Link building
SEO and AI visibility
SEO and AI visibility
Link building is the work of earning links to your site from other websites. Search engines read such a link as a signal that a page is worth something.
A link is more than a number. Where it sits, how relevant that site is to your topic and the text inside the link (the anchor text) together decide how much value it carries. One link from a trade publication in your industry often beats dozens from random directories.
What works structurally: making something others want to reference. Research, tools, strong explanations, cases, partnerships, press coverage, sponsorships, mentions by trade bodies and customers. That overlaps heavily with PR and with local visibility, where listings of your business details count too.
What backfires over time: buying links in bulk, networks of sites linking only to each other, and text that exists solely to host a link. Google is explicit about this and can ignore or penalise such links.
Tip
Optimise for relevance instead of link counts. A handful of links from sites that genuinely matter in your market do more than a hundred random ones.
Related terms
- BacklinkA backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines read it as a recommendation, provided the source is relevant and trustworthy.
- Off-page SEOOff-page SEO is everything outside your own site that affects findability: links from other sites, brand mentions, reviews and your presence where people talk about you.
- Domain authorityDomain authority is a score from SEO tools (not from Google) estimating how strong a domain's link profile is, usually on a 0–100 scale.
- PRPR is working on what others say about you: publications, trade media, podcasts and spokespeople, rather than bought ad space.