How to do link building for SEO: tactics and outreach within Google's rules

What Google allows in link building

Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate search rankings. For link building, that draws a clear line: you may ask for a link, but you may not pay for one that passes ranking credit, trade for one or manufacture one.

Two link attributes do the qualifying. According to Google's guide to qualifying outbound links, rel="sponsored" marks advertisements and paid placements (nofollow is still accepted for them, though sponsored is preferred), and rel="ugc" marks links in user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. The site that publishes the link sets the attribute, so when you pay for a placement, the correct attribute is part of the deal. A qualified paid link still sends visitors; the attribute only blocks the ranking credit.

Guest articles sit in between. In a 2017 reminder, Google's webspam team said it does not discourage articles that inform users, educate another site's audience or bring awareness to a company, but that articles whose main intent is building links back to the author's site at large scale break its rules on link schemes. Its warning signs, taken to an extreme: keyword-rich links stuffed into the articles, articles on many different sites (or many articles on a few large ones), writers who do not know the subject, and the same or similar content across articles. In 2021 Google added that it strongly recommends the appropriate rel values on links in sponsored and guest posts, and that excessive guest posting without them can bring algorithmic and manual actions. Treat a guest article as a way to reach readers, not as a source of ranking credit.

Enforcement is mostly automatic. Since the December 2022 link spam update, SpamBrain, Google's AI-based spam-prevention system, detects both sites buying links and sites used to pass outgoing links, and any credit those links passed is lost. When a person at Google reviews a site, the outcome can be a manual action such as "Unnatural links to your site" in Search Console's Manual actions report. If an agency builds the links, Google's advice on hiring an SEO is plain: you are responsible for the actions of any company you hire.

Start with something worth linking to

Outreach multiplies what you already have; it cannot make a weak page worth citing. Google's helpful content self-assessment describes what editors link to: original information, reporting, research or analysis; a page you would bookmark, share or recommend; content you would expect a printed magazine, encyclopedia or book to reference. In link building, a page with those qualities is called a linkable asset.

Choosing the subject is the important decision. Start from the questions your customers, and the journalists who cover your field, keep asking, and pick one where you can add something new: data nobody has published, a tool nobody has built, an explanation nobody has made clear. Put an author, a date and your method on the page, and keep it current. Improving on the best existing page on a subject (sometimes called the skyscraper technique) works on the same condition: yours has to be genuinely better, and the outreach has to be as personal as for anything else.

Link building strategies that work within the rules

Every tactic below gives an editor a reason to link that has nothing to do with your rankings. The table is a quick guide; the sections explain each one.

Digital PR and journalist requests

Digital PR means earning coverage, and the links that come with it, by giving journalists something worth reporting: new data, a clear explanation of a news event or a quote from someone who knows the subject. Pitch the story to the few reporters who cover it, not the whole newsroom. A link is not guaranteed. If an article cites your data without linking to it, a short note asking the author to link to the source is reasonable. A press release, on the other hand, is not a link building tool: Google's link spam examples include links with optimized anchor text in press releases distributed on other sites.

Journalist request services reverse the direction: reporters post what they need, and experts answer. One of the best known, HARO (Help a Reporter Out), has changed hands. Cision moved HARO into its Connectively platform, announcing that the old HARO service would be phased out in early 2024, then permanently discontinued Connectively (HARO) on December 9, 2024. Featured.com acquired HARO from Cision in April 2025 and restarted it as a free daily email, sending the first edition on April 22, 2025. As of September 2026, HARO runs under Featured, and Qwoted, ResponseSource (focused on UK media) and SourceBottle also connect journalists with expert sources. Reporters post requests on X, LinkedIn and Substack as well.

Answer only where you have real expertise, answer the question actually asked, and answer quickly, because requests have deadlines. Lead with a sentence the reporter can quote, add one line on who you are, and leave the link to the reporter's judgement.

Resource pages

Universities, associations, public bodies and specialist blogs often keep pages that list useful external resources on a subject. Those pages exist to link out, so a relevant, free resource is what their maintainers want to hear about. Google's documented search operators find them: quotes for an exact phrase, site: to search one site or domain, a minus sign to exclude words or sites, and after: for pages updated since a date.

