What Are Backlinks and Why Are They Important for SEO?

Backlinks remain one of the most powerful ranking factors in SEO. In this guide, we break down what backlinks are, why they matter, and how to build high quality links that drive rankings, authority, and organic traffic in 2026.
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I started my link building career when I was 12 (seriously). I’ve dedicated my entire professional life to SEO, particularly link building.

But if you’re here because you’re new to building links (or SEO in general), I was once just like you. You’re probably wondering if you need backlinks. Or maybe you’re just overwhelmed by the sheer volume of SEO disinformation, propaganda, and industry jargon out there.

Can I buy backlinks, or will I get penalized? Are backlinks still relevant in 2026? What does “high quality link” even mean? How do I tell the difference between spammy backlinks and a quality one?

I wrote this guide to give you the real truth from someone who has worked in this industry for nearly 20 years.

I have personally overseen thousands of link placements, vetted tens of thousands of publishers, and analyzed probably hundreds of thousands of links for SEO purposes throughout my life. I may not know everything, but I know loads about link building.

In this guide, I’ll break down what backlinks are, why backlinks matter for SEO, the different types of links you can build, and some of my best tips for building links based on my 17+ years of experience in the SEO industry.

Forget about all of the Google propaganda and gaslighting from the SEO industry. This guide is going to show you the real playbook for SEO backlinks.

Backlinks, commonly referred to as just “links” or “inbound links,” are hyperlinks from one website back to your site. Search engines like Google use links as a source of trust, credibility, and relevancy. This makes links one of the most important ranking signals.

For example, if your site is a website in the SEO niche and you link to my site PressWhizz.com, that is a “backlink” for me, because your site links back to mine.

Despite what Google mouthpieces and white hat SEOs claim, the famous Google algorithm leak confirmed that links are one of the most important ranking factors, and they also help search engines find new pages to crawl.

Imagine Google rankings as an election. And in this election, whoever gets the most votes from other websites wins. In this case, links to a website would act as votes. 

It’s important to note that you can’t just spam links anymore and hope to rank. Google is now obsessed with relevancy and authority. You need to build a natural profile of relevant links from real websites with organic traffic to succeed in SEO in 2026.

Note: Inbound backlinks are different from internal links. Internal links are when you link from one article within your site to another piece of relevant content within your site. Backlinks are links from other sites to yours.

Backlinks are important for SEO because they signal to Google that your website is credible, authoritative, and relevant to a user’s search query. The more backlinks you have from relevant websites, the better your rankings will be.

No matter what Google claims publicly, backlinks are, without a doubt, a top 3 ranking factor. And they are becoming more important in the age of AI. More on that later.

Before we get into the details, I want to point you to the testimony of Google employees during the antitrust lawsuit brought forth by the U.S. Department of Justice. You don’t have to be an attorney to see the importance of links for SEO:

Testimony from Google insiders proves that:

  • Google evaluates the quantity and quality of links pointing to your site
  • Google uses links to estimate your credibility
  • Google uses anchor text to figure out what your page is about
  • Google uses advanced algorithms to determine link quality and relevancy

Here are the reasons why backlinks are important for SEO in more detail:

Search engines like Google use links to determine your relevance to a user’s search query. If a trustworthy, high authority website in your niche links to you, Google sees this as a vote of confidence in your website and boosts your domain’s authority. 

For example, if you’re an SEO news website, and a high authority site in the online marketing industry links to you, that signals to Google that you are a trustworthy source of information. Obviously, that will improve your chances of ranking for industry related key terms.

If you really want to geek out on SEO, you should read up on PageRank, Google’s foundational search algorithm that ranks pages using an algorithmic score (originally 0-10) based on the number of relevant inbound links. It’s fascinating.

The quantity, quality, and relevancy of your site’s inbound links directly increase your search rankings, and it’s not up for debate.

Dr. Eric Lehman, a former engineer at Google, said, “A ranking signal might be how many links on the web are there that point to this web page or what is our estimate of the sort of authoritativeness of this page.”

Unless they are lying (which Google never does…), it is clear that links are an important, if not the most important, factor in your website’s search rankings.

This study from the go-to search engine optimization tool, Ahrefs, confirms that pages with more referring domains get more traffic and rank for more keywords (on average):

Images courtesy of Ahrefs.com/blog/search-traffic-study

 

I encourage you to pick any random keyword in your niche and check to see how many backlinks the top result has. I searched “how to start a blog” and chose the top result.

Then I threw it into Ahrefs and checked:

31,000+ inbound links! Good luck trying to rank web pages without building backlinks. It’s next to impossible.

This is a great time to mention that one of the first steps toward building a high performing link campaign is to benchmark yourself against your top competitors. I go into more detail in my post on “how many backlinks do I need?”.

Referral traffic from inbound links is an overlooked benefit of links for SEO, but it’s much more important than most SEO professionals realize.

If website X has a lot of organic traffic, and it links to website Y in one of its articles, there’s a good chance that visitors will click the link to website Y and visit the site. Many of them probably would not have found out about the site without encountering the link from website X.

