factor, although their importance now depends on quality over quantity, and relevance over volume. One high-quality backlink from a relevant, reputable source is worth much more than dozens of low-quality publications.
Think about how Google would perceive ten random articles linking to your page versus a well-known publication writing about your niche and including a backlink to your resource. The second option is much more valuable to you and much harder to achieve through manipulations.
- The case for AI visibility
Here is where things get interesting, and that to some extent, SEO optimization practices of the last few years have been overlooked. First of all, while no link-based ranking system comparable to Google’s is likely to be used, AI systems will nonetheless analyze which brands are mentioned in reliable sources and in a relevant context.
An indirect way in which building authority online helps is that many AI systems rely at least in part on search engines for information, meaning that there is likely to be some indirect benefit to increased authority in search results. According to Semrush’s research published with Growth Advisor Kevin Indig, link-building factors such as volume and quality are crucial for visibility in AI search.
Yoast points out that systems such as Google Gemini, ChatGPT, or Perplexity no longer rely on backlinks as a ranking factor, instead, analyzing meanings and connections, studying context, and weighing relevance, popularity, and credibility, with mentions, schema markup, and author bios all playing a role. In short, visibility in AI search is influenced by a wide range of factors, but it boils down to being discoverable and being viewed as an expert in one’s field. That, in essence, is the difference between checking off link-building tasks as done and building real relationships with others in one’s field over time.
One nuance that is worth mentioning here, as many in the past have made the mistake of thinking that mentions are useless, is that while it is true that a mention without a link has limited potential from a linking perspective, brand mentions nonetheless send a signal to search engines and AIs about the relevance and popularity of a brand. As such, if one’s brand is being talked about, even if it is not being linked to, it is important to remember that those mentions nonetheless affect one’s visibility in search results.
Before proceeding to the next section, there is one rather important note that must be made, and it concerns a widespread fallacy among site owners that appears to severely limit their ability to engage in effective link-building campaigns. Link building, when done right, is a long-term process, not a series of tasks to be completed and then ticked off of a list. In short, it is not about rushing to get as many backlinks as possible; it is about nurturing relationships and slow, steady growth. The companies that are able to maintain their success for decades in the marketplace understand this concept and operate on this philosophy, applying it not only to the creation of products and services but also to their link-building efforts.
The Two Categories of Link Building Nobody Talks About
Most individuals see link building as some big entity that comprises all sorts of different approaches that have little in common, besides building backlinks for the sake of the task. In contrast, it is better to split everything into two large groups. The first two are link producers – a relatively simple type of link building, characterized by the relative ease of its implementation, a high volume of possible backlinks, and the fact that it is often the starting point for any company with a site and the desire to increase its authority. Examples of link producers are email outreach to website owners, reclaiming lost links, research of the backlink profile of similar companies, listings on resource directories, broken link building, and many others. All of the above are relatively simple and do not require special skills, allow you to create hundreds or even thousands of backlinks per month, and have high flexibility and scalability. However, all of the above methods are low-authority producers, which means that it is not the most high-quality backlinks from top-tier domains.
The second group is the association producers, which is much more demanding of time, effort, and money. At the same time, this method allows you to build brand associations, which is an essential factor in the work of search engines and artificial intelligence. More precisely, it creates such associations for search engines and link evaluators, so that, based on this, they can determine for themselves which brands are worthy of being mentioned on the page, cited, or quoted. Association producers are high-authority link building, which implies the creation of assets that will organically attract backlinks from other sites, digital PR, creating content for publication on resource catalogs, specialized directories, and newspapers. It also includes guest posting on popular sites in the niche and building genuine relationships with potential link partners, based on honest and mutually beneficial cooperation. In other words, such a type of link building requires much more effort, time, and resources to achieve the desired effect – but it gives a much more favorable result in terms of authority and brand awareness.
Most often, when companies start their link building, they focus mainly on the first group of methods, as they are much easier, which is logical, given their relative simplicity. While providing a good quantity of backlinks, however, they cannot provide the required quality – on the contrary, they tend to focus on getting the link placed rather than on the context around it, which is what search engines value most. Link builders who resort only to the first group of methods will find themselves caught between the need to increase authority and the lack of flexibility and high competition of the producers of this group. Therefore, companies should not rely on the first group of methods alone, but should also invest in the second group.
