What is Link Building? Basics for Beginners in 2025

Based on what I have learned building links in the past 5 years, I put together this beginners guide to link building so that you too could learn what makes them important and how to build them.

This guide covers the basics of link building and backlinks. I discuss how links are built and some of the best practices I've learned building hundreds of links for clients in different industries. 

What Is Link Building in SEO?

According to Wikipedia, link building is the effort to increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website with the goal of increasing search rankings.

Most common strategies to acquire backlinks include content marketing, email outreach, broken link building, exchanging links, buying links, and PR campaigns.

Link building focuses mostly on creating dofollow links. These links pass link equity, unlike nofollow links.

Why backlinks are important?

Backlinks act as votes of confidence for your content. They signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy and your content is valuable. If your content is valuable, it ranks higher in search.

In our survey of SEO experts, 82% identified backlinks as an important factor for search engine ranking.

Link building is important because of the PageRank algorithm. Instead of solely relying on the content on the page to assess its quality, Google looks at how many other websites link to that page.

The more and the higher quality backlinks a page has, the more valuable the content is assessed, and it should therefore be ranked higher.

Semrush's 2024 study on ranking factors, highlighted 8 backlink factors that were important for ranking.

For businesses, higher keyword rankings means more traffic to the website and eventually more business. Backlinko's study on click traffic found the #1 ranking result gets 27.6% of the clicks. Top 5 rankings combined get 69.1% of the clicks and the rest are distributed among the 6-20 rankings.

Because of this traffic distribution, we often recommend to build links to pages with keywords that rank in 3-10 for quick wins.

How fast will link building impact rankings?

How fast link building affects your search rankings will depend on the amount and quality of links you build. It also depends on how competitive your industry and target keywords are.

We've seen ranking and traffic increase in 3-4 months in our customer cases. Some as fast as 3 weeks if the customer has had an existing brand, lots of brand mentions, and good quality content.

For low competition keywords (we use Ahref's KD to measure this), you only need 5-10 links if the keyword has a KD of 0-5.

The earlier you start link building the better as SEO can take some time.

3 main link types that you should know

There's different backlink types when some website is pointing to your website. And then there's external and internal links that sit on your website. Each has in impact on SEO. 

14 different backlink types

You can get a link from several places as long as it's on the web. I put together a list of the 10 most common backlink types:

1. Editorial links: Links placed naturally within high-quality, relevant content on a website. These are often earned through creating valuable content that others want to reference.

2. Guest post links: Links earned by writing articles to another website, usually within your niche, to provide value and gain backlinks. From my experience, the industry standard in link building is to get 3 links from a guest post so you can exchange the other two if you have collaborations with other websites.

3. Digital PR backlinks: Links earned through public relations efforts such as media coverage, press releases, or influencer outreach. These help increase visibility and domain authority.

4. HARO backlinks: Links gained through the "Help a Reporter Out" (HARO) platform, where businesses provide expert commentary for journalists in exchange for a backlink.

5. Link insertions: Backlinks inserted into existing content on a website, typically through outreach to website owners or editors.

6. Broken backlinks: Links pointing to non-existent or broken pages, which can be fixed by reaching out to the site owner with a suggestion to replace the broken link with a relevant one.

7. Reciprocal backlinks: A type of backlink where two websites agree to link to each other. They can be effective but shouldn't be used excessively as Google can detect the pattern. ABC exchanges are much more common and it's what we use for our link building clients such as SSH.

8. UGC backlinks: Links placed within content created by users or customers, like reviews, forum posts, or comments on a website.

9. Directory listing backlinks: Links from online business directories or niche-specific directories. These help with local SEO and can also increase credibility and visibility.

10. Webinar and podcast backlinks: Links earned from hosting or being featured in webinars or podcasts. These often come from the show's website or the podcast description. It's recommended to spell out your domain when you guest a podcast because then the transcription tools can pick it up.

11. Badge backlinks: Links placed within badges or awards displayed on websites. Websites often link to the source that issued the badge. This is a common strategy used by G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot.

12. PBN backlinks: Backlinks from a network of websites created solely for the purpose of passing link equity. While they can be effective, they are considered a black-hat SEO practice and can lead to penalties. At The Backlink Company, we don't recommend building PBN backlinks.

13. Widget links: Links embedded in interactive elements like widgets or tools that other websites can place on their pages. For example review tools and form tools often act as widget links. They can grow your domain metrics fast but are less effective for ranking increases based on my experience.

