Links from other sites remain among the strongest ranking signals: each one is an independent endorsement that your page is worth referencing. Link building is the practice of earning those endorsements; E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) is the broader quality framework that links feed into.
What makes a link valuable#
Not all links are equal. Value scales with:
- Authority of the linking site and page: one link from a respected industry publication outweighs hundreds from obscure blogs
- Topical relevance: a coffee blog linking your espresso guide says more than a casino site doing so
- Anchor text: descriptive anchors transfer topical meaning (same mechanics as internal links)
- Placement: editorial links inside content beat footers, sidebars and author bios
- Uniqueness: your hundredth link from the same domain adds little; the first from a new authoritative domain adds a lot
- The linking site's own behaviour: in April 2026 John Mueller said that if Google's systems recognize a site "links out in a way that's not very helpful or aligned with our policies, we may end up ignoring all links out from that site" (Search Engine Roundtable). A link from a site that sells links may be worth nothing.
Links carrying rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or rel="ugc" tell Google not to associate the linking site with the target or pass ranking credit (Google). Since 2019 Google has treated these attributes as hints rather than strict directives (Google). They can still send referral traffic and get your brand in front of people, which matters for brand signals and AI answers (more below).
Tactics that work#
In rough order of return on effort:
1. Linkable assets#
Most pages don't deserve links; some formats attract them naturally. Original data and research (annual surveys, benchmarks: journalists cite data), free tools and calculators, definitive reference pages (the glossary or statistics page everyone cites, like a well-maintained glossary), and original diagrams that explain a concept better than prose.
2. Digital PR#
Package something genuinely newsworthy (your data, an expert take on a breaking change) and pitch the journalists and newsletters covering your space. Highest ceiling of any tactic, and also the most work per attempt. Full playbook in Digital PR & Brand Signals.
3. Guest content and expert commentary#
Writing for established industry publications, podcast appearances, expert-quote roundups. The byline link is fine; the authority and audience transfer is the real prize. Keep anchors natural: Google's link spam policy names "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" as an example of spam.
4. Reclamation and housekeeping#
- Unlinked mentions: someone named your brand or product without linking; ask for the link
- Broken link building: find dead resources competitors link to; offer your live equivalent
- Competitor gap analysis: domains linking to two or more competitors but not you are pre-qualified prospects (Competitor Analysis)
Links, mentions and AI answers#
AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and Perplexity don't count backlinks the way PageRank does, but they retrieve from indexes built by systems that do, and they summarize what the web says about you. That makes brand mentions part of off-page work.
The most-cited data point: in a May 2025 study of 75,000 brands, Ahrefs measured the correlation (Spearman) between various factors and how often a brand appeared in AI Overviews (Ahrefs):
| Factor | Correlation with AI Overview brand visibility |
|---|---|
| Branded web mentions | 0.664 |
| Branded anchors | 0.527 |
| Branded search volume | 0.392 |
| Domain Rating | 0.326 |
| Referring domains | 0.295 |
| Number of backlinks | 0.218 |
Read it carefully. The authors themselves stress that correlation is not causation, and well-known brands naturally collect mentions, links and visibility together. The practical lesson is not "stop building links"; it's that the work which gets you talked about (research, tools, PR, community presence) earns both links and mentions, while link-only tactics miss half the picture.
What not to do#
Three 2025 to 2026 developments widen the danger zone:
- AI answers are now explicitly in scope. On 2026-05-15 Google changed the definition of spam to include "attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search" and clarified that its spam policies apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode (Google).
- Inauthentic mentions don't work. The same day, Google's AI optimization guide listed "seeking inauthentic 'mentions'" among tactics to ignore: "Our core ranking systems focus on high-quality content while other systems block spam; our generative AI features depend on both." Paid "get mentioned in AI" placements, fake listicles and seeded forum posts are the 2026 version of paid links.
- Renting someone else's reputation is policed. Publishing third-party content on a strong host site mainly to borrow its ranking signals falls under Google's site reputation policy (renamed from "site reputation abuse"). Since 2026-08-30 a manual action under it affects results outside the European Economic Area, while in the EEA the affected section may be separated so it ranks on its own. Either way, "parasite" placements are a poor long-term bet. Details in Penalty Recovery.
Buying an expired domain to redirect or republish for its old links is also a named spam practice (expired domain abuse).
If you inherit a toxic link profile (spammy anchors at scale, link networks), document it. Google's disavow tool exists for genuinely manipulative profiles, especially under a manual action, but for normal sites the right answer is almost always "ignore the random spam; Google already does".
E-E-A-T: the bigger picture#
Links are one input into a broader trust evaluation. The signals you control:
| Signal | Implementation |
|---|---|
| Experience | First-hand evidence in content: original photos, test results, "we measured" |
| Expertise | Real author pages with credentials; Person markup helps Google connect the author to their profiles but doesn't create expertise |
| Authoritativeness | Links, mentions, citations, earned via the tactics above |
| Trust | HTTPS, contact and about pages, editorial policy, accurate claims with sources |
E-E-A-T weighs heaviest for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics such as health, finance and safety, where Google's quality guidelines ask raters for the highest standards of trust. See E-E-A-T & Quality Guidelines.
Measuring link building#
Track referring domains over time (the growth curve matters more than totals), links to priority pages versus the homepage, and ranking movement on target queries about one to three months after acquisition. Use Ahrefs or Semrush for the wider link graph, and the Search Console Links report for Google's own (sampled) view. For the mentions side, track unlinked brand mentions and, where available, AI citations (Measuring AI Visibility).
Next: Local SEO, the off-page game for businesses that serve customers in a place.