Building a Link Building Strategy that Actually Holds Up
Before you go and start planning your link building outreach campaigns, it is important to know what your goals are.
Spontaneous link building tends to generate a ton of random links that will ultimately provide very little SEO benefit. Smart link building, on the other hand, is about building a steady stream of high-quality dofollow links that will steadily improve your rankings and SEO profile in the eyes of Google.
First things first: determine where you are at in terms of link building.
Before any outreach campaigns, you will need to perform an audit on your own site to see what links you currently have, where they are coming from, and whether or not there are toxic links harming your growth. Before you can know what to do, you have to know where you are at in terms of backlinks.
Second, determine how much time you have for link building.
Link building is a slow and steady process, and many rookie link builders get frustrated when they do not see instant results. In order to avoid disappointment and stay sane, it is important to set realistic expectations for yourself. If you are working with a team, this is the time to determine what kind of tactics you can implement on an ongoing basis. For smaller teams, it is best to prioritize less time-consuming tactics such as resource page links and lost backlinks first before moving onto more rigorous campaigns such as digital PR.
Finally, determine what pages on your site need backlinks.
It is important to keep in mind that link building should be concentrated on a smaller set of high-quality pages. Trying to do link building for your entire website is a sure-fire way to waste a ton of time and effort with little payoff.
What Actually Makes a Backlink Valuable
Not all backlinks are equal, and neither is their value. Some are useless for SEO, while some could even hurt a site’s SEO – spammy links, otherwise known as toxic backlinks. Here are some factors that distinguish between a good and a bad link.
- Authority of the Linking Site
The more authority the source page has, the higher its value is. For example, a link from a popular website will bring significantly better SEO benefits than a link from an up-and-coming blog. Seems pretty obvious, right? Well, not always. When you’re deep into the outreach process, any link, regardless of its source, seems like a victory.
Sites that are considered to have high authority usually have thousands of domains linking to them, receive a decent amount of traffic, have high-quality contents, a strong topical focus, and a great UX (experience of using the website).
While Google does not officially disclose information about authority, these are specific characteristics that usually point towards an authoritative source. Semrush’s Authority Score is also calculated using similar metrics on a scale from 1 to 100. It uses link power (based on the number of quality backlinks referring to the domain/page), organic traffic (based on Google’s data), and natural profile score (based on how spam-free the backlink profile is).
One thing to note here, though, is that a healthy backlink profile should have a mixture of high and low-authority links. Having only high-authority links may be suspicious since it shows that only big brands are willing to link to you. At the same time, having only low-authority links will not boost your authority significantly.
- Relevance to Your Niche
The closer the niche of the source page to yours is, the better. Not only are you building authority with the search engines, but you’re also building credibility with your audience. Relevance to your niche is also connected to the quality of the contents the link appears in. A link that appears in a relevant article or paragraph has more value than a link that appears in an irrelevant one.
Let’s take an example. A link from a gardening blog to your basketball shoe store has almost no value because both the niche and the content are irrelevant to your business. A link from a sports blog to your basketball shoe store has some value because the blog is relevant to your niche, but the content (article about cardio) is not. A link from a sports blog’s basketball shoe guide, on the other hand, has high value because both the website and the content are relevant to your niche (in fact, the linked page appears to be specifically about basketball shoes).
- Where the Link Sits on the Page
Links that appear closer to the top of the page are more valuable than those that appear at the bottom. Some speculate that it has to do with Google’s “reasonable surfer” patent and how Google calculates how likely a human is to click on a link based on its placement on a page. Whether it’s true or not is unclear, but links that appear in the body of an article are much better than those that appear in sidebars or footers. And within the body of an article, the higher the link’s position is, the better.
- Anchor Text Quality
Anchor texts that appear in the written contents of a page usually have better value than those that appear in sidebars or footers. Anchors texts that describe the linked page/article (such as “basketball shoes”) are better than anchors texts that have nothing to do with it (such as “this is a cool link”). Search engines use texts to understand what the linked page is about, so it’s important to let search engines know what your page is about with the help of anchor texts. It’s also important to remember that while you cannot control the anchor texts of natural backlinks pointing to your domain/page, you should avoid over-optimized anchor texts (e.g., those that are too long or do not make any sense). Links with over-optimized anchor texts may be marked as spam, resulting in a penalty.
