SEO Term Definition
Link Building
Link building is the work of earning relevant editorial links and mentions that help people discover a useful resource.
Reviewed by Alexander Yarovenko · Updated: 2026-09-18
What is Link Building?
Link building is the practice of actively obtaining hyperlinks (backlinks) from external websites pointing to your own. Backlinks act as votes of confidence — a signal that other sites consider your content valuable enough to reference. Google's original PageRank algorithm was built on this principle and backlinks remain one of its strongest ranking signals today.
Not All Links Are Equal
- Relevance — a link from a site in the same industry is worth far more than one from an unrelated site
- Source quality — evaluate editorial context, relevance and whether the linking page is genuine
- Placement — an editorial link should help the reader at the point where it appears
- Anchor text — descriptive anchor text provides keyword context
- Link relation — sponsored, ugc and nofollow describe the relationship when qualification is needed
White-Hat Link Building Strategies
- Digital PR and HARO — create newsworthy content; respond to journalist requests
- Guest posting — write quality articles for relevant blogs in your industry
- Skyscraper technique — find top-linked content, create something better, outreach to the same linkers
- Broken link building — find broken links on authority sites and suggest your content as a replacement
- Original research and data — unique statistics attract natural citations
- Resource link building — get listed on industry resource pages and directories
Links to Avoid
- Paid links (violates Google's guidelines)
- Private Blog Networks (PBNs)
- Comment spam and forum profiles
- Links from irrelevant or low-quality sites
- Exact-match anchor text in large volumes
Decision guide
| Use when | Earn links through genuinely referenceable assets, relationships and relevant discovery. Buying ranking links or automating broad outreach creates policy and reputation risk without durable audience value. |
|---|---|
| How to verify | Define the audience and reason to cite before prospecting, personalize outreach, and record placements without demanding exact-match anchors. Review referral relevance and remove tactics that depend on manipulation. |