Aside from the direct business value of acquiring a new visitor, referral traffic also improves your rankings by sending positive user engagement signals to Google. From the algorithm leaks and DOJ testimony, we know Google uses a system called NavBoost to analyze user interaction data (dwell time, clicks, etc.) as an additional way to validate quality.

So, if users come to your site from another site and interact with your content, Google takes it as a sign that your content is relevant and valuable to users in that niche and boosts your rankings.

This is a complicated (and controversial) system. We don’t have the exact weighting for it, so you should just focus on keeping the user on site and engaged.

Note: Checking referral traffic from a link on another website is a bit annoying, but not too hard. Go to your Google Analytics dashboard, then go to Reports > Acquisition > Traffic acquisition and set the dimension to “Session source/medium.” Type “referral” into the search bar to filter for traffic from external links.

Faster Indexing

Inbound links from authoritative websites help Google discover, interpret, and analyze your content much more quickly than if it were a random, isolated page (an orphan page).

The links “notify” Google that your page exists, especially when the links come from high authority sources.

How it works is not super important, but Google constantly crawls high authority pages like Forbes. If a link to your site gets placed on a page on one of these mega sites, Google knows about it in a split second, follows that path, and finds the page on your site.

Link juice, or link equity, is the term for how websites pass authority from their sites to yours via a link. If you have a high authority website and link to my site, I get some of that link juice passed to my site (thanks!).

Let me elaborate on the types of links first so you can better grasp this concept. There are two types of links:

Yes, backlinks are still a top 3 ranking factor, but it’s no longer just a matter of quantity. What matters is relevancy, authority, organic traffic, freshness, and anchor text.

Google itself consistently confirms that links are a top 3 ranking factor, and the Google algorithm leak that we covered previously also confirms that. A definitive study by Semrush entitled “Ranking Factors 2.0” stated the following: “The more backlinks a domain has, the higher its position on the SERP.”

And a study from our friends at Backlinko.com entitled “We Analyzed 11.8 Million Google Search Results. Here’s What We Learned About SEO” stated the following:

“Pages with lots of backlinks rank above pages that don’t have as many backlinks. In fact, the #1 result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2-#10.”

I’m not trying to brag when I say this, but I personally oversee thousands and thousands of link placements as the CMO and Chairman of PressWhizz, so I see it firsthand. Websites that consistently build high quality links outperform those that don’t.

And this is not just for search engine optimization. Links also matter for AI SEO/GEO/AEO 

(or whatever you want to call it).

Another great study by Semrush analyzed the number of AI mentions against key backlink signals, such as the total number of links, the authority of those links, and unique referring domains.

That study concluded the following:

  • Link authority boosts visibility
  • Link volume matters, but not as much as link quality
  • Image links and nofollow links also improve AI visibility

So, do links still matter in SEO in 2026? 

Well, domains that rank #1 have loads more links. The more links you have, the better you rank. And, link quality equals more AI visibility. 

So yes, you bet links still matter in 2026. 

The most common types of backlinks in SEO are guest post links, niche edits, editorial backlinks, broken backlink building, linked brand mentions, and forum or comment links.

They all have their advantages and disadvantages, and the best option for you depends on your niche, which stage of business you’re in, and what your budget is. Let me cover more on each of the different types of links in SEO so you get a better idea of how to build links for your business:

Editorial links are backlinks that a website’s writer or editor places in their content naturally. 

You didn’t ask for the link and didn’t exchange anything for it. It just happened because your content was worth linking to. 

That’s why they’re one of the strongest signals you can send to Google. The algorithm is built to reward links that happen naturally within relevant, well written content.

Here’s an example of an editorial link we’ve received because a website found our guide on link building statistics helpful:

The author mentioned one of the stats we curated and linked to us naturally within her article, as you can see here:

Editorial links are the gold standard of the link building industry.

Google looks at the anchor text, the topic of the page linking to you, and whether the link fits organically into the flow of the article. A link embedded in a paragraph about your exact topic carries much more weight than one sitting in a sidebar or a directory.

Here are three ways to start earning more of them:

  • Publish original data or research: Surveys, case studies, and industry stats give bloggers and journalists a reason to cite you instead of your competitors.
  • Cover trending topics: If your page is one of the first solid resources on a subject, editorial links tend to follow as more people write about it.
  • Build relationships with editors: Industry relationships take forever to build, so you’d better get on it sooner rather than later. Reference a website’s work or mention them on your socials. Or, try to go to conferences and meet real people. At PressWhizz, we’ve put years of legwork into building our network.

Pro Tip: Start creating linkable assets ASAP. It could be tools, case studies, guides on relevant topics…you name it. Check out this keyword research tool from Backlinko. It has generated nearly 11,000 links for the website already:

Guest Posts

Guest posts are a common form of link building where you write an article for another website and place a link back to your website within that article.

Guest posts benefit you in the following ways:

  • You get a link from an established website
  • You get relevant traffic from an industry publication
  • You get link juice from a relevant website

And, unlike editorial links, you can normally build guest post links quickly.