- Nofollow, Sponsored, and UGC Tags
Some links have special HTML attributes that tell search engines what to do with them. There are three types of such attributes: nofollow, sponsored, and ugc. Nofollow links are links that tell search engines not to pass ranking credit, and are typically used when a publisher does not want to vouch for the linked page (usually when the link is not their own content). Following the same logic, sponsored links are links that appear in sponsored contents (such as ads) should be ignored by search engines. UGC (user-generated content) links, on the other hand, are links that appear in contents made and published by users, such as comments and forum posts. All three attributes tell search engines not to treat the link as a full editorial endorsement.
While Google treats all three attributes as signals for search engines (meaning they do have some effect), the actual effect is most likely lower than expected. According to a Semrush study about nofollow links, they have nearly the same impact on AI visibility (visibility in the search results powered by artificial intelligence) as regular links. In other words, links’ positions and contexts matter more than their attributes. So while nofollow links may have been completely ignored a few years ago, they still have some value now – and if you’ve been ignoring nofollow link-building opportunities because of their “low” value, it might be time to reevaluate that.
- Co-Citations and Co-Occurrences
Both are related to brand mentions and tell search engines that two entities are related. Co-citations are mentions of two or more brands in the same piece of content (either through links or appearances). Co-occurrence, on the other hand, is the appearance of terms that are related to your business in the same piece of content as your brand name, or next to the link to your website/source.
Since co-citations and co-occurrence tell search engines what businesses are connected to yours, they are crucial in SEO, especially for newer companies that need to raise their authority. They also show what products/services you offer and to what extent. However, since co-citations are formed when a brand mentions other brands and products, link-building efforts should take care of co-citations automatically.
Internal Links Still Matter Here Too
It is easy to overlook one while trying to optimize the other, but internal and external links are more closely related than many realize. Links within a web page guide crawlers through the site’s hierarchy and help rank pages relative to each other. Moreover, they enable the link juice provided by external sources to flow out and improve the authority of related pages on the domain.
This effect is often underutilized, especially when a linking acquisition campaign produces high-quality backlinks pointing to only one page. In such cases, it is crucial not to overlook internal opportunities: if the linked page contains internal links to other pages on your site, each of them will pass some authority and boost those pages’ SERP performance. Thus, a single backlink acquisition campaign may provide multiple rewards if the link equity is distributed internally within the domain.
The Four Ways to Get Links, and Which Ones are Actually Worth Doing
There are four main types of link-building strategies: content marketing, direct outreach, directory submission, and paid placement. Content marketing entails creating valuable content that compels users to share information about your site, and it is the most desirable SEO tactic because it produces backlinks that enhance your website’s authority. Direct outreach means requesting a link from another site that has mentioned your brand name but has yet to provide one, and it works best when you offer something attractive. Directory submission is found in niche-specific data banks where you register your website to appear, and it is a completely acceptable way to generate backlinks, albeit less powerful in terms of SEO. Finally, paid placement means purchasing links directly from other sites. This is against Google’s guidelines and should be avoided.
There is nothing wrong with hiring a professional organization to manage your outreach efforts as long as you do not pay them directly for producing links.
Ten Link Building Tactics that Actually Work in 2026
The first 5 tactics below are link producers, meaning that they can potentially create many links when scaled properly, making them perfect for beginners and sites just getting off the ground. The last 5 are association producers, meaning that they might require a steeper learning curve, but will earn valuable placements on authority sites, boosting both your search and AI presence.
- Run email outreach the right way
Email outreach is contacting site owners, editors, or other relevant representatives in the hope of convincing them to place a link to your site on theirs. Outreach campaigns usually rely on cold email, meaning that contacting someone who you don’t have a pre-existing relationship with. This usually works, but competition for such links can be high as many site owners are likely to have similar campaigns.
It’s usually much more effective to engage in some ‘warming up’ activities before initiating contact. Some examples include sharing or comment on your articles and social posts, citing one’s work in something you’ve published and notifying the author, commenting on their newsletter or responding to their questions or comments on your content, and others. While none of these directly ask to place a link on their site, such action significantly increases the likelihood of earning one later.