14. Service links: Links generated by businesses providing a service, where they link back to their site as part of the service offering, such as through client pages or case studies.

Internal links

Internal link is just a link from one of your own page to another page on your site. However, they're very powerful because you can use them to control the link equity you receive from backlinks.

Think of internal links as water valves that you can adjust. Link equity is the water that flows from other websites to yours, and you can direct that link equity (water) to the pages you really want to promote in search results.

Most of the time you're only able to build links to blog articles and other high-value resources. You then need to interlink those to your money pages (landing pages, service pages, and case studies) so that

A) the people can navigate to your offers, and

B) your offer pages start ranking for relevant keywords as well.

External links

External links are links you link to other websites. The are backlinks for them. External links help your SEO if you help answer the user's search query, for example, by linking to an interesting related research resource.

How to assess backlink quality?

Several factors impact backlink quality: authority, relevance, placement, and attributes. And many more that we cover in our deep dive guide to backlink quality.

You can check backlinks by looking at domain-level metrics. However, I suggest evaluating them on three levels: page, domain, and network. This way, you get a complete picture of their quality.

Link building is also about balancing link velocity with quality so it doesn't make sense to analyze all the metrics under the sun. The perfect link doesn't exist.

Read that again.

Over time, you'll build your own process for link building and you'll find a balance of quality and how many links you can build. At the end of the day it's about bringing ranking results as fast as possible sustainably.

Authority

Google's PageRank algorithm is not public, but platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush have created their own metrics to assess domain authority.

Most link builders that I have met and built links with use Ahref's Domain Rating. It's also what we use for clients of our link building service.

While relevancy is important, without high authority your backlink is going to be very little value.

A high authority page gets lots of backlinks. Getting a link from a page like that would be extremely valuable.

However, from my personal experience I know that most website owners don't want to link out from their most valuable pages.

Relevance

When it comes to links, relevancy matters as well as authority.

In fact, can you imagine getting a link to your AI note-taking SaaS website from a food blog? Neither can I. For our AI note-taking SaaS client, 

Relevancy matters both on domain and page level.

On domain level, the website linking to yours needs to be somehow semantically connected. Eg. you get a link from another AI productivity tool. The trick here is that you're not going to get a link from a direct competitor which would be super relevant. This makes it near impossible to get 100% domain level relevancy.

How about page relevancy?

It's much easier to get a link from a relevant page, unless the target the exact same topic as your page. A relevant page placement might be from, let's say, a blog post discussing "Future trends in productivity" to your page on "How to take notes using AI during meetings".

Link Placement

Where the link is on the page also page a big role in how much link equity it passes on.

A link from a website footer is not going to be as powerful as a link from an article.

Additionally, it matters how high on the page that link appears. The higher the better because it signals higher importance.

Based on my experience exchanging hundreds of links, however, it's usually not possible to place a link in the intro paragraph of a page. This guideline is shared by many webmasters.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text section a user clicks on in a link.

Google uses anchor texts to understand what the target page is about so it's important to optimize it as well.

Overuse of the same anchor will lead to an unnatural looking anchor profile  so it's good to vary the anchors when you do link building.

The more natural the anchor in the paragraph text the better backlink it is. Exact matches don't matter anyway.

Nofollow, Sponsored, and UGC Attributes

Dofollow links carry the most link authority and are have a higher impact on rankings than nofollow or other types. That's why most of link building revolves around building dofollow links in my experience.

Link builders don't usually use sponsored or ugc attributes in their links because they devalue the link.

How to build links (and how not to)

All of the tactics mentioned here are tactics we have successfully done for clients - even buying links according to the clients wishes.

Depending on the project you're working on, you might need to change tactics. For example, we've found that the gray area industries that you're not allowed to advertise on Google almost exclusively deal in paid link acquisition.

This is a brief version of how to build backlinks. For a more comprehensive guide, check our guide on how to build backlinks in 2025.

Let's dive in.

1. Earn links

Earning links is the most sustainable and ethical way to build your backlink profile. It involves creating content or assets that are valuable and relevant to your target audience, which will naturally attract links from others.

The down-side is that this tactic takes the longest and requires you to have really great link-worthy content. A lot of people like to link to stats posts, but your less important pieces are not going to attract any naturally because the topic has been covered by hundreds of other websites.

