Link building still matters, but the goal is no longer to collect as many backlinks as possible. The strongest link building strategies focus on earning relevant, useful links from websites that people actually trust and visit.
Google uses links to discover pages and understand relationships between content, while its spam policies specifically warn against creating links primarily to manipulate rankings.
That changes how a good campaign should be planned. A link that makes sense to a reader can support visibility, referral traffic, brand awareness, and authority. A pile of irrelevant links created only to influence rankings can do the opposite.
The strategy you choose should also match your situation. A local business, a new SaaS company, and an established enterprise website do not need the same backlink plan.
Which Link Building Strategy Should You Use?
| Strategy | Effort | Typical Link Quality | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital PR | High | Very high | Brands with newsworthy stories |
| Guest posting | Medium–High | Medium–High | Expertise and topical authority |
| Linkable assets | High upfront | High | Content-led campaigns |
| Competitor backlink analysis | Medium | Variable–High | Finding proven opportunities |
| Journalist outreach | High | Very high | Expert-led brands |
| Business directories | Low–Medium | Low–Medium | Local businesses |
| Local link building | Medium | Medium–High | Location-based businesses |
| Link roundups | Medium | Medium | Useful niche content |
| Skyscraper technique | High | Medium–High | Competitive informational topics |
| Broken link building | Medium–High | Medium–High | Resource-rich websites |
| Resource page outreach | Medium | Medium–High | Educational content |
| Internal linking & reclamation | Low–Medium | Existing links | All websites |
The table is a starting point, not a ranking. A highly relevant local directory may be more useful to a local company than a prestigious publication that has no connection to its market.
Digital PR and High-Authority Backlinks
Digital PR is one of the strongest ways to earn editorial backlinks because the link is a result of something genuinely newsworthy, useful, or interesting.
Instead of asking hundreds of websites to link to an existing page, you create a reason for journalists and publishers to mention your brand. That reason could be:
How to Execute It
For example, a cybersecurity SaaS company could publish research showing common security mistakes among small businesses. A journalist writing about business security now has a reason to reference the research.
Digital PR requires more preparation than submitting links to directories, but successful campaigns can generate several valuable outcomes from one piece of work: editorial backlinks, brand mentions, referral traffic, and increased awareness.
Guest Posting
Guest posting involves creating useful content for another website and earning a link within the author profile or article where appropriate.
The tactic works best when the publication is genuinely relevant and the article would be valuable even without the backlink.
Start by finding websites whose readers overlap with your target audience. Review their existing content, publishing standards, traffic relevance, and external links before pitching.
A Practical Guest-Post Workflow
Build a list of relevant publications.
Check whether they accept external contributors.
Study their recent articles.
Identify a topic they have not covered well.
Pitch a specific idea rather than sending a generic email.
Write original, useful content if accepted.
Add only links that genuinely help the reader.
Review the published article and monitor the placement.
Avoid producing dozens of shallow articles simply to obtain backlinks. Google specifically warns against low-quality guest posts and other practices intended to manipulate rankings.
Guest posting is particularly useful when you want to build brand visibility and topical authority alongside acquiring links — see our guest post outreach guide for the outreach side of this in more depth.
Want this workflow run for you, end to end?
Brimcove handles pitching, writing, and placement — 100% manual outreach.
Linkable Assets
A linkable asset is content that other websites have a reason to reference. It could be a:
The key question is simple: why would someone link to this instead of writing the information themselves?
For example, a payroll software company could create an annual report comparing hiring trends across different industries. Recruiters, business publications, HR blogs, and consultants may reference the data when discussing the subject.
The execution process starts with research. Find topics that publishers already reference and identify what is missing from existing resources. Then create something more useful, more current, easier to understand, or genuinely original.
Once published, promote the asset through relevant outreach. Do not assume that great content will automatically attract links. Distribution is often what puts the asset in front of the people who can reference it.
Competitor Backlink Analysis
Competitor backlink analysis is useful because it shows where websites in your market have already earned attention.
It does not mean copying every link your competitors have. Their backlink profiles may contain outdated, irrelevant, or low-quality links.
Instead, look for patterns and opportunities. For example, if several competitors are referenced by the same industry publication, that publication may be worth researching. If competitors are receiving links because of original research, that could indicate a content opportunity.
Select three to five genuine search competitors.
Export their referring domains.
Remove obvious spam and irrelevant sites.
Group remaining links by type.
Identify websites linking to several competitors.
Investigate why each competitor earned the link.
Create a better or more relevant reason for those websites to mention your brand.