After warming up your prospect, it’s time to send a pitch email that ideally includes a specific mention of their post/article/website, explains what benefit your content provides, and asks to place a link to your content in their content in a specific spot if applicable. Generic outreach emails that don’t specifically mention what you’re asking or why you’re asking are significantly less effective.
- Reclaim the backlinks you already lost
Recovering backlinks that have been lost due to the modification, deletion, or redirection of a page on the referring domain tends to be a more viable option as compared to building links from scratch.
Backlink auditing tools can help identify these possibilities by displaying a list of referring domains, indicating the number of acquired, broken, or lost backlinks in the last 30, 60, or 90 days. In order to prioritize the list, sort it by Authority Score, focusing on any links that have a score of 40 or higher.
In addition, it may be possible to get the lost backlinks re-instated by contacting the webmaster of the domain that hosts the defunct link and requesting that they re-link to the page, provided that the page still exists and is relevant to the referring domain. It is important to note that not all lost backlinks should be prioritized; it is more reasonable to focus on recovering the ones from highly authoritative and relevant domains.
- Study and recreate your competitors’ backlinks
Researching where competitors get their links from allows you to understand what content people in your niche are linking to and which sites are open to acquiring links from businesses like you.
Your aim is not to recreate your competitors’ backlinks, as many will have little hope of you getting placed there, e.g., a link from a relationship you don’t have. Instead, consider them as inspiration for similar links you could build elsewhere.
Using backlink tools, you can identify which pages on a competitor’s site hold the most backlinks, typically sorted by the referring domains. You should look for similarities between the pages with the most backlinks, those that have the highest chance of you being able to recreate their success. If multiple competitors have backlinks from the same domains, this implies those domains are open to linking to other businesses in your niche, and you should explore the possibility of getting a backlink from them too. Using a backlink gap tool, you can input your domain plus the domain/s of your competitors to identify the domains linking to others in your niche that don’t link to you. From there, visiting the domains and inspecting the articles they link to on your competitors’ sites can give direction on what you should create or propose to get a similar link from them.
- Get featured on resource pages
Securing backlinks from resource pages, which are pages that list useful links in a niche, is one of the best methods for building highly relevant backlinks while also gaining value from the co-citations of other sites that are relevant to your industry.
To find resource pages, you can perform a Google search using the search operator “your topic/industry” + “inurl:resources” or variations on that, e.g. “helpful resources”, “useful links”, etc.
From there, identify the pages that are actively maintained and link to genuinely useful content. Once you’ve found a resource page, you need to determine whether your content could be placed alongside the other links on the page. If the resource page lists articles, leading with a guide is usually better than a product page. Then, you’ll want to contact the owners of the resource page and briefly describe the resource you’re proposing, what category it would fall under, and ideally, suggest where on the resource page your link should be placed. The more specific you are about where they should place your link, the higher the likelihood of acceptance.
- Try broken link building
Broken link building is a method where you identify broken links on other websites and contact the owners to inform them so that they can replace the dead link with a link to your content instead. Broken link building is win-win for both parties, as the website owner gets to improve the user experience on their site by fixing a dead link while also getting a fresh link to relevant content.
Using backlink tools, you can find a list of broken links on competitor sites sorted by the number of referring domains. From there, you’ll want to identify which links you could replace by visiting the URLs and then look at the backlinks of the page to see which ones you could potentially inherit. When viewing the link building potential of a domain, you should inspect the backlink in context to identify whether it would be a good fit for replacing a competitor’s dead link.
If the site seems like a good fit, you can reach out to the site owner with the page on your site that you’d like them to use instead.
- Build something people actually want to link to
Creating link worthy assets allows you to build links long-term while building brand equity with search engines and AI, as link worthy assets tend to be high-quality content that other site owners will link to indefinitely. A link worthy asset is any piece of content or resource that other sites will find useful enough to link to, which can take many forms – tools and calculators, guides and case studies, and even visual assets such as infographics. However, a link worthy asset typically combines multiple types of content to maximize its link potential. For example, one link worthy asset that combines a practical tool, an ultimate guide, and eye-catching design has gained over 3,000 backlinks from over 1,000 referring domains. Done right, this type of link worthy asset has the potential to become a pillar of content that will continue to gain backlinks indefinitely due to its usefulness.