Here’s how you can approach earning links:

Content creation

The backbone of earning links is high-quality content. Create content that people naturally want to link to. Some strategies include:

• In-depth guides or comprehensive resources: Detailed, well-researched content that serves as a one-stop resource for a specific topic. These pieces are more likely to get linked to as they become authoritative sources.
• Data-driven studies and original research: Publishing proprietary research or data-driven content is a great way to attract links. People love linking to studies and surveys that offer valuable insights.
• Infographics: Visual content like infographics is highly shareable and linkable, especially when they convey complex data in a digestible format.
• Case studies and success stories: Showcasing your results and success stories is appealing for other sites, especially those in the same niche, to link to.

Why it works

• Natural: Earned links are organic and signal to search engines that your content has value.
• Trustworthy: High-quality content is more likely to be referenced by authoritative sources, which adds credibility to your site.
• Long-term benefits: Since earned links are based on the quality of your content, they tend to be more durable over time.

How to do it

• Invest in high-quality content creation. Hire a vetted freelancer or learn yourself. 
• Promote your content via outreach.
• Share in social media to amplify visibility.

2. Ask for links

This is one of the most common methods to acquire backlinks, but it’s important to approach this correctly. Asking for links involves reaching out to other website owners or bloggers in your niche and asking them to link to your content.

Here's the key to success with this method:

How to do it

• Identify relevant sites: Research websites, blogs, and online publications in your niche or industry. The more relevant the site, the better the link will be in terms of SEO value. However, remember that you like aren't going to get a link from a competitor.
• Craft personalized outreach: Avoid generic, template-based outreach emails. Personalize each request, explaining why their audience would benefit from the link to your content. Highlight the value you’re providing rather than just requesting the link.
• Offer something of value in return: Sometimes, offering something in return helps. This could be sharing their content, promoting their work, offering a backlink in exchange, or even creating guest posts for their sites. If you have a SaaS tool, offer a limited time premium subscription.

Best practices for outreach

• Be polite and professional.
• Clearly explain the value of linking to your content. If you're reaching out to other marketers, most already know the value. From my experience, however, they are pitched a lot so make yours stand out.
• Be specific: Don’t ask for a vague link. Instead, direct them to the exact page you want to be linked to. Best if you can show them the paragraph your link could go to so they don't have to do any work besides adding your link.
• Be patient and ready for rejection - this will happen a lot, believe me. Not every outreach will lead to a link.

Why it works

• Customizable: You can tailor your approach based on the target website, increasing the likelihood of success.
• Relevant: If done correctly, asking for links from relevant and authoritative sources helps build your site’s credibility.

How not to ask

• Never use spammy tactics like mass emailing or submitting irrelevant content to unqualified websites. If you use the same email for everyone, your domain sender reputation will suffer and you'll be blacklisted.
• Avoid demanding links or being aggressive in your requests.

3. Add links (link building via guest posts and directories)

While this is a more proactive approach to link building, it still falls within the scope of earning links.

Guest posting

Guest posting involves writing articles or blog posts for other websites in your niche, and within those posts, you include links to your own content.

Here's the process:

• Identify relevant blogs: Focus on high-quality, authoritative blogs that accept guest posts in your niche. You can google "write for us" to find opportunities.
• Write high-quality posts: Ensure the content you submit is valuable, well-written, and aligns with the host blog’s audience.
• Link naturally: Don’t force links. Instead, add them naturally within the context of the post, ensuring they enhance the article's value.

Why It Works

• Relevance: Links added through guest posts or naturally integrated content are often highly relevant.
• Authority building: Posting on established websites boosts your own site's authority.
• Audience expansion: Guest posting helps you get in front of a new audience, which can lead to more traffic and backlinks.

How not to add links

• Don’t use low-quality, irrelevant guest posts.
• Avoid excessive self-promotion, especially in contexts where the link is forced and doesn’t add value.

Directory links

From my experience, directories work well if you have a fairly new website. Google probably expects you to be on some directories if you're a legitimate business.

Using directory links early on grows your domain rating, making your website more valuable for exchange with other link builders.

4. Buy links (How not to build links)

Buying links is a black-hat SEO tactic that is heavily discouraged by search engines, especially Google. While it may be tempting to purchase links to speed up your SEO efforts, it comes with some risks.

Why buying links is risky

• Violation of Google’s guidelines: Buying links violates Google’s guidelines. If caught, your website can be penalized, potentially leading to a significant drop in rankings.
• Unnatural link profile: Links from irrelevant or low-quality sites don’t contribute positively to your SEO. In fact, they can harm your site's reputation.
• Temporary gains: Even if buying links brings short-term traffic or ranking improvements, it's not sustainable. Once Google detects the paid links, your rankings can plummet.

