SEO Glossary

Link Building: Earning Links From Other Sites

Link building is the practice of getting other sites to link to your pages. Learn what works, what does not, and how to run it.

5 min read

Quick Definition

Link building is the practice of getting other websites to link to your pages, because links signal authority to search engines.

Why Links Are Worth Earning

Links are the votes behind authority. Every relevant site that links to you adds to the case that your page deserves to rank.

Links also bring referral traffic, and the readers who arrive from a trusted site tend to stay and return.

Outreach: contact writers who cover your topic with a genuine reason to link.
Assets: publish data, tools, or guides that other sites want to cite.
Replacement: offer your page where a broken link has left a gap.
Relationships: earn links by being a source the field already trusts.

Buying links, trading link schemes, and dropping spammy comments all look like attempts to game the system, and search engines treat them that way.

The risk is not a mystery. A pattern of bought links can drag the whole site down, not just the page.

Build a list of pages worth linking to, then a list of sites where a link makes sense. Reach out with a reason, not a request.

Track what earns and what ignores you, and feed the results back into the next round of content.

Example in Practice

The asset: a marketing site publishes a study on email open rates with original data.

The outreach: the team emails journalists and bloggers who cover email trends, offering the data and a quote.

The result: a dozen relevant articles cite the study, and the page earns steady links for months.

Why it works: the outreach gives sources something valuable, so the links come because they earned them.

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Link building works like pitching. Ask what the other site's readers gain, and the links start coming in.

What is link building?

Link building is the practice of getting other websites to link to your pages, because links signal authority to search engines.

Why is link building important?

Links are one of the strongest authority signals, and they also bring referral traffic from the sites that give them.

What are the best link building strategies?

Publish assets worth citing, reach out to relevant writers, replace broken links, and build relationships in your field.

What are bad link building tactics?

Buying links, running link exchanges at scale, and dumping spam comments can all draw penalties from search engines.

Link building is about earning votes from the right sites, and the honest methods are the only ones that last.

Publish worth citing, reach out with value, and let the links follow the quality.