- Lean into digital PR
Digital PR revolves around earning high-quality backlinks from websites in your niche by getting mentioned or covered in articles on relevant websites, typically authoritative ones such as publications and news outlets.
Digital PR coverage is something that AI systems will scrape for when seeking answers about your niche or industry, providing traditional link equity as well as brand associations that help search engines and AI understand what your brand is about, even without a direct link. Digital PR campaigns are typically made up of a mix of different tactics, with many coverage opportunities being earned by creating unique research, a fresh angle on a given topic, or an idea that is interesting enough that it will get picked up naturally. For example, one digital PR campaign that involved research into the AI industry, with stats and infographics about the most visited AI tools and an accompanying ultimate guide, earned backlinks from publications such as Forbes and CNBC.
- Become a go-to source for journalists
Becoming a source for journalists and content creators who are looking for experts to quote or mention in their articles is one of the most powerful ways to build brand mentions and, subsequently, links and citations. There are many different methods and sources to become a journalist source, including using platforms that connect journalists with sources, or manually searching on X for journalists that cover topics relevant to your niche. Additionally, many journalists will publicly state that they’re looking for sources on a given topic.
Being quoted or mentioned in articles is one of the most powerful methods for building mentions, citations, and backlinks while also boosting brand authority, as it exposes your brand to new audiences while also providing indirect mentions, citations, and sometimes, direct backlinks. This method is extremely competitive, has a steep learning curve, and requires a lot of time investment, as journalists receive hundreds or thousands of pitches for every article they publish. However, the reward for investment is massive in terms of potential mentions, citations, and backlinks.
- Write guest posts on sites your audience actually reads
Writing a guest post for another publication offers exposure to a relevant audience while also having a chance at earning a backlink from the publication’s domain, which will typically have a strong domain rating.
To identify which publications to guest post for, look at the sites your competitors have written guest posts for. If a competitor has written a post for another site, you can follow up by pitching a related but distinct angle, or a post on an entirely different topic, depending on what the publication typically publishes. If your competitors haven’t guest posted elsewhere, you can search for publications in your niche using the search operator “your industry/niche” + “contribute” or variations of that, such as “guest post”, “guest blog”, or “write for us”.
Most publications, especially those with a decent domain rating, will have received thousands of guest post pitches, so it’s important to stand out when pitching. When pitching, briefly describe what you’d like to write about, and explain the angle you’ll take on the topic. Avoid vague pitches, as they will get ignored.
- Ask for links from partners you already work with
Sites that you have a relationship with, such as partners, resellers, agencies, and industry associations, are typically the easiest to secure a link from, albeit with little link juice. Linking from partner directories is unlikely to provide much in terms of SEO value, but they can provide co-citations that let search engines and AI know what industry you’re in and who your partners are. Most technology partners, resellers, agencies, and industry associations will also typically have a page dedicated to their partners or members, which is the perfect place to request a link. All you need to do is identify the opportunities afforded to you by your relationships and existing directories and reach out to request a link.
Link Building for Local and Ecommerce Businesses
The tactics described above are effective for the majority of industries, but there are a few exceptions, and link building practices for local businesses and ecommerce companies fall under this category.
- If you run a local business
Local businesses benefit most from tactics that create relevance and authority in their local markets and communities, as opposed to immediately seeking syndication in national media outlets. Local listing directories, links from local news sites, sponsorships of local events, and partnerships with local bloggers and influencers are more valuable than going after national publicity, at least for the short term, for businesses that operate and compete within a local market.
Local partnerships are also much more relevant for such businesses, as they provide backlinks that have clear value in terms of geography and theme. Local coffee shop and bakery can recommend and review each other’s products and services, linking to one another’s web pages and thus influencing search results.
- If you run an ecommerce store
Ecommerce sites see significantly more value from link building using buying guides, comparisons, and unique data about their category than from standard assets, as a large proportion of websites will be niche-similar but uninterested in buying directly from a store. A comprehensive buying guide on product sizes and care or seasonal recommendations can amass links from various resources that would not have linked to a product page directly.
Digital PR is a link-building strategy particularly suited to ecommerce websites with an interesting founding story, supply chain, or consumer behavior insights within their category. Reporters covering the retail beat regularly seek out product-adjacent data sources to highlight in their stories, meaning that an ecommerce site with unique information on the market sees a demand for its content.
