Link Building Strategies: The Complete Guide

Link building strategies are the repeatable methods websites use to earn links from other sites, because Google still treats those links as one of its strongest signals of trust and authority. This guide is the hub for everything on backlinkscanada.ca about how to get backlinks the right way. It explains what each legitimate tactic is, ranks them by effort, impact and risk, and points you to the in-depth guide for whichever one fits your site. Whether you run a new Canadian business site or an established brand, you will find a strategy here that matches your time, budget and appetite for risk.

What are link building strategies?

A link building strategy is a planned, repeatable way of earning hyperlinks (called backlinks) from other websites to yours. A backlink is simply a clickable link on another site that points to a page on your site. Search engines read each backlink as a kind of recommendation: when a trusted site links to you, some of that trust flows across, which can help your pages rank higher.

The word “strategy” matters. Randomly dropping your link on forums and directories is not a strategy and rarely works anymore. A real strategy pairs a repeatable tactic (for example, pitching journalists or fixing broken links) with a clear idea of the pages you want to strengthen and the audience you want to reach. If you are new to the topic, start with the fundamentals in our Link Building Basics section, then come back here to choose a tactic.

Link building vs. link earning: what is the difference?

The difference is who initiates the link. “Link earning” describes links other people choose to give you because your content is genuinely worth citing. “Link building” describes the active outreach you do to prompt those links, such as suggesting your resource to a site owner. Google prefers links you earn, but the best tactics below sit in the honest middle: you create something worth linking to, then you tell the right people it exists.

Why link building still matters for SEO

Links still matter because Google uses them to gauge which pages are trustworthy and relevant, and no amount of on-page tuning fully replaces them for competitive keywords. Google has confirmed that links remain an important ranking factor, even as their weight is balanced against content quality and user experience.

Two practical points keep link building relevant in 2026:

• Authority is hard to fake. Earning links from reputable sites is difficult, which is exactly why Google values it. That difficulty is a barrier your competitors also have to clear.
• Links bring referral traffic. A link in a well-read article sends real visitors, not just ranking signals, so a good backlink can pay off even if its SEO value were zero.

Link building also feeds directly into E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness), the quality framework Google’s human raters use. Citations from respected sources are one visible sign that your site is a credible voice in its field.

The rules: what Google allows and what it prohibits

Google allows links you earn on merit and prohibits links created mainly to manipulate rankings. This single line explains almost every rule below, and staying on the right side of it is what separates a durable strategy from one that eventually triggers a penalty. Google’s own spam policies spell out what counts as a link scheme.

Link schemes Google treats as spam

Google’s link-spam policy names several practices to avoid:

• Buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, including exchanging money, goods, services or free products for a link.
• Excessive link exchanges (“link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages that exist only for cross-linking.
• Large-scale guest posting or advertorials built around keyword-rich, optimized anchor text.
• Automated tools that create links to your site at scale.
• Low-quality directory and bookmark links that spread the same keyword-rich link across many sites.

If you have paid for or sponsored a link in any way, it must not pass ranking credit. Our Buying Backlinks & Compliance section covers where the line sits in more detail.

Nofollow, sponsored and ugc: the link attributes to know

Link attributes tell Google how to treat a link. There are three, and using the right one keeps paid or untrusted links compliant:

• rel=”sponsored” — for links that are ads, paid placements or part of any commercial arrangement.
• rel=”ugc” — for user-generated content such as blog comments and forum posts.
• rel=”nofollow” — for any link you cannot vouch for and do not want to endorse.

Google introduced the nofollow attribute in 2005 and added sponsored and ugc in 2019. Since March 2020 it treats all three as “hints” rather than strict commands, but marking paid links correctly is still what keeps you inside the rules. A regular, editorially given link needs no attribute at all — that plain “followed” link is the kind every strategy below aims to earn.

How to choose a strategy: effort, impact and risk

Choose a strategy by weighing three things: how much effort it takes, how much link value it tends to return, and how much risk it carries if done carelessly. No single tactic is best for everyone; the right pick depends on your budget, your skills and how competitive your niche is. The table below ranks the main legitimate tactics so you can shortlist a couple to start with.

Digital PR sits at the top of most professional rankings. In Editorial.Link’s State of Link Building study, 48.6% of respondents named it the single most effective tactic, and journalists are roughly 3.2 times more likely to cover a story built on original data than a plain press release. It also carries low risk because the links are genuinely editorial. The trade-off is effort: it needs a real story and real outreach.

The core link building strategies

Below is a short summary of each legitimate tactic, ordered roughly from highest to lowest impact. Each one has (or will have) its own deep-dive guide in the Link Building Strategies section, where the step-by-step process lives. Use these summaries to decide which guides are worth your time.

1. Digital PR

Digital PR earns links by creating newsworthy content — original data, surveys, studies or expert reaction — and pitching it to journalists and editors. When a publication covers your story, you often get a link from a high-authority news site. It is the top-rated tactic for a reason: the links are editorial, the referral traffic is real, and coverage tends to snowball. The catch is that it takes genuine research and confident outreach, so it suits sites that can invest in a story worth telling.

2. Guest posting

Guest posting means writing a useful article for another relevant website in exchange for a byline and, usually, a contextual link back to your site. Done well — on topically relevant sites, with honest content and natural anchor text — it builds links and reaches new readers. Done at scale with paid placements and keyword-stuffed anchors, it becomes the exact link scheme Google warns about. Quality and relevance are everything.