"cloud migration" "useful resources"
"backup policy" "recommended tools" -site:example.com
"password manager" "resources for small business" after:2025

Suggest your page only when it fills a real gap in the list, and name that gap in one sentence.

Broken link building

Pages with long lists of outbound links collect dead ones as the sites they point to move or close. Broken link building means finding those dead links and offering the editor a working replacement. To check a batch of candidate pages at once, paste their URLs into the Screaming Frog SEO Spider in list mode, raise the crawl depth from 0 to 1 so it follows each page's outlinks, and filter the Response Codes tab for Client Error (4xx); the free version crawls up to 500 URLs. Before you pitch, look up the dead page in the Wayback Machine to see what it covered, and pitch only if your page serves the same need.

The pitch names the page, the exact link that is broken and where it sits, and offers your page as one possible replacement. Make the fix easy for the editor even if they choose another source.

Unlinked mentions and link reclamation

Some links only need asking for. When an article names your company, product or people without linking, the author has already done the hard part. Set up Google Alerts for your brand and product names to get an email when new results appear, and when a mention has no link, send a short thank-you that points to the exact page it refers to.

Link reclamation looks inward. Redesigns and migrations break URLs that other sites still link to. In Search Console's Links report, check that each of your top linked pages still returns 200, and send any page that moved to its closest equivalent with a permanent server-side redirect: Google's redirect documentation says the 301 and 308 status codes mean a page has permanently moved. A link that points to a misspelled URL on your site can be fixed the same way.

Partners, suppliers, customers, associations and events

Real business relationships produce the most natural links, because each one has a reason to exist. Software vendors and manufacturers list partners and resellers; suppliers list stockists; customers publish case studies, with your agreement on what is said; industry associations and chambers of commerce list members; conferences and meetups list speakers, hosts and sponsors. Go through the relationships you already have and check whether each listing exists, is accurate and links to the right page. Where a listing is paid for, as a sponsorship usually is, the link should carry rel="sponsored". An occasional link between genuine partners is normal; the policy targets excessive exchanges and partner pages that exist only for cross-linking.

Local citations

A business that serves an area also earns links and mentions from local sources: map platforms and directories that carry its name, address and phone number, local press, the chamber of commerce and community organizations it supports. Consistency matters more than volume, and low-quality directory and bookmark links are on Google's list of link spam. The local SEO guide covers citations, reviews and local links in detail.

Guest contributions within the rules

Write for the publications your customers actually read, on subjects you know first-hand, and only when the editor accepts the piece on its merits. Keep your link to an author bio, or to a source that genuinely supports a point in the article, with plain anchor text such as your company's name. Do not publish the same article on several sites, do not stuff keyword-rich links into it, and if the host asks for the link to carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow", accept it: the audience was the point.

The link building outreach process, step by step

Outreach is the part of link building that most often turns into spam. Keep it small and personal:

1. Build a prospect list of pages and people that already cover your subject.
2. Qualify each site for relevance, a real audience and editorial standards.
3. Find the right person: the author or editor of the page, not a generic inbox.
4. Write a personal pitch that explains what their readers gain.
5. Follow up once or twice, spaced out, then stop.
6. Track every contact and every outcome, including the links that go live.

Build a prospect list

Combine three sources. First, search operator queries like the ones above. Second, the sites that already link to pages similar to yours: a link-gap report such as Ahrefs' Link Intersect lists sites that link to your competitors but not to you. Third, journalists who wrote about the subject recently, which the after: operator helps you find. Add the people you already know: partners, customers, speakers you have met. For each prospect, record the exact page, why it is relevant and which of your pages you would suggest.