Common Link Building Mistakes that Quietly Sabotage Results
Besides the obvious mistakes, which can be found further in this guide, there are also a number of lesser ones that could happen to any link building campaign of average quality.
The first is prioritizing quantity over relevance, as while having more backlinks is usually preferable to having less, a greater amount of irrelevant links will rarely, if ever, improve the target’s position in the SERPs. In some cases, it can even make it worse by giving the linked domain an unworthy appearance. This is why it is important to prioritize quality over quantity whenever the link building campaign allows it, as even five relevant and reliable backlinks will serve their purpose much better than fifty irrelevant ones.
The second is giving up too early when faced with minor rejections. Digital PR, guest post outreach, and many other link building techniques require time and patience before they bear fruit, which means that any effort should be sustained for as long as it takes to get results. A single ignored outreach email does not mean that the next one will be refused as well, especially if the target is nurtured properly and reminded of the value of collaboration. The third issue is focusing on promotion over production, as most high-quality link building techniques require the promotion of a linkable asset rather than simply asking for backlinks. This means that the quality of the content being promoted is paramount, as no matter how persistent the outreach is, no reputable source will link to subpar content. If the produced asset, guest post, or webpage is not worthy of being recommended by others, any link building effort is a wasted resource.
Finally, the last common mistake is wasting time on irrelevant backlink opportunities. Whenever one has to choose between spending hours pursuing a single low-value link and pursuing a genuinely high-value opportunity, the high-value opportunity should always be prioritized. This may sound obvious, but many people fail to differentiate between the two, which leads to poor allocation of resources. The time spent on irrelevant directories or pages with no linking authority could have been spent on identifying and nurturing a real opportunity that will benefit your own domain in the long run.
Tracking your Link Building Progress
Conduct regular link building audits to find new, lost, and toxic backlinks. Most of the link building audit tools allow users to set up recurring crawls so that they can receive reports about fresh and lost backlinks periodically.
In addition, it is possible to observe the changes in Authority Score over time. Though it may increase slowly, a positive trend suggests that the link building efforts have brought decent results.
Shady link building tactics to avoid entirely
Because the process of building high-authority backlinks may be a lengthy one, some webmasters are tempted to use link schemes. The methods include buying links, link farms, private blog networks and many others. While some of these may produce results, it is better to avoid them since Google views such practices as spam and penalizes websites by removing them from the search engine’s database.
Therefore, if Google suspects unnatural interference, it will either demote the page’s ranking or delist it. Recovering from this kind of penalty is usually a slow process that can take months. Hence, it is better to go for slow but steady methods of improving the page’s positioning rather than risking an eternity ban for short-term benefits. It is the quality that lasts forever!
How Much Time and Budget Should you Actually Put into This
This is one of the most common questions, and the answer is not always straightforward. It depends on several factors. First of all, you need to know the level of competition of niches in which you want to work, what authority you have on this subject already, and which keywords you are going to use. Nevertheless, there are several general truths on this topic.
If you are working on a shoe-string budget and have to plan link building around your other duties, expect to spend the majority of your effort on the link producer’s methods, outreach efforts, resource page building, and broken link building. They will consume most of your available time, as they require continuous, ongoing work with prospects to keep producing results. Set aside this activity some consistent, deliberate time you can dedicate to the task every week, as even two hours of focused effort every week will beat a month of sporadic, unfocused work. Secondly, if you have a budget to work with, always prioritize digital PR and linkable asset creation, as they offer the best ratio of input to long-term gains. Paid methods will require a larger initial investment but will continue to pay dividends for years after the initial effort.
A small business with limited resources should not be put off from association producer’s methods, as the time investment is the only significant input needed to get such collaborations up and running. The same goes for guest blogging, which is more dependent on the writing and outreach quality than any inherent budget advantages. The methods requiring substantial expenditures of time and money, on the other hand, should be prioritized only when the former has been invested into building the basics of authority.
A Quick Word on Measuring What is Actually Working
It is easy to get attracted to link building’s activity stream and forget to stop and think about the actual value it brings. Some metrics are more insightful than others, so it can be a good idea to track them on a regular basis. Instead of vanity metrics such as total number of links, it is better to focus on the following three areas.