Competitor analysis works best as a research tool, not as a checklist for copying links.
HARO and Journalist-Request Platforms
HARO became widely known as a way for journalists to find expert sources, but the original Help a Reporter Out platform has changed significantly since the early days of the tactic. Modern campaigns should therefore focus on journalist-request opportunities and established media-source platforms, rather than assuming every old HARO workflow still exists in its original form.
The basic model remains useful: a journalist needs expert input, you provide a concise and relevant response, and the journalist may cite your business or expert profile if selected.
Platforms and services in this space have included Qwoted, Featured, and Help a B2B Writer, among others.
The quality of your response matters more than sending the largest number of pitches.
A Strong Response Should:
This approach can earn editorial coverage from publications that would otherwise be difficult to reach.
Directory and Business Listing Links
Directories are not all equal. A reputable industry directory, professional association, or local business listing can be useful, while a directory created solely to sell links usually adds little value.
For local businesses, listings can help establish consistent business information across relevant platforms.
Good examples include:
When creating listings, keep the business name, address, phone number, website, and category consistent.
Do not submit a business to hundreds of unrelated directories simply because they accept listings. Relevance and legitimacy should determine whether a directory belongs in your campaign.
Local Link Building
Local link building focuses on earning links from organizations, businesses, publications, and communities connected to a specific geographic area.
A restaurant might earn coverage from a local newspaper after sponsoring a community event. A dental practice could partner with a school on an oral-health education initiative. A law firm could support a local nonprofit and receive recognition on the organization’s website.
Useful opportunities include:
The strongest local links are often relationship-driven. Instead of asking a local website for a link without context, create a legitimate reason for the organization to mention your business.
Link Roundups
A link roundup is a page or article that collects useful resources around a particular subject.
They can create opportunities for websites with genuinely valuable content, especially in active industries where publishers regularly curate resources.
Search for relevant roundups in your niche.
Check whether they are current and maintained.
Review the types of resources they include.
Identify a page on your website that genuinely fits.
Contact the editor with a short, relevant suggestion.
Explain why the resource would help their readers.
Do not pitch every piece of content you publish. A roundup editor is more likely to respond when the suggested resource clearly fills a gap.
Skyscraper Technique
The Skyscraper technique starts with content that has already earned links and asks how you could create something substantially more useful.
The goal is not to rewrite the competing article. It is to understand why people linked to it and then create a stronger resource.
A better resource might offer:
After publishing, identify websites that linked to older resources and contact only those where your content genuinely improves their page.
The strategy becomes weak when “better” simply means longer. A 5,000-word article is not automatically more valuable than a focused 2,000-word resource.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building involves finding relevant pages containing links that no longer work and suggesting an appropriate replacement.
The process is simple in principle but requires careful qualification.
The important part is relevance. Do not create weak content simply because you found a broken URL. Your replacement should solve the same problem for the reader.
Resource Page Link Building
Resource pages exist to help visitors find useful information about a particular topic.
Universities, nonprofits, professional organizations, educational websites, and industry publications may maintain these pages.
Start by searching for resource pages relevant to your subject. Then review each page manually.
If your content is a genuine fit, contact the site owner with:
Resource link building becomes much more effective when your content was created to be genuinely useful rather than created only to obtain links.
Internal Linking and Link Reclamation
Not every link-building opportunity requires acquiring a new external backlink.
Internal linking helps users and search engines move between related pages on your own website. Google recommends using descriptive anchor text and ensuring important pages can be reached through internal links.
Identify your most important commercial and informational pages.
Find related pages that already receive traffic.
Add contextual links where they help readers.
Use descriptive, natural anchor text.
Check for orphan pages and broken internal links.
Link reclamation focuses on recovering value that already exists. Look for unlinked brand mentions, removed links, broken URLs, or pages that have moved.
These supporting tactics are often overlooked because they do not involve “building” a new backlink, but they can improve the overall efficiency of an SEO campaign.
Risky and Gray-Area Link Building Tactics
Not every tactic marketed as “link building” deserves a place in a sustainable SEO campaign. Some methods can produce links quickly but create more risk than value.
Buying Backlinks
Buying a backlink is not automatically the same as buying advertising. The important distinction is why the link exists and how it is qualified.
Google’s spam policies identify buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam. This includes exchanging money, products, or services for links intended to manipulate rankings.
Paid placements can still be legitimate advertising. The issue is whether the link is properly qualified. Google recommends using rel=”sponsored” for paid placements, while nofollow remains an acceptable alternative in relevant situations.