Just remember that it’s not 2016 anymore, and you can’t just flood the web with spammy guest posts on link farms with 0 organic traffic. You need well written, valuable blog posts published on real websites with organic traffic.

And, again, be very careful about listening to Google and its army of propaganda bots. According to Google, paid guest posting is against the rules and gets you penalized.

But, mega sites that Google absolutely grovels to do it all the time, like Entrepreneur.com:

It can’t be that bad if it’s advertised like this.

Note: It takes a long time to cultivate relationships with publishers like Entrepreneur and MSN.com. It takes even longer for you to pitch and eventually get published with them. That’s why we created PressWhizz. We have already built these relationships and streamlined content creation and publishing for you. All you have to do is select your outlet, and we will handle everything else.

See for yourself on our marketplace. Sort by domain rating (DR), and check out some of the high authority publishers we give you direct access to:

Niche Edits

Niche edits are links placed into content that already exists and is already indexed by Google. Instead of pitching a guest post or waiting for someone to discover your page, you’re getting a link added to an article that’s been live for months or years, which means it already has authority and crawl history baked in.

That’s what makes them fast and cheap compared to traditional outreach. You skip the pitching, the writing, and the back-and-forth, and just get a contextual link on a page Google already trusts.

For example, say you find a two-year-old article on a DR 50 website about budgeting apps. If you have a relevant page on your site, that’s a great opportunity to build an easy, relevant link. So, you pay the site owner to have your link added with relevant anchor text, and your target page gets an authority boost without you writing a single word.

OK, now for one that SEOs love, especially ones who don’t like spending money (which is 90% of them): Broken link building.

Broken link building is when you find broken links on other websites and reach out to the site owner to suggest your content as a replacement. People forget about links quickly, and if a site shuts down or the page gets deleted, that link is “broken” since it no longer links to a live page.

Here’s an example from HubSpot where a website links to one of their pages that no longer exists:

If you click that link, it takes you to this page:

This would be an excellent broken link building opportunity if you had a similar guide on IG analytics.

If you can actually get in touch with the website’s management, there’s a high chance this works. Why not? It’s a win-win for both the site owner and you!

You’re doing them a favor by flagging a 404 on their page. Plus, you offer them a working link that points to something you’ve published on the same topic.

SEOs love it because it’s completely free and it works more often than you’d think. The biggest drawback is the prospecting side, because it can take a decent amount of legwork to actually reach the person who manages the site (and if you’ve ever spent a full afternoon hunting down contact info, you know the pain).

To find opportunities in Ahrefs, run a competitor’s domain through Site Explorer and filter its backlink profile by “Link Type: Broken.” That gives you a list of pages linking to your competitor’s dead URLs, which you can then target with your own replacement pitch.

Links or brand mentions (linked or unlinked) on forums or social media sites like Facebook, Reddit, Quora, or niche forums do provide SEO value, but not the “here’s my link in the footer” spam that worked back in 2013.

This is a complex and controversial topic, so let me break it down brick by brick for you, starting with what no longer works in 2026.

Back in the day, you could just spam links in your forum profile, forum threads, or blog comment threads and get SEO results. It practically ruined the internet. You used to see random links in comments like this every day:

That type of UGC link spam doesn’t work anymore. In general, forum links are now nofollow, meaning they don’t pass any ranking equity to your website. Google pretty much ignores these links now.

Google Search Advocate Jon Mueller has explicitly stated that forum links do nothing for SEO. Here he is saying “no” in response to a user’s question on the efficacy of forum links followed by someone adding some slight pushback:

And, as we all know, Google never lies, right?

But that doesn’t mean that these types of links or mentions (a user mentioning your brand in the thread) don’t have some SEO value. Especially now, post-HCU, when forums like Reddit and Quora are seeing inhuman traffic gains.

Here are a few ways that links or mentions help your SEO:

  • Helps Build a Natural Link Profile: Google likes to see a link profile that looks like it’s from a real business and NOT like an SEO built it. Having a nice mix of nofollow links from industry forums or socials is part of a healthy link profile and therefore valuable.
  • Referral Traffic: If your site is relevant to the post, users may visit your site. And as you now know, referral traffic has both SEO and direct business benefits (e.g., visitors may make a purchase).
  • Brand Awareness: Google wants to rank trustworthy, authoritative, and popular brands, so it uses brand signals as part of its ranking algorithm. That includes brand mentions, branded search volume, and online review sentiment. So being mentioned on relevant forums or subreddits does provide value.

The key takeaway from this section is that spamming random forums or social sites with irrelevant links is no longer a viable SEO strategy. But targeted, natural links or brand mentions on relevant threads or subreddits will provide SEO value.

Nofollow links tell search engines to ignore them for ranking purposes. They don’t pass juice to you, sadly.

Google introduced the rel=”nofollow” attribute in 2005 to solve comment spam. At the time, spammers were flooding blog comments, forums, and guestbooks with links to their own sites, exploiting the fact that every link acted as a vