Every time a website links to yours, Google interprets it as a vote of confidence. Not all votes carry the same weight: a link from a national newspaper is worth a hundred times more than a hundred links from directories of dubious origin. This is the fundamental principle of
Link building is still one of Google's most important ranking factors. A Backlinko study of over 11 million search results shows that the number of referring domains pointing to a page is the variable that correlates most with ranking in the top positions. But earning quality backlinks is hard, takes time and can damage your site if done badly. In this guide I show you how to do it the right way.
Sources: Ahrefs (2020); Backlinko (2023)
Why backlinks still matter
Google has introduced hundreds of algorithm updates in recent years, many of which have reduced the impact of certain SEO techniques. Quality backlinks, however, have held up as a primary ranking signal. The reason is logical: it's hard to fake the organic endorsement of an authoritative site — much harder than optimising the text of a page.
In 2026 Google assesses links on several factors: the
Count a lot: links in the body of topically related articles, from sites with DR 40+, with descriptive, natural anchor text
Count little: links in footers, from generic directories, with anchor text identical to the keyword on every link
Can cause damage: links from networks of sites created specifically to sell links, over-optimised anchor text
Strategy 1 — Guest posting: still the most effective technique
Guest posting — writing articles for third-party blogs and sites in exchange for a link to your site — remains the link building technique with the best balance of quality and accessibility in 2026, provided you do it the right way.
Quality guest posting works like this: you identify sites that are topically related to your sector and have a higher DR than yours, you pitch an article that's genuinely useful for their audience (not written just to get the link), you create content that meets their editorial standards, and you include a contextual link to a relevant page on your site.
How to find guest post opportunities
Search Google for: "write for us" + [your sector], "guest post" + [your sector], "submit a guest post" + [your sector]. Alternatively, use Ahrefs or Semrush to analyse your competitors' backlink profiles: the sites linking to them are excellent candidates for your guest posts.
The outreach email that works
Most guest post outreach emails fail because they're obviously mass templates. An effective email is personalised (it shows you've read the site), pitches a specific title (not just "I'd like to write for you"), explains why the article is useful for their audience (not for you) and includes a link to examples of your work. Short, direct and focused on value for them.
Subject: Article for [Site Name] — [Specific proposed title]
Hi [Name],
I read your article on [specific article title] — your point about [specific detail] really got me thinking.
I work in [sector] and would love to write an article for [Site Name] on [proposed title]: [2 lines explaining why it's useful for their audience, not for you].
You can see some of my other articles here: [link]. Would you be interested in taking a look?
[Name]
Strategy 2 — Digital PR: backlinks from media and publications
Digital PR is link building for sites with ambitions of high authority. The goal is to earn mentions and links from newspapers, high-authority industry blogs and relevant online publications — not in exchange for money, but in exchange for news, data and content genuinely worth citing.
Creating linkable content (link bait)
Journalists and bloggers link to the sources they cite in their stories. To become a cited source you need to create content that has value as a reference: original research with data from your sector, infographics on little-known statistics, useful free tools, definitive guides on niche topics, original surveys with published results.
In Italy, an agency or professional that publishes original data on their sector — even on a small but methodologically sound sample — often earns citations from industry blogs and sometimes from national newspapers. Proprietary data is among the most linked resources on the web.
HARO and Connectively
HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and its successor Connectively connect journalists looking for expert sources with industry professionals. You sign up, receive daily queries from journalists looking for expert quotes on specific topics, reply with high-quality comments, and if the journalist uses your answer you get a link from the publication. It's a laborious process, but it produces very high-quality backlinks from domains with DR 60–90+.
Strategy 3 — Broken link building: finding opportunities where others see problems
Broken link building takes advantage of broken links: when an external site links to a resource that no longer exists (404), that's an opportunity. You find the broken resource, create an equivalent or better replacement and contact the site with the broken link to suggest your resource as a substitute.
To find broken links: use the Check My Links Chrome extension on resource pages in your sector, or use Ahrefs to analyse your competitors' broken links (Ahrefs → Site Explorer → Broken backlinks). For every broken link to content similar to yours, contact the site with a polite email pointing out the problem and suggesting your resource as an alternative. The positive response rate is often 5–15%, much higher than generic cold outreach.
Strategy 4 — Internal links: often neglected, always effective
Internal links — links between pages on the same site — aren't backlinks in the traditional sense, but they're an integral part of an effective link building strategy. They distribute PageRank (or "link equity") within the site, signal the topical structure and relationships between content to Google, and improve navigation for users.
An effective internal linking strategy follows the cluster model: a pillar page on a main topic links to the related cluster pages, and the cluster pages link back to the pillar page. This creates a coherent content architecture that Google reads as a signal of topical authority.
Review your internal link profile regularly: use Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) to identify pages with few or no internal links — they're often the most important pages on the site that nobody links to internally, leaving them "orphaned" and hard to surface in search results.
Link building mistakes that damage your site
Measuring link building: metrics and tools
DR (Ahrefs) and DA (Moz) are proprietary metrics that estimate a domain's overall authority based on its backlink profile. They aren't official Google metrics, but they're useful proxies for tracking growth over time. An increase from DR 30 to 40 typically reflects a real improvement in SEO competitiveness.