Before paying for a placement, ask:
- Is the website relevant to your audience?
- Is the placement clearly commercial or editorial?
- Will the publisher properly qualify a paid link?
- Does the page receive genuine visitors?
- Would the placement still make sense without SEO?
A website selling hundreds of backlinks at unusually low prices is a warning sign. Google specifically lists low-quality directory links, automated link creation, excessive link exchanges, and other manipulative practices among examples of link spam. If you’re evaluating this route, see our full breakdown of ways to buy backlinks and how to vet a provider.
Tiered Link Building
Tiered link building involves creating backlinks to pages that themselves link to your main website. The idea is usually to build several layers of links rather than pointing every backlink directly at the target domain.
This can sound sophisticated, but using tiers primarily to manipulate ranking signals creates unnecessary risk. The more layers you add, the harder it becomes to control link quality, relevance, and spam exposure.
For most businesses, a better approach is to invest those resources in direct, relevant, editorially justified links.
Private Blog Networks
Private Blog Networks, or PBNs, use networks of websites controlled by the same operator to create backlinks.
The apparent benefit is control. The problem is that the entire network exists partly to manufacture ranking signals rather than provide independent editorial value.
If a strategy depends on hiding ownership, manipulating expired domains, or publishing low-value content mainly to pass links, it is not a sustainable foundation for SEO.
Google states that sites violating its spam policies can rank lower or be removed from search results.
How to Prioritize Link Building Strategies
You do not need twelve strategies running at once. Most businesses get better results by choosing a few tactics that match their resources and audience.
If You’re a Small Team
Start with three or four areas:
Competitor backlink analysis
Use competitors to discover relevant publications, directories, resource pages, and partnership opportunities.
Linkable content
Create one or two genuinely useful assets that give publishers a reason to reference you.
Guest posting or expert outreach
Build relationships with relevant websites rather than sending mass pitches.
Local or industry-specific links
If your business serves a specific market or location, prioritize organizations and publications that already influence that audience.
This combination gives you research, content, outreach, and relevance without requiring a large team.
If You Have More Resources
Once the basic system works, add higher-effort campaigns such as Digital PR, original research, journalist outreach, partnership campaigns, and larger-scale content assets.
The goal is not to increase backlink volume endlessly. It is to increase the number of good opportunities you can identify, qualify, execute, and measure consistently.
A useful monthly workflow might look like this:
| Activity | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Competitor research | Find proven opportunities |
| Content production | Create link-worthy resources |
| Publisher outreach | Build editorial relationships |
| Digital PR | Generate media opportunities |
| Link reclamation | Recover existing opportunities |
| Internal linking | Strengthen site architecture |
| Reporting | Measure quality and outcomes |
Common Link Building Mistakes
Chasing Volume
A report showing 200 new backlinks may look impressive, but the number tells you little about quality.
Ten relevant referring domains can be more useful than hundreds of automatically generated links from unrelated websites.
Track quality, relevance, traffic potential, and referring-domain diversity, not just the total number of links.
Ignoring Relevance
A backlink from a well-known website is not automatically valuable simply because the domain has strong SEO metrics.
Ask whether the publication’s audience, topic, and context make sense for your business.
A specialist software company may benefit more from a respected technology publication than from a random general website with a higher third-party authority score.
Treating Link Building as Separate From Content
Outreach becomes much harder when there is nothing worth promoting.
Strong campaigns connect content strategy and link acquisition from the beginning. Before creating an article, report, tool, or study, consider:
This turns link building from a post-publication task into part of the content strategy.
Focusing Only on Domain Rating
DR, DA, and similar metrics can help with prospecting, but they should not be treated as the final decision-maker. Review the actual website:
Third-party metrics are shortcuts for research, not substitutes for judgment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Conclusion
Effective link building is less about finding the largest possible list of websites and more about creating reasons for relevant websites to mention your business.
The strongest campaigns usually combine several approaches: Digital PR for authority, useful content for natural citations, targeted outreach for relationships, competitor analysis for research, and supporting tactics such as link reclamation and internal linking.
Avoid shortcuts that depend on manipulated links, automated spam, irrelevant placements, or unrealistic volume targets. Google’s current guidance makes the distinction clear: links created primarily to manipulate search rankings can fall under link spam, while genuinely useful content and properly qualified commercial links support a healthier web ecosystem.
Build a strategy around relevance, usefulness, editorial judgment, and consistency. Those principles are much more durable than any single link-building tactic.
Want a strategy built around your actual competitive gap?
Brimcove combines research, outreach, and manual placement into one managed campaign.
