What Is Link Building in SEO? Strategies Google Accepts

Link building in SEO is the work of getting other websites to link to pages on yours. Google says it “uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl,” so a link from a relevant site helps Google find you and understand what you offer. The method matters, though. Links you earn, ask for, or get from people who know you are fine; links you buy or trade mainly to move rankings count as link spam under Google’s policy unless they carry rel="sponsored" or nofollow.

Last updated 30 October 2026.

How Google uses links

Start with what Google says, because almost everything else written about link building is commentary on it.

Google’s link best practices page gives links two jobs: discovery and relevance. Its SEO starter guide adds that “Google primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled,” and that “the vast majority of the new pages Google finds every day are through links.” In other words, a page nobody links to is a page Google may take a long time to find.

The second job is understanding. The words a link sits on, the anchor text, tell people and Google what is on the other side. Google’s guidance says “Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on and to the page it links to.” It calls “click here” too generic. So a link on the words “emergency boiler repair in Leeds” says far more than a link on “this site”.

There’s a technical point too. Google says it “can only crawl your link if it’s an <a> HTML element” with a real address in the href. A link hidden behind a script, or a button with no address, may not count as a link at all.

Most people miss the quiet part of this guidance. Google never says links are the only thing that matters. The starter guide says creating content people find “compelling and useful will likely influence your website’s presence in search results more than any of the other suggestions in this guide.” Links come after the page is worth linking to.

Where links come from: four routes

Most lists of backlink building techniques run to fifty items. In practice, every one of them falls into one of four routes, and the useful question is who says yes to the link.

Earned links happen when someone finds your page and cites it. Google’s starter guide says “Other sites linking to you is something that happens naturally over time.” You can speed that up by telling people the page exists, which the guide also encourages.

Asked-for links are what most people mean by link building. You find a page where your link would genuinely help its readers, and you ask. That includes guest articles, pointing out a dead link and offering your page as a replacement, and asking partners and associations to list you.

Self-placed links are the ones you can create yourself: a business profile, a forum signature, a comment. They’re easy, which is exactly why they rarely carry much weight, and why many platforms mark them ugc or nofollow.

Paid links are placements you buy. They’re legitimate advertising when they’re labelled. They’re link spam when they’re bought to pass ranking credit. We cover the difference in should you buy backlinks.

Link building strategies vs tactics

A tactic is “send outreach emails” or “write a guest post.” A strategy is the decision underneath: which pages need links, and whether you pay for each link in hours or in money.

Skip the tactic list until you’ve answered three questions.

1. Which pages should receive links? Usually the pages that make you money or answer the questions your customers ask. A link to a thin page rarely helps; fix the page first.
2. Who would naturally link to those pages? Suppliers, customers, local groups, trade associations, writers covering your field.
3. What will you spend? Hours on outreach and content, money on placements or an agency, or a mix.

When you answer those honestly, the tactics pick themselves. Our step-by-step guide on how to build backlinks starts with the people who already know you. A bakery has suppliers, a local business association and food bloggers. A SaaS tool has integration partners, comparison writers and its own users. Their tactics look nothing alike, yet the strategy is the same.

A worked example: a plumbing firm’s first quarter

Here’s a realistic scenario with round numbers, so you can see how the time adds up. A two-person plumbing firm wants links to its service page for boiler repair. Say the owner has four hours a week for twelve weeks, 48 hours in total.

• Week 1-2 (8 hours): they rewrite the boiler page with real prices, a clear service area and photos from actual jobs. Without this step, nobody has a reason to link.
• Week 3 (4 hours): they list the people who already know the firm. Their boiler supplier’s installer directory, their trade association’s member list, the local chamber of commerce, two builders they subcontract for. That’s six likely links, each asked for in one email.
• Week 4-8 (20 hours): they write one useful guide, “what to check before you call a plumber about a cold radiator”, and send it to 30 local blogs, community sites and property-management firms. If three link to it, that’s a fair result for cold outreach.
• Week 9-12 (16 hours): they follow up, fix anything that changed, and check which links went live and how each one is marked.