The number of unique domains linking to your site matters more than the total number of backlinks. 100 links from 100 different domains are worth far more than 100 links from the same domain. Track the growth of referring domains month by month with Ahrefs or Google Search Console.
Ultimately, link building must translate into growth in organic traffic to the pages receiving the links. In Google Analytics 4, monitor the organic traffic of the linked pages over the 3–6 months after earning the link: this is the most reliable signal of real impact.
Link building for new sites: where to start with DR 0
A new site with DR 0 and no backlinks looks like an impossible problem: nobody wants to link to a site with no authority. In reality, there are accessible strategies even when starting from zero.
The first sources of backlinks for a new site: a Google Business Profile (a link from the google.com domain), company social profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook Business, Instagram — all link to the site), relevant and authoritative industry directories, trade associations (they often have member sections with links) and online communities in your sector where you contribute genuinely.
None of these is a powerful link on its own, but they build a diverse, natural backlink profile that gets the site taken seriously by Google. From there, guest posting on mid-level sites in your sector (DR 30–50) is the most effective next step.
Link building for e-commerce: a specific strategy for online stores
An e-commerce site has specific link building challenges that set it apart from a services site or a blog. With hundreds or thousands of product pages, the strategy has to be scalable — you don't have enough time to do manual outreach for every single product page.
The most effective strategy for an e-commerce site is to focus link building on the
Link building opportunities specific to e-commerce: product reviews on blogs and industry sites (offer samples or free access in exchange for an honest review), inclusion in "best products for [category]" roundups (industry bloggers and journalists publish them regularly), partnerships with industry influencers who create content linking to product pages, and listings on relevant comparison sites and industry directories.
Unique or niche products have a natural advantage in link building: they're less competitive and easier to cite in topical guides. If you sell something specific — tools for craftspeople, accessories for niche sports, ingredients for ethical cooking — look for the online communities dedicated to that topic: forums, specialist blogs, YouTube channels. They're sources of genuine, highly relevant backlinks.
Measuring and protecting your backlink profile: continuous monitoring
Building backlinks is important; just as important is monitoring your existing profile to spot toxic links, the loss of valuable backlinks and anomalies that could signal a negative SEO attack.
You monitor your backlink profile with two main tools: Google Search Console (the Links section, free), which shows the main referring domains and the most-linked pages, and Ahrefs or Semrush, which send automatic alerts for new and lost backlinks.
Negative SEO — a deliberate attack on a site's backlink profile through a flood of spam links — is rare but it exists. If you notice a sudden spike of hundreds of new backlinks from completely irrelevant or spam sites, report it to Google through the Disavow tool in Google Search Console and open a support ticket in Search Console if you've already received a manual penalty.
Also monitor the loss of existing backlinks: a link from an authoritative site that gets removed can cause a drop in rankings. If you notice an important link has been removed, consider contacting the site to find out why — sometimes it's a technical error (a site restructure) that can easily be fixed. A recovered backlink is worth as much as a newly earned one, without the outreach effort.
Conclusion: link building is a marathon, not a sprint
Link building is the part of SEO that requires the most patience. The results of a backlink earned today often only show 2–4 months later — and the cumulative impact of a year of consistent link building is hard to quantify until you experience it. But it's also the part of SEO with the most lasting impact: a solid backlink profile built over 2 years doesn't disappear overnight.
If you want to build a quality backlink profile for your site without the risk of penalties, explore the SEO service or contact me for an assessment of your current backlink profile.
The best backlink you can get is the one that comes because you've created something that genuinely deserves to be cited.
The link between link building and content strategy: why you can't do one without the other
Link building and content strategy aren't two separate disciplines: they're two sides of the same coin. Quality content attracts natural links; links increase domain authority, which in turn helps content rank. Those who separate the two activities get slower, more expensive results than those who integrate them into a single strategy.
The principle of
To put link earning into practice: identify the 3–5 most important strategic keywords for your business, create for each one the most complete resource available in your language (a definitive guide, original research, a free tool), promote it actively through outreach and social media in the early phase, and then let it do its work over time. A resource like this can keep earning natural links for years after publication, generating compound value with no further direct investment.
Link building in competitive sectors: how to compete with the big players
In highly competitive sectors — insurance, finance, health, legal, B2B software — the big players have backlink profiles built over years with huge budgets. A new site can't compete head-on. Instead it has to use a niche strategy: dominate the long-tail and vertical keywords where competition is lower, and build specific topical authority rather than generic authority.
The
Another effective strategy in competitive sectors is data-driven PR: carry out original research on your sector (a survey, an analysis of public data, a case study), publish the results with an eye-catching headline and do outreach to industry journalists. Original data is rare and valuable — industry media are happy to cite it because it gives their readers valuable content without requiring research work.
Finally, in competitive sectors it's worth investing in
If you want to apply this to your own project, take a look at my SEO and online visibility service: clear prices from €200/month, a free quote and a reply within 24 hours.
