Search guide
Links you can earn, and the ones that are not worth the risk
Link building has a bad reputation because most of what is sold under that name is a network of sites that exist only to sell links. The legitimate version is slower, smaller in volume, and considerably more durable.
11 min read · 7 steps · By Aman Mishra · Written August 2026
What you end up with
A shortlist of link sources you can realistically earn from, a way to judge whether any given link is worth chasing, and a clear line on what to refuse.
Have these ready
- A page worth linking to
- A list of your suppliers, partners and memberships
- Patience, because this is a slow channel
What it takes
11 min to read
7 steps, in the order below. Skip to the one you are stuck on.
Links remain one of the things that decides whether a page can compete. That is why an entire industry exists to sell them, and why most of what it sells is worthless or worse.
The version that works for an ordinary business is not a campaign. It is a handful of things done consistently, most of which are just being visible in your own industry.
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Make sure something on your site deserves a link
Link building for a site with nothing worth citing is cold outreach with extra steps. The asset comes first.
Before any outreach, ask what on your site somebody would link to.
If the honest answer is nothing, the first job is to build something rather than to start emailing. Outreach for a site with nothing citable is cold sales with an extra step, and it converts accordingly.
Three things reliably get linked. Original data nobody else has. A tool that does something useful for free. A clear position on something contested in your industry, argued properly.
Case studies, service pages and general advice articles rarely earn links on their own, however good they are. That is not a criticism of them. They are for converting, not for citing.
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Collect the links you have already earned
Suppliers, trade bodies, partners, sponsorships and local organisations. Most businesses are entitled to a dozen links they have never claimed.
Most businesses are entitled to links they have never claimed. This is the fastest and least unpleasant part of the whole exercise.
Work through: suppliers and manufacturers with dealer or partner pages, trade bodies and certifications you hold, your chamber of commerce, any sponsorship you fund, local organisations you support, software vendors with customer or integration directories, and any event you have spoken at or exhibited with.
For each, check whether you are listed and whether the listing links to you. A surprising number do not, and a short email usually fixes it.
These links are relevant, permanent, and free, which is a combination the rest of the field does not offer.
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Judge a link before chasing it
Relevance and whether the page has real readers matter more than any third party authority score. Learn to tell a real site from a link farm.
Two questions, in this order.
Is it relevant? A link from a site in your industry or your area is worth many from a general site about everything. Relevance is the part that has held its value most consistently.
Does the page have real readers? Look at the site as a person. Does it publish things somebody would read. Is there a real organisation behind it. Does it link out to forty unrelated businesses in every article.
Third party authority scores are useful for sorting a large list and are not the decision. They are estimates from crawled data, they are gamed deliberately by link sellers, and a high score on a site with no readers means nothing.
The clearest signal of a link farm is a site covering unrelated subjects with an article on each, every one linking out to a business. Once you have seen a few, they are obvious.
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Build the local and industry footprint properly
Directories are largely devalued for ranking and still useful for consistency and for being found. Do the handful that matter and ignore the rest.
Directories used to be a ranking tactic. Mostly they are not now.
They are still worth doing for two reasons: consistency of your business details across the web, which matters for local search, and being findable by people who use those specific directories.
Do the ones that matter. Your Google Business Profile, the main data aggregators, your industry association, your local chamber, and the two or three trade directories people in your field actually use. Make sure the name, address and phone number match exactly everywhere.
Then stop. The long tail of general directories produces nothing, and bulk submission services produce a footprint that looks exactly like every other business that bought the same service.
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Give people a reason to cite you
Original data, a genuinely useful tool, and a clear opinion are the three things that get linked without asking. Everything else needs an ask.
The links that arrive without asking come from three things.
Data you gathered. A survey of your customers, an analysis of your own anonymised account data, a count of something in your industry nobody has counted. Journalists and bloggers need numbers with a source, and there are far fewer sources than there are people needing them.
A tool. Something that does a calculation or a check for free. Tools get linked because they are useful to a reader, which is the whole basis of a citation.
A real opinion. A clear, argued position on something people in your industry disagree about. Neutral overviews get read and forgotten. Positions get referenced, including by people arguing against them.
All three take real effort, which is precisely why they work.
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Ask in a way somebody would say yes to
Most outreach fails because it asks a stranger for a favour with nothing in it for them. The version that works is closer to a normal professional email.
When you do ask, the email should look like a normal professional message rather than an outreach template.
Short. Says who you are and why you are writing to that specific person. Names the specific page and what it would add for their readers. No paragraph about how much you enjoyed their recent article, because everybody uses that line and it now signals a template.
The strongest version has something in it for them: a correction to something out of date on their page, a piece of data they could use, a genuine offer to contribute something.
Expect most to be ignored. That is normal and it is not a reason to send more of a worse email to more people.
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Refuse the things that carry a delayed cost
Paid link networks, mass guest posting and reciprocal schemes all work briefly. The cost arrives later and clearing it up is slow.
Four categories to decline, whoever is selling them.
Paid link networks. Sites that exist to sell links, usually selling to your competitors as well.
Mass guest posting. Placement on sites that publish anything, on any subject, for a fee.
Private blog networks. Sites owned by one operator specifically to link to clients.
Reciprocal link schemes. Groups organised to link to each other in rotation.
All four can produce a short-term improvement. The reason to refuse is that you cannot easily undo them. When the profile becomes a problem, and it often does at exactly the moment the site is starting to matter to the business, the cleanup is slow, uncertain and considerably more expensive than the links were.
Slower and permanent beats faster and reversible, particularly for a business that intends to still be trading in five years.
When you have done all 7
A shortlist of link sources you can realistically earn from, a way to judge whether any given link is worth chasing, and a clear line on what to refuse.