First, one should analyze the link profile and see whether referring domains bring a sufficient amount of value. Ten backlinks from ten different domains will bring significantly more traffic and authority than the same hundred of backlinks from one domain. While the total number of links shows overall volume, one should pay more attention to the number of unique referring domains.
The second metric that should be tracked is organic traffic to pages with backlinks. If one sees that, for example, an average page with acquired backlinks gets ten times more traffic, it is a great sign. However, if your page gains more backlinks and the number of visitors remains steady, it indicates that either the links are of poor quality or other SEO optimization factors need attention.
Last but not least, you need to evaluate your referral traffic to see if the new backlinks contribute to it. The link building efforts should be able to help a page appear more prominently in search results. A high-quality backlink tends to drive substantial referral traffic to the linked page. If link building campaigns do not increase referral traffic, you may want to reconsider some link building activities and prioritize others.
The Bottom Line
Link building has become much less mysterious over the years. It appears that the sites that are succeeding now are not the ones that go after every opportunity to build a link, no matter how dubious the tactic. Instead, they are creating valuable content and appearing in relevant, reliable sources, letting the links come to them.
Focus first on the easiest link-gaining opportunities: outreach, resource page links, lost link recovery, and other short-term, low-effort options. After that, when you have some time and money to invest, shift some resources to the long-term, high-effort link-gaining opportunities to build the linkable assets, digital PR, partnerships, and other high-quality references that will provide substantial authority for Google and other search engines.
Avoid getting fooled by link-building services that claim to offer quick and easy solutions. In most cases, you have to put in effort to get rewards. Create value, and the reward of backlinks will follow.
FAQs
Q 1: What is link building in simple words?
Link building is a process of getting other sites to link to your pages. Simply put, these are backlinks, so every link is a vote for your page’s authority and quality from the point of search engines.
Q 2: Is link building important in 2026?
Yes, link building is important for traditional search engines, and there is evidence that it impacts the strength of appearance in AI search engines (ChatGPT, Gemini). The difference is that for the latter, links are not a direct ranking factor.
Q 3: What is a high-quality backlink?
High-quality backlinks are characterized by several factors: authority of the source, topical relevance, presence in the body of the text, anchor optimization, and brand mentions.
Q 4: Are nofollow links beneficial for SEO?
According to Google, nofollow, sponsored, and UGC tags are simply suggestions; thus, search engines can choose to ignore them. At the same time, research shows that nofollow links can have a noticeable effect on AI visibility specifically. So it’s worth giving them more attention than you might have in the past, even if their impact on traditional SEO rankings remains limited.
Q 5: Should I buy backlinks?
It is better not to buy backlinks directly from people who place them since it violates the terms of service of search engines, which can lead to penalties. However, you can pay an agency to manage your outreach campaigns, as long as you are not paying for the placement of the link itself.
Q 6: What is the difference between link producers and association producers?
Link producers contain low-authority but high-volume opportunities that are suitable for beginners due to their easy identification and high scalability. Association producers, on the other hand, require more expertise but offer greater rewards, volume, and quality, promoting stronger brand association among users.
Q7: How long does it take to see results from link building?
Depending on the method and the strength of the backlink, you can see results from link building either in a few weeks or even after years. Link recovers or resource page placement usually yield a faster return on investment (ROI), whereas digital PR and linkable assets campaigns have a longer-term impact on your ROI.
Q8: Can brand mentions improve SEO?
Brand mentions can be used to improve SEO results since they can indirectly affect the ranking of search results pages and AI results. They are most useful when they appear alongside relevant keywords and other brands in similar niches.
Q9: How many backlinks does a page need to rank?
There is no exact number of backlinks that can help a page rank. One backlink from a strong and relevant source can be more beneficial than 100 low-quality backlinks. Hence, it is better to focus on the quality of backlinks and let their quantity grow organically over time.
Q10: What is the best way to start link building for someone new to it?
The best way to start is to invest time and effort into recovering lost links and creating content that can attract natural backlinks. Then, it is advisable to start with no-cost methods like reaching out to relevant websites and request placement. These are the methods that require lesser skills, so you can start building links without years of experience in the field and spend little money on training.