Qualify each site

Most of a prospect list should not survive this step. Check each site against four questions:

• Is it relevant? The site covers your subject, and the page you would appear on is about the same thing as the page you suggest.
• Does it have a real audience? People read it: it appears in search results for its own topics, it has an active newsletter or community, and its articles attract comments or shares.
• Does it have editorial standards? Articles carry named authors and dates, outbound links point to sources that support the text, and there is a way to reach an editor.
• Does it sell links? A "write for us" page with prices for followed links, sponsored posts on unrelated subjects, or links to casinos and payday lenders in unrelated articles mean the links are for sale, and Google's SpamBrain detects sites used to pass outgoing links.

Third-party authority scores such as Moz Domain Authority or Ahrefs Domain Rating can help sort a long list, but they are vendors' estimates from their own link data. Google's guidance on third-party SEO tools says those tools do not have access to its internal ranking data. A relevant site with real readers and a modest score is a better prospect than an unrelated site with a high one. What each score measures is explained in how Google determines a website's authority.

Find the right person

Send the pitch to the person who can change the page: the author of the article, the maintainer of the resource list or the editor of the section. A generic contact address is a last resort. If the site says it does not accept pitches, respect that and move on.

Write a personal pitch

A good pitch is short enough to read on a phone and specific enough that it could only have been sent to one person. It says who you are, shows that you read the page, explains in one sentence what their readers gain and gives one link. It does not offer money, a link swap or a product in return, and it does not dictate anchor text. A pitch for a broken link might read:

Subject: Dead link in your "Cloud backup resources" list

Hi <first name>,

I was reading your cloud backup resources page and noticed that the
link to <old guide title>, in the "Recovery testing" section, now
returns a 404 error.

We published a guide on the same subject: <URL>. It covers restore
testing step by step and is free to read, with no sign-up.

If it fits your list, it could replace the dead link. Either way, the
broken link is worth fixing.

<Your name>
<Role>, <Company>, <postal address>
If you would rather not hear from me again, reply "no" and I won't write again.

Follow up once or twice, then stop

A reply may simply be buried, so one polite follow-up after several days is reasonable, and a second is the limit. After that, silence is an answer. Google's webspam team noted in its 2017 reminder that site owners generally prefer not to receive aggressive or repeated requests to publish articles, and encouraged them to report such requests. A prospect who says no, or asks you to stop, goes on a do-not-contact list.

Track every contact and outcome

A spreadsheet is enough at small scale; a CRM helps when several people do outreach. Record, for every prospect:

How to measure link building

Measure three things: whether the links exist, whether people use them, and whether the pages they point to do better in search.

• Search Console Links report. The Links report shows a sample of the links Google has found, grouped by root domain: your top linked pages, top linking sites and top linking text. The "Latest links" export lists up to 100,000 recently discovered links sorted by discovery date, the simplest way to see new links appear. It is a sample, it can include links that have since been removed, and it does not say whether a link is nofollow.
• Referral traffic in Google Analytics 4. GA4's Referral channel counts users who arrive through non-ad links on other sites and apps. In the Traffic acquisition report (Reports, then Acquisition, then Traffic acquisition), switch the dimension to Session source / medium and search the table for "referral" to list the sites that send visitors. A link that sends customers is worth having whatever its attribute.
• Search performance of the linked page. In Search Console's Performance report, compare the queries and impressions of the pages you promoted over several months, alongside everything else that changed on them. Links are one signal among many, so treat a correlation as a hint, not as proof.

Third-party backlink tools can show your competitors' links, which Search Console cannot. For your own site, Google's guidance on third-party tools recommends Search Console, because its data comes directly from Google Search.

What not to do

Some tactics still sell well because they produce links quickly. Each one appears in Google's spam policies:

The expired domain rule has a limit: Google's March 2024 announcement says it is fine to use an old domain name for a new, original site designed to serve people first.

If you inherit links built with these tactics, remove what you can first. Google says that in most cases it can assess which links to trust, and recommends the disavow tool only when a considerable number of spammy, artificial or low-quality links point to your site and they have caused, or likely will cause, a manual action.

Link building done this way is slow, because every link depends on someone else's editorial decision. The alternative is links that Google's systems are built to find and neutralize. If you want help, our SEO service earns links with content worth citing and digital PR where it fits, and does not buy links or use private blog networks. More guides are in the SEO topic.