Link Building Strategies That Work
Earned links, digital PR, HARO, resource pages, broken link building, and what produces real results.
The Three Categories: Earn, Build, and Buy
Link acquisition falls into three categories. Understanding the differences is crucial because they have very different risk profiles and outcomes.
Earned links are links you receive because your content is genuinely useful. A journalist cites your research. A blogger recommends your tool. A competitor's customer finds you and links to you. These are the gold standard — they are safe, valuable, and compound over time.
Built links are links you earn through relationship-building and outreach. You create something worth linking to, then actively reach out to relevant sites to let them know it exists. Digital PR campaigns, HARO responses, and resource page pitching fall here. These are ethical, hard work, but sustainable.
Bought links are the dangerous category. You pay for a link directly. Google's guidelines say this is manipulation. At best, the link is nofollow and passes no ranking value. At worst, it triggers a manual penalty. Unless links are marked as sponsored or are part of legitimate advertising (like native ads), buying links is risky.
Earned Links: Create Content Worth Linking To
Earned links come from creating something that people genuinely want to cite. This includes:
- Original research. Conduct a survey, analyse a dataset, run an experiment. Publish the findings with clear methodology. Journalists and other content creators will link to original research.
- Comprehensive guides. Create the definitive guide on a topic in your niche. Make it thorough enough that other sites cite it as an authority.
- Tools and utilities. A free SEO tool, a calculator, or a generator that solves a real problem will naturally accumulate links over time.
- Interesting data visualisations. If you can present data in a compelling visual, other sites will embed or link to it.
The common thread: you create something valuable that outlasts a single article. Earned links compound over time because the asset remains useful for years, not weeks.
Built Links: Digital PR and Outreach
Digital PR is the process of creating newsworthy content or stories that earn editorial links from publications and journalists. Unlike paid PR (which is expensive), digital PR focuses on creating content that editors want to cover because it is interesting or controversial (but defensible).
Common digital PR assets include expert commentary on industry trends, counter-intuitive research findings, or data about an emerging issue. When you pitch to journalists, you are giving them a story they can use. In return, they link to you.
HARO (Help A Reporter Out) and newer services like Connectively are platforms where journalists request expert commentary. You respond to requests in your field, and if chosen, you get quoted in an article with a link to your site. This can scale — large sites get 5-20 editorial links per month from HARO.
Resource page link building targets pages that are lists of resources in your niche. You find pages that list "best SEO tools" and pitch to be included. This works because these pages are curated by experts and receive traffic and links themselves, so a link from them is valuable.
Other Built Link Strategies
Broken link building involves finding dead links on other sites (pages that 404), creating content that replaces what was there, and notifying the site owner. This works because site owners want to fix broken links, and you are offering a ready-made solution.
Competitor backlink analysis is not a strategy to build links, but to find opportunities. You analyse where competitors get links from, then approach the same sites with your own pitch or ask why they didn't link to you.
Strategy Comparison
| Strategy | Effort Level | Link Quality | Scalability |
|---|---|---|---|
| Earned (original content) | High | Excellent | Medium |
| Digital PR / HARO | Medium | Excellent | High |
| Resource page pitching | Medium | Good | Medium |
| Broken link building | Medium | Good | Low |
| Competitor backlink analysis | Low | Varies | High |
| Guest posting | Medium | Good to Fair | High |
| Paid links / link buying | Low | Poor to Fair | High |
The clear winner is digital PR and content-driven strategies. They require initial effort but produce links that compound. Guest posting can work at scale but has quality risks (covered in the next section).
How This Connects
Link building is only effective when paired with content strategy. You cannot build links to mediocre content. The next sections cover guest posting (which needs careful evaluation), toxic links (which you need to avoid), and digital PR specifics. But the fundamental principle remains: create something worth linking to, then make the right people aware it exists.