Why you shouldn’t buy links

• Penalty risk: The penalty from buying links could set you back months, if not years, of hard SEO work. It's better to work with an experienced agency that knows the industry.
• Lower ROI: Paid links rarely provide long-term returns. High-quality earned links, on the other hand, continue to deliver value over time.
• Lack of trust: Backlinks from questionable sources can harm your brand's credibility and trustworthiness.

How not to buy links

• Never purchase links from link farms, spammy directories, or low-quality websites.
• Avoid using automated tools that promise to deliver backlinks for a fee.
• Do not engage in any form of paid link schemes that offer backlinks in exchange for money or goods.
• And whatever you do, do not go to Fiverr or Upwork for links.

Best practices in link building

1. Quality over quantity: Prioritize building a few high-quality links over a ton of bad quality links. 
2. Keep relevancy and context in mind: Links should come from other websites and pages that are close to your niche.
3. Build a diverse link profile: Vary link types (dofollow and nofollow if you don't have many), anchor texts, link types such as editorial, directory, and guest post links.
4. Build links gradually: Avoid building too many at once to not trigger Google's link spam detection. If you previously got 0 links, don't suddenly build 100 a month.
5. Monitor backlink profile regularly: Keep track of the backlinks you build ─ some of them might turn toxic over time and need removing.
6. Consider the surrounding text: Make sure the content around the link is relevant and adds value to the page. Think "where would a user expect to navigate from here".
7. Monitor Google updates regularly: Google changes it's rules regularly so it's important to stay current on the developments.

To learn about any new link building best practices, get our newsletter directly to your inbox.

Link building tools

While it's good to use a combination of tools for link building, all these tools come at a price. If you're a solo-marketer in a startup and this is your first time doing link building, I recommend you to not buy all the expensive licenses.

Now, here's the link building tools we have found useful.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is arguably the most powerful backlink analysis platform available, thanks to its massive link index and rich set of filters. Ahrefs is our main SEO tool at The Backlink Company. We use Domain Rating and Ahrefs reported traffic to build our links. We know DR can be gamified but there's other ways to check for bad actors.

Here's how we use Ahrefs for link building.

Link building tactics we use with Ahrefs

• Broken link building:
  - Use Site Explorer to analyze a target website.
  - Go to the Broken Backlinks report to find broken pages with incoming links.
  - Create or repurpose content on your site and reach out to those linking sites suggesting your page as a replacement.
• Competitor backlink stealing (not really stealing):
  - Plug in 2-3 competitors into Link Intersect.
  - Identify sites that link to them but not to you.
  - Prioritize outreach to those domains as they’ve already linked to similar content. We've learned that you need to add a good amount of new value for this tactic to work.
• Best by links:
  - See which content types attract the most links on a competitor’s site.
  - Replicate the format (stats, tools, guides) and promote it to similar publishers.
• Content explorer for outreach:
  - Search for keywords like “email marketing statistics” in Content Explorer.
  - Filter for high-authority pages with lots of referring domains.
  - Reach out to sites linking to outdated or low-quality versions.

Semrush

Semrush offers end-to-end link building from our experience. It includes tools for identifying gaps to managing outreach campaigns. However, the feature we really like is the Backlink Network Graph.

Link building tactics we use with Semrush

• Backlink gap tool:
  - Compare your domain against several competitors.
  - Discover domains linking to others in your niche but not to you.
  - Filter by authority score and traffic to prioritize targets.
• Link building tool:
  - Enter your target keywords, competitors, and domain.
  - Semrush automatically generates a prospect list of potential link sources (blogs, forums, directories).
  - It even helps with email templates and tracking outreach responses.
• Brand monitoring for link reclamation:
  - Set up a brand mention alert.
  - Reach out to sites that mention your brand but don’t link. Ask them to make the mention clickable.
• Toxic link audit:
  - Identify and disavow harmful links that could trigger manual penalties.
  - Helps keep your link profile clean while you build good links.

Moz Link Explorer

Moz is beginner-friendly but powerful for qualifying link opportunities and understanding domain strength.

Link building tactics we use with Moz:

• Link intersect:
  - Like Ahrefs, use this to find shared backlinks among your competitors.
  - Prioritize prospects linking to multiple competitors but not to you.
• Anchor text and spam ccore analysis:
  - Examine the anchor text profile of your competitors.
  - Identify natural anchor patterns and linking domains worth targeting.
  - Avoid domains with high spam scores.
• Inbound links to top content:
  - Use Top Pages by Links to analyze content that attracts backlinks.
  - Moz shows linking page titles and anchor text, helping you target linkers who care about your topic.
• Evaluate domain Spam Score
  - We use Moz mostly for their Spam Score when we do link building to make sure it's under 10-20% depending on the industry.

Combine link building tools for best results

Each tool serves a different purpose in your link building workflow. Here's the overlap of what these tools are capable of:

3 incredible link building case studies

Here's 3 case studies:

• an enterprise cybersecurity company
• an eCommerce jewelry company, and
• an AI note-taking SaaS.

1. Case Study: SSH - Cybersecurity link building

Client overview

SSH is a cybersecurity company specializing in secure remote access and network management solutions. With a growing demand for cybersecurity tools, they were looking to improve their visibility in a competitive market.

Challenges

• Low organic search visibility despite offering high-quality services.
• Low domain authority compared to competitors.

Strategy

• Targeted content creation around high-value topics in cybersecurity.
• Guest posting on industry-specific blogs and authoritative websites.
• Link building through resource pages, identifying opportunities for backlinks to informative articles.
• Broken link building by offering SSH's content as replacements for broken links.

Results

• 65% increase in organic traffic after 6 months.
• Improved rankings, with target keywords moving from page 3 to page 1 on Google.
• Domain authority rose by 15 points.

2. Case Study: Laatukoru – eCommerce link building

Client Overview

Laatukoru is a premium jewelry brand based in Finland, offering high-quality, custom-made pieces. They wanted to expand their online presence and gain recognition within a competitive luxury jewelry niche.

Challenges

• Limited backlink profile in the competitive luxury jewelry market.
• Strong competition from established brands in the luxury jewelry space.

Strategy

• Developed keyword strategy around trends in jewelry.
• Leveraged outreach targeting top fashion and luxury lifestyle publications for backlinks.
• Focused on global link building through reputable publications.

Results

• 45% improvement in keyword rankings for highly competitive terms like "Tissot watch"
• 30% increase in sales from organic traffic and improved brand recognition.
• Domain authority grew by 12 points.

3. Case Study: AI Note-Taking – SaaS link building

Client Overview

AI Note-Taking is a SaaS product that helps businesses and individuals by using artificial intelligence to generate accurate meeting notes and summaries. They needed to stand out in a crowded SaaS and productivity tools space.

Challenges

• High competition in the productivity and AI tools space.
• Minimal backlink profile and limited quality links to compete effectively.

Strategy

• Created guest posts for well-known productivity and SaaS blogs, positioning the client as a thought leader.
• Collaborated with productivity experts for content partnerships and natural backlinking.

Results

• 50% increase in keyword rankings, both short-tail and long-tail terms.
• 40x boost in organic traffic in 4 months, correlating with a rise in backlinks.
• Notable improvement in domain authority and referral traffic.

Black hat link building

Black hat link building refers to manipulative tactics used to acquire backlinks that violate search engine guidelines.

In fact, over 60% of penalties imposed by Google are related to unnatural links, according to industry reports.

Common black hat methods include buying links, using link farms, and leveraging PBNs. These tactics often involve obtaining backlinks from low-quality or irrelevant sites to artificially inflate a website’s authority.

PBNs, in particular, have gained attention as a major tactic in black hat link building. In 2015, Google’s Penguin update made it clear that manipulative link building, including the use of PBNs, would result in substantial ranking drops or penalties.

Other manipulative methods include comment spam, content scraping, and link cloaking, where links are disguised or hidden to pass link equity. Websites engaging in black hat link building often experience drops in search visibility of up to 50% or more once penalized.

How AI will impact link building?

AI will impact link building by changing the way we write content, discover link opportunities and placements, and create tools for ourselves. The change is already happening and we're already using some of the new ways of working in our link building service.

A big cost factor in link building used to be the cost of content. Now AI can write a lot of blog posts rather quickly. On the contrary, website owners are not going to accept surface level guest posts anymore because they could just create those themselves. It's possible that outreach as a link building strategy will go away with AI.

 When link building, discovering where to place your link has always been manual. You would go through a website to find the most relevant placement for you. In the future, AI can find that placement for you and it will be the most relevant placement.

SEO is full of SaaS tools. We use a SaaS tool to manage our and monitor the links we've built. We can now create our own SaaS tool at almost no cost to do the same. And we can customize the tools to fit our use cases for link building better.