3. Broken link building

Broken link building finds dead links on other websites, then offers your working page as the replacement. You help the site owner fix a broken user experience, and in return they often swap in your link. It is a fair-value exchange that scales reasonably well, though it depends on having (or creating) a page that genuinely matches what the dead link used to point to.

4. Expert commentary (formerly HARO)

Expert commentary means answering journalists’ requests for quotes and being cited as a source, which frequently earns a link from the publication. This was popularised by HARO (Help a Reporter Out). Note the change: Cision rebranded HARO as Connectively in 2024 and shut Connectively down on 9 December 2024. The same tactic now runs through newer platforms such as Source of Sources, Qwoted and Featured.com (which acquired the HARO brand in 2025). The method is unchanged even though the tool has.

5. Resource page link building

Resource page link building targets the curated “useful links” or “resources” pages that many sites maintain. You find resource pages relevant to your topic, confirm your content deserves a spot, and ask to be added. Because these pages exist specifically to link out, acceptance rates can be healthy — provided your resource is genuinely one of the best on the subject.

6. Earning links with content (linkable assets)

This tactic earns links passively by publishing content so useful that others cite it on their own: original statistics, free tools, definitive guides, templates or calculators. These “linkable assets” do the heavy lifting for years, and they power almost every other tactic on this list because outreach is far easier when you have something worth linking to. The effort is front-loaded into creating something excellent.

7. Reclaiming unlinked brand mentions

Unlinked brand mentions are places where a site names your brand, product or research but does not link to you. Reclaiming them means finding those mentions and politely asking the author to turn the text into a link. Because the site has already chosen to mention you, conversion rates are high and the effort per link is low, making this one of the quickest wins available to an established brand.

Other legitimate tactics worth knowing

A few smaller tactics round out a healthy link profile: business directories and local citations (especially for Canadian local SEO — see our Canadian SEO & Local Link Building section), testimonials given to tools you genuinely use, podcast and interview appearances, and community participation where a link is natural rather than dropped. None will carry a whole campaign, but together they diversify where your links come from.

Common link building mistakes to avoid

The most common mistake is chasing quantity over quality — buying cheap bulk links that either do nothing or actively invite a penalty. Watch for these traps:

• Buying followed links. Any paid link that passes ranking credit breaks Google’s rules. If you pay, mark it sponsored.
• Over-optimised anchor text. Repeating the same exact-match keyword as your anchor looks manipulative. Natural profiles are varied and often use brand or URL anchors.
• Ignoring relevance. A link from an unrelated site is worth little; a link from a topically relevant page is worth far more.
• Chasing metrics instead of readers. Third-party “authority” scores are estimates, not Google signals. A link that sends real, interested visitors is the better target.
• Doing it all at once. A sudden spike of identical links looks unnatural. Steady, varied growth is safer and more believable.

How to measure whether your strategy is working

Measure success by tracking the number and quality of referring domains, the relevance of the sites linking to you, and the rankings and traffic of the pages you are building links to. A referring domain is a unique website that links to you at least once; ten links from ten different sites are usually worth more than ten links from one. Use Google Search Console alongside a dedicated backlink tool to watch new and lost links over time — our Backlink Analysis & Tools section compares the options. Judge a strategy over months, not days: link value builds gradually.

Which strategy should you start with?

Start with the tactic that matches your resources. If you can produce original data or a strong story, digital PR gives the best return. If you already have a recognised brand, reclaiming unlinked mentions and answering journalist requests are fast wins. If you are starting from scratch on a tight budget, build one excellent linkable asset first, then use broken link building and resource pages to promote it. Most sites do best by combining two or three complementary tactics rather than betting everything on one.

A note on results and compliance

This guide is educational information, not a guarantee. Link building results vary widely with your niche, competition, content quality and consistency, and no ethical provider can promise a specific ranking. Follow Google’s guidelines, avoid paid links that pass ranking credit, and treat any service promising instant “page-one” results with caution. When in doubt, favour links that a real person would genuinely want to click.

Vanliga frågor (FAQ)

What is the single best link building strategy?

Digital PR is the most highly rated tactic in industry surveys because it earns editorial links from high-authority publications and brings real referral traffic. That said, the “best” strategy is the one you can execute consistently with your resources, so a smaller site may get more from linkable content and broken link building.

How long does link building take to affect rankings?

Expect months rather than weeks. Google has to discover and evaluate each new link, and rankings usually shift gradually as your profile of quality referring domains grows. A single link rarely moves a competitive keyword on its own; the cumulative effect over time is what counts.

Is buying backlinks against Google’s rules?

Buying links that pass ranking credit violates Google’s link-spam policy and can trigger a penalty. Paid or sponsored links are allowed only when they are marked with rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” so they do not pass credit. Paying for a genuine ad placement is fine; paying to manipulate rankings is not.

How many backlinks does my site need?

There is no fixed number. Quality, relevance and diversity of referring domains matter far more than a raw total. A handful of links from trusted, topically relevant sites will usually outperform hundreds of low-quality links, so focus on earning good links rather than hitting a count.

Does HARO still work for link building?

The HARO platform closed on 9 December 2024 after being rebranded as Connectively, but the expert-commentary tactic still works. You can now respond to journalist requests through alternatives such as Source of Sources, Qwoted and Featured.com to earn citations and links.