23 Most Important Link Building Questions Answered

Nailing your link-building strategy takes time and effort. As one of the core components of a powerful SEO profile, backlinks are key drivers of site traffic and site authority.

However, in 2025, just 29% of link builders find their efforts successful, and 66% still struggle with identifying effective tactics.

To help you navigate your own link-building efforts, we’ve answered some of the most important link-building questions, so you don’t have to.

Core Questions

Here are the most frequently asked link-building questions. If you’re just starting out on your link-building journey, let’s get into the core of how link building works, why it’s effective for SEO and what makes a backlink high quality.

1. What is Link Building and Why is it Important for SEO?

Link building is the process of securing referring links to your domain from another domain.

When ranking your website, search engines consider your backlink profile. If your website is linked out to from a high-authority domain, Google takes this as a signal that your content is relevant and trustworthy in your search niche.

This results in higher SERP rankings for industry-specific topics and keywords, as well as greater domain authority.

When building a powerful backlink profile, there are several factors to consider. While it is tempting to build as many links as possible, it’s vital to remember that Google and other search engines don’t just evaluate the number of backlinks your website has; they examine each link closely.

Link placements are judged based on:

• The referring domain’s authority and rating
• The relevance of the link and anchor to the content in which it appears
• The authority of your target URL

To achieve the best results, your link-building efforts should focus on securing links from reputable, high-authority sites relevant to your search niche.

When executed correctly, link building can improve your site-wide rankings and drive referral traffic to your domain.

2. Does Link Building Still Work?

The short answer is yes. High-quality link building is still a direct ranking factor that signals to a search engine that your website is trustworthy and authoritative.

This is why the top ten results in a Google search have, on average, 3.8x more backlinks than lower-ranking domains.

Search engines rely on backlinks to determine if your content is helpful or not. Think of a referring domain as a vote of confidence from another website. If you are frequently building backlinks to high-authority domains, search engines take this as a sign that your content is valuable and credible as a source.

However, a high-quality backlink profile is earned through scoring organic links on reputable websites. While it may seem tempting to land as many links as possible, your website stands a much higher chance of ranking higher if it is featured on high-quality domains known for being popular sources in your search niche.

The key to powerful link building in 2025 is quality, not quantity. Landing a few high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites is far more beneficial for your SEO health than scoring many low-quality ones from spammy or irrelevant sites.

3. Does Link Building Affect Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and LLM SEO?

Link building plays a crucial role in your generative engine optimisation (GEO) strategy. GEO and large language model (LLM) SEO is the process of building authority in an AI-powered search.

About 10% of UK AI users rely on AI search daily, while a further  41% use it occasionally. Therefore, gaining visibility in a generative search space has become a key concern for modern-day marketers.

Whether that means gaining coverage in an AI overview or being cited as a source by ChatGPT, optimising your SEO strategy for generative engines is crucial if you want to rank highly in the new era of search.

Here are some of the benefits of having a powerful link portfolio for GEO and LLM SEO:

• You Appeal to User Intent: AI algorithms rank on user intent. If you have high-quality links from contextually relevant sources, it signals to a generative engine that your content is valuable and answers user intent.
• You’re Easier to Discover: Building links on sites within your search niche helps generative search engines discover your content faster. This is critical if you’re hoping to be featured in an AI overview as a source.
• Internal Linking Boosts Visibility: Internal link building is just as important as external link building. If you add pathways in your own content to other contextually relevant sources on your website, more of your blog posts, product pages and online content will be crawled and used by AI crawlers.
• You’re Connected to Authoritative Networks: If you’re linked out to by other respected domains within your industry, you’re instantly placed in the same ‘trust circle’ as these high authority brands, aiding AI when verifying your expertise as a source.

AI-powered search models rely on backlinks to help understand your content’s relevance and trustworthiness. If you’re cited as a credible source on high authority domains within your search niche, AI models will follow suit.

4. What is The Difference Between a Dofollow and a Nofollow Link?

A ‘dofollow’ link is essentially a link that generates equity or ‘link juice’ for a linked domain. This equity helps strengthen a page’s authority by serving as an endorsement of your credibility as a source.

As a result, dofollow links help improve your SEO and aid your page’s ranking in search results.

All links start as dofollow links. However, if a domain wants to credit your website as a source while stopping engines from passing authority, they can mark the HTML with the rel=”nofollow”.

A ‘nofollow’ link does not provide the same SEO benefit and actively tells a search engine not to pass on authority to the link source. Nofollow codes were initially designed to prevent black-hat link-building schemes and domain manipulation.

Therefore, when it comes to SEO, nofollow links do not contribute to your website’s authority/ranking position; however, not all is lost, as they can still drive referral traffic to your domain.

5. How Do Backlinks Impact Google Rankings?

Backlinks act as a vote of confidence, signalling to Google that your domain is credible and authoritative.

If you frequently land links on high-quality websites, this enhances your own domain’s authority in the eyes of Google.

Google’s search engine algorithms view backlinks as a signal of content validity. If a popular publication links to your content, Google understands that your site is a source of helpful information.

As a result, your domain is ranked higher for specific search terms, driving more traffic to your site.

6. What Makes a Backlink “High Quality”?

High-quality backlinks come from high-quality domains. If you aim to place links on relevant, authoritative websites, you’re more likely to see a greater return on investment in your link-building efforts.

Backlinks act as endorsements, signalling to search engines such as Google that your content is a valuable source of information.

For this reason, search engines favour links that are naturally placed within a relevant piece of content that is also a trustworthy domain with a great SEO profile.

Here are some of the key factors to consider when generating a high-quality link placement:

• Relevance: Is the backlink you’re hoping to secure relevant to the website you’re securing it on? Ensure that you target your own search niche or a similar industry when placing links. Not only do links on relevant sites drive more traffic, but they are also more likely to be picked up by the search engine in a target keyword search.
• Organic Placement: Ensure that your link and anchor naturally fit into the organic flow of the content. A link appearing in the footer or sidebar or a generic anchor phrase like ‘click here’ can signal to a consumer and a search algorithm that a link is promotional, rather than a helpful source.
• High Quality Domain: the best links are placed on websites with genuine organic traffic, high domain ranking and a strong reputation within your search niche. If your linking site attracts real users, you’ll drive more referral traffic to your own domain.
• Editorial Value: The best links are placed organically by the site owner themselves. This often means that they found your content valuable, not because it was purchased.

Building high-quality backlinks can take more time, but the payoff is worth the effort. Over 93% of link builders prioritise quality over quantity. In an era where search engines are smarter than ever before, a few powerful endorsements from high authority sites trump hundreds of endorsements from low-quality domains.

7. What Are Toxic Links and How Can They Hurt Your Site?

Toxic links are otherwise known as backlinks that appear on low-quality, spammy domains.

Most commonly, toxic links are found on spammy websites that are a part of a link farm or an automated link-building scheme. These are often links acquired using ‘black hat’ techniques such as paid link schemes or private blog networks (PBNs).

Smart search engines immediately interpret these types of links as a sign of a low-quality domain, which could be extremely harmful to your SEO profile.

Toxic links lower your search engine ranking and ruin your reputation as a credible source. In severe circumstances, you could even face a site-wide penalty if a search engine believes that you’re trying to manipulate SERPs.

Strategies & Techniques

Now that we’ve covered the core questions, let’s take a look at some of the most common questions surrounding the strategies and techniques needed for link building in 2025.

8. What Are The Best Link Building Strategies in 2025?

The best white-label link-building strategies focus on securing links on high-quality domains by contributing value and building relationships with website owners and content editors.

Let’s take a closer look at the best high-impact strategies for building quality external links:

• Linkable Assets: Developing high-value content, such as a research guide or interactive tool, is otherwise known as a ‘linkable asset’. These are unique assets that websites will organically link to.
• Guest Blogging: Writing niche-relevant guest posts for high authority websites in your search industry is a great way to land a link organically. Ensure that content naturally fits with your target’s previous posts and include only contextually relevant links for the best chance of being featured.
• Broken Link Building: This process involves identifying broken links on a target domain and offering to replace these with a link to your content.
• Digital PR: If you’re aiming to score links on high-authority news sites and niche publications, creating news-worthy campaigns, releasing studies and offering expert commentary is a brilliant way to earn organic link placements.
• HARO Link Building: Use services like HARO to respond to commentary requests from journalists. Use this opportunity to establish your brand as an expert on a relevant topic for a chance to feature on high-authority publications and earn an editorial backlink.

The best link-building strategies incorporate multiple methods. This helps you create a diverse, organic link profile.

9. What is Anchor Text, and How Should I Use It?

Anchor text is the label that tells both users and search engines where your link points. Known as the clickable text that accompanies a hyperlink, anchor text helps provide context for your link insertion.

When placed effectively, anchors help guide users naturally to your linked content. This can improve your link traffic and help search engines better understand your link’s relevance.

For search engine optimisation, choose anchor text that clearly tells a search engine what your page is about.

For example, if you’re linking to a blog post on crochet patterns, choose an anchor that reflects that, such as “best crochet patterns’ or “free crochet patterns”.

Using a generalised anchor such as “click here” or “find out more” makes your link less evident to the search engine crawler, which could lead to your content getting missed.

For user experience, descriptive anchor text is best. Tell users exactly what they should expect when they click the link.

Take a look at this example from our blog post on Generative Engine Optimisation:

As you can see here, when linking to our beginner SEO guide, we’ve anchored the link with “introduction to SEO”. This immediately tells the user that they will find information on how to begin their SEO journey.

10. Are Directory Links Still Worth It?

The short answer is yes. Securing directory links is worth your time, especially if you’re placing them on high-quality, industry-relevant directories.

A directory is a structured list or catalogue of websites that online users often leverage to hunt for and compare businesses.

While the impact of securing a link in a directory has decreased in recent years, these types of links still play a role in establishing local SEO and driving organic referral traffic.

Directory links should play a small role in your overall SEO and marketing efforts; they should not be your primary focus. The key here is to prioritise niche directory placements where your link naturally fits.

11. Should I Buy Backlinks or Use a Link Building Service?

While there is no simple answer to this question, it’s important to proceed with caution when buying backlinks.

Those who choose to buy backlinks open up their domain to more traffic and increase their chance of being recognised by a search engine in a related search. This said, if you choose to buy backlinks from low-quality sites, link farms and private blog networks (PBNs), your risk of receiving a search engine penalty shoots right up.

Search engines like Google favour helpful, high-quality links from reputable sites. These are most commonly achieved using organic, white-hat techniques such as guest posting or niche edits.

To avoid potential SEO penalties associated with backlink buying, a safer way to accelerate your link-building results is to enlist a white-label link-building service to support your backlink strategy.

White-label link builders are experts in their field and secure links for your domain using white-hat techniques.

Here are some of the benefits of white-label link building:

• Trusted Results: Third-party link builders still use organic methods, such as guest posting, to secure your brand with high-quality links. This means you can trust the results and enjoy long-term link juice from every placement.
• Wide Networks of Reputable Contacts: White-label link-building services have hundreds of trusted contacts. From niche publications to high-authority SERP leaders, third-party link builders can secure placements for your brand on websites you could only dream of.
• Cut Down on Costs: It’s much cheaper to outsource your link-building than to hire a new member of the SEO team. White-label link builders complete the work in half the time of a standard SEO team and charge a fixed price based on your individual needs.

Essentially, if you’re aiming to speed up your link profile growth, opting to outsource your campaign to third-party link builders is much safer than buying links from low-quality websites and is twice as likely to be more effective when it comes to long-term SEO health.

12. How Do You Build Links For E-Commerce Sites?

Building links for your e-commerce website is no different from building links to any domain. However, to achieve the best results, you should use specific strategies that improve both your conversions and your SEO profile.

These include creating high-quality content, such as buying guides that naturally link to your product pages, and partnering with influencers and brands to showcase your products alongside your link placement.

Our advice is to secure a mix of product page links and informational links to content-heavy blog posts. This lets the search engine know that, as well as being an e-commerce brand, your website is a helpful resource for searchers in your niche.

Content & Outreach

The best backlinks are built organically within quality content. Now that we’re more familiar with the best strategies for link insertion, here are some of the most asked questions when it comes to creating link-worthy content and placing it on high-authority domains.

13. What Kind of Content Attracts Natural Backlinks?

Getting your content game on track is key if you want to build natural backlinks. Content that attracts the most organic links is usually valuable to your target demographic.

In-depth how-to guides, original research, and shareable infographics are unique, authoritative and can be easily referenced naturally on a competing domain in the same search niche.

Your goal here is to place as many organic links as possible on high-authority domains within your industry/niche. This means that when a search engine crawls these top-performing websites for information, it also encounters your domain when generating answers to an industry-relevant question.

Better still, creating industry-relevant content also drives more organic traffic to your website. If you’re linked to as a source on a top-performing blog or publication within your search niche, you receive clicks from your own demographic, raising your chances of conversion.

14. How Do I Find Websites to Reach Out to For Link Building?

Once you’ve produced a piece of content or a linkable asset that you’re hoping to place on a high-quality domain, it’s time to begin a website search for the best placement opportunities.

When it comes to finding the best websites to reach out to for link-building, there are plenty of strategies you can use:

• Analyse Competitor Backlinks: If you’re trying to move up SERPs and overtake your competitors, start by analysing their current backlink profile. Using tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, find out which websites are linking to your competitor’s domains, and reach out to them with your competing linkable asset. The key here is to mirror your competition. If other similar brands are getting valuable links from a high-authority site, you have a high chance of securing one there, too.
• Use Google Search to Your Advantage: An easy way to discover new websites for link placement is to use the search engine itself. Inputting phrases such as [your niche] + “write for us” will bring up a curated list of domains open for guest posting in your search niche. If you’re hoping to place content on a website, this is a great place to start.
• Invest in Content Explorer Tools: Tools like Ahrefs’ Content Explorer are a valuable resource for finding popular websites and blogs in your industry. On Ahrefs, you can even filter results to find relevant websites for guest posts or link insertions.

The best websites are those with high domain authority, steady traffic, and more referring domains than linked domains. Before securing a placement on a website, ensure it is healthy for the best possible results.

15. What Should I Include in a Link Outreach Email?

A strong link outreach email is personalised, well-targeted to the specific website and offers the recipient something of value in exchange for publishing your link.

For example, if you’ve identified a broken link on a webpage, offering a quick and easy fix to the website editor is considered valuable.

The same goes for guest posting. In most cases, you’re offering a website a piece of high-quality, relevant content for free. This essentially saves their content team the job of creating the article themselves and immediately provides value to their readers.

The question is, what details should you include? Take a look at this example of a guest post pitch:

As you can see here, the brand is mentioned immediately in numerous places, including the subject line and the email body. This signals to the recipient that the email is personalised and directed at their website, rather than a ‘send all’ template.

It’s also essential to align your outreach email with the content your target is already covering. In this instance, the target website specialised in recruitment, so a guest post title like ‘Is Your Business Attractive to Domestic Talent Pools’ naturally aligns with the blog’s existing topical discussions.

Finally, use your email pitch to sell yourself and your link. Insert an outline or a rundown of what a website can expect from a guest post. Don’t forget to showcase your previous work too. If you’ve been featured on other high authority websites as an author, link to these within your email and mention key blogs and publications when talking about your experience.

The best link outreach emails offer value to a recipient in exchange for a link. Taking time to personalise your outreach campaign and target your own search niche offers the greatest chance of success.

16. How Do I Track The Success of My Link Building Campaigns?

To effectively track your link profile growth, monitor important metrics like your domain authority, referring domains and site traffic.

Here are some of the easiest ways to stay in tune with your SEO growth once your link-building campaign is underway:

• SEO Tools: Backlink monitoring tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz are perfect for analysing your backlink profile. With the ability to monitor the number and the quality of your referring domains and view your domain authority in real-time, you can quickly paint a picture of your SEO health. Most SEO tools also offer data visualisation in the form of graphs and charts, which allows you to easily see your growth in the search landscape.
• Google Analytics: Another great tool to use to monitor your referral traffic and conversions is Google Analytics. This is especially helpful for those of you running multiple campaigns. Use UTM parameters to tag links from specific campaigns for more detailed tracking.
• Regular Backlink Audits: To grow a healthy website, the links you secure must be high-quality. Conducting a regular audit of your backlink profile on platforms like Ahrefs will help you assess the quality and quantity of your links and identify any harmful ones that could impede your growth.

Regularly tracking the success of your link-building campaign is crucial if you want to achieve the best results.

17. What Metrics Should I Track?

Some of the key metrics to track during a link-building campaign include:

• Domain Authority: Track your DA growth. Websites with a high-quality backlink profile have a higher domain authority. If your strategy is effective, your DA should be steadily rising.
• Referring Domains: This is the number of high-quality domains linking to your site. The more referring domains you secure, the better your overall SEO growth will be.
• Referral Traffic: Check to see if your links are driving organic traffic to your webpage. A high organic traffic score suggests that your link is well placed and appears on domains that naturally attract your demographic.
• Keyword Rankings: If your brand’s keyword rankings are improving, it indicates that your link-building efforts are helping search engines recognise your website as relevant and authoritative for those search queries.

Local & Niche SEO

Link-building can also play a significant role in your local SEO strategy. If your goal is to reach a specific audience or geographic area, here are answers to some of the most common local link-building questions.

18. How Does Link Building Differ For Local SEO?

Unlike traditional link-building methods, local link-building focuses on acquiring backlinks from location-specific domains, such as local news sites or directories.

Local link building aims to boost a business’s visibility in a specific geographic area. For example, if you have a physical store based in Birmingham, you may want to gain more coverage on Birmingham-based publications/blogs to reach your target audience.

(Image Source: Digital SEO Land)

When it comes to local link building, relevance takes centre stage. While quality and authority are still important when selecting target websites, links from high-traffic local publications and niche directories hold the most weight.

Local link-building campaigns aim to have more impact on local search results, rather than a global search landscape. The goal here is to push your business up to Google’s Local Map Pack rather than increase your global visibility on SERPs.

19. Do Links From Small Niche Sites Still Matter?

The short answer is yes! Links from niche sites are extremely crucial in an AI-powered search landscape.

In an era of search where relevance is the key to gaining visibility, search engines like Google prioritise context and E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) when crawling a domain’s link profile.

A link from a smaller website that is highly relevant to your search niche acts as a ‘vote of confidence’ and signals to the search engine that your content is a valuable resource.

Better still, links from niche-relevant domains are more likely to attract direct traffic to your website, generating more qualified traffic.

Lastly, remember that search engines are looking for a website with a natural link profile. A backlink profile with links from various sources, including local directories, niche blogs and small brand mentions, appears more organic to Google, and will boost your niche/local SEO as a result.

20. Should I Focus on Relevance or Authority For Local Backlinks?

Relevance is key when it comes to building local backlinks. If you want to build on your visibility in a local search space, it’s important to focus on placing links on domains that are associated with a target geo-specific location.

While domain authority still plays a crucial role in the health of your backlinks, domain relevance takes centre stage here.

If you’re building links locally, opt for local directories, niche, geo-specific publications and online forums rather than the domain with the highest DA. The key here is to appear in a local search result, rather than a global one.

Risks, Penalties & Recovery

Finally, let’s take a look at some of the risks associated with link-building. Now that we’ve answered the strategy questions, here are some of the most asked link-building questions related to risks, penalties and recovery.

21. Can Too Many Backlinks Hurt My Rankings?

Surprisingly, yes. An excessive number of low-quality backlinks could harm your SEO in the long run, especially if they are acquired using black hat methods.

Often, search engines see overlinking as an attempt to manipulate the algorithm. Your backlink profile should appear organic and feature only high-quality, relevant links that relate to your search niche.

Toxic or low-quality links from spammy or irrelevant websites will either have no impact at all on your SEO growth or, in some cases, negatively affect your rankings.

Let’s take a closer look at how to manage your backlink strategy:

• Focus on Quality Over Quantity: This is a no-brainer. If you want to build a strong backlink profile, it’s best to spend longer acquiring links from high-quality, reputable sources than to secure a large number of low-quality links in one go.
• Regularly Audit Your Backlink Profile: The best way to avoid Google penalties is to audit your backlink profile as often as possible. If you find a toxic link, you can use Google’s Disavow Tool to tell Google to ignore it. For broken links, try to reinstate your placement with the publisher or politely ask for it to be removed.
• Avoid Black Hat Techniques: While it may seem tempting, buying links and participating in PBNs could leave your SEO in tatters. Focus on white-hat techniques such as guest posting and broken link building to build a sustainable and risk-free backlink profile.

To avoid a painful penalty, it’s best to focus on acquiring the best-fit links for your website, rather than rushing to grow your backlink profile too early.

22. How Do I Recover From a Google Penalty Related to Bad Links?

A Google SEO penalty is essentially a punishment from the search engine for using manipulative strategies to artificially boost your website ranking.

From manual actions imposed by a Google employee to algorithmic penalties that are imposed automatically, each SEO penalty is a consequence of violating the search engine’s webmaster guidelines.

When left, search engine penalties can significantly harm your DA score, site visibility and organic traffic.

To recover from a Google penalty for bad links, you must first work hard to remove any remaining toxic backlinks within your backlink profile.

Conduct a backlink audit and identify any low-quality backlinks that could be harming your link profile. Once highlighted, attempt to remove these links by contacting website owners directly.

If this fails, use Google’s Disavow Tool to disavow the links, which can be sent in a file to the Google employee working on your case.

Once you believe that your link profile is clean, you must submit a reconsideration request via Google Search Console. This should detail the steps you have taken to improve your SEO strategy moving forward.

23. How Often Should I Audit My Backlink Profile?

How often you should audit your backlink profile is based on how active your website is.

For larger, more active websites, it’s important to audit your backlink profile monthly, especially if you’re also gaining links organically.

Generally, medium-sized websites only need to audit their backlink profile quarterly to catch issues and monitor changes as you build a healthy link profile.

For smaller sites that remain static most of the year, an annual link audit is still essential, especially if you’re within a competitive search niche.

Other times, we’d recommend auditing your backlink profile are before a major website redesign or during a specific link-building campaign where you want to track your progress more closely.

Wrapping Up

Link building is no easy task. It requires dedication, patience and trust in the process.

To build the best SEO profile for your business, take note of our answers to the most commonly asked link-building questions.

If you’re still struggling to hit your link goals, get in touch with our friendly link-building team to start your link-building journey today.