At the end, they might have six to nine new links from relevant, local sites. That sounds small. It isn’t. Each one is on topic, earned or asked for, and none of them needs a disavow file later. Honestly, that’s what a sound first quarter looks like for a small business.

Is there such a thing as “white hat” link building?

“White hat link building” is a seller’s term, not Google’s. Google’s spam policies, link best practices and outbound-link pages, which we read for this guide, don’t use the phrase. What Google does publish is a list of things that count as link spam. Anything outside that list, done for real readers, is just normal promotion.

Turns out sellers don’t agree on what the label covers either. Some call paid guest posts white hat because a human did the outreach; others put any paid link in a grey zone. So when you see the label on an offer, skip the label and ask three questions instead:

1. Is money, a product or a favour buying the link?
2. If so, is it marked rel="sponsored" or nofollow?
3. Does the offer promise rankings? Google’s page on hiring an SEO says plainly: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”

What Google’s spam policy says about links

Google’s spam policies define link spam as “the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings.” The examples it lists include:

• “Buying or selling links for ranking purposes,” which covers “Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links,” “Exchanging goods or services for links,” and “Sending someone a product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link.”
• “Excessive link exchanges” and “partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking.”
• “Using automated programs or services to create links to your site.”
• “Low-quality directory or bookmark site links.”
• “Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature.”
• Links “with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites.”

The same policy also says Google “does understand that buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes.” Paid links are fine “as long as they are qualified with a rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” attribute value.” Google’s page on qualifying outbound links asks sites to “Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value.” Our guide to dofollow vs nofollow links explains what each value does.

If you’re weighing a paid service anyway, our link building services section reads each provider’s terms and notes whether you can see the site and request the sponsored tag before paying.

Common link building mistakes

Building links to a page that isn’t ready. If the page is thin, a link sends people to something they leave. Fix the page first.

Chasing numbers instead of relevance. One link from a trade body in your field usually tells Google more than twenty from unrelated blogs.

Using the same exact-match anchor everywhere. Google names optimized anchor text in guest posts and press releases as link spam. Let sites link with your brand name or a natural description.

Swapping links at scale. One genuine mutual link between partners is normal. A swap arrangement with dozens of sites is what the policy calls excessive.

Forgetting to check the live link. Don’t forget that links get edited, tagged or removed. Look at the page after it goes live and every few months after.

Panicking about “toxic” links. Google’s disavow help page says “most sites will not need to use this tool.” If you’ve never bought links or run schemes, you probably don’t need it.

FAQ: link building questions

What is link building in SEO, in simple terms?

It’s getting other websites to link to pages on yours. Google uses those links to find your pages and to judge what they’re about and how relevant they are. The best links come from sites in your field that link because the page helps their readers.

Is link building still important?

Google still says it uses links to find pages and as a relevance signal, so yes. But its own starter guide puts useful content ahead of everything else it suggests. Think of links as the way good pages get found, not a substitute for them.

Is link building against Google’s rules?

No. Earning links, asking for them and promoting your content are normal. What breaks the rules is creating links mainly to manipulate rankings, such as buying links that pass ranking credit, excessive swaps, or automated link programs.

How long does link building take to work?

There’s no fixed timeline, because Google has to find the link, crawl the page and weigh it with everything else. In practice, plan in months, not weeks, and judge the work by whether relevant sites link to you, not by next week’s rankings.

The short version

• Link building means getting other sites to link to yours; Google uses links to find pages and judge relevance.
• Every technique is earned, asked for, self-placed or paid. Ask who says yes before you choose one.
• A strategy picks the pages first, then decides whether you spend hours or money.
• “White hat” is a seller’s label. Google’s spam policy is the rule that counts.
• Paid links are fine only when marked rel="sponsored" or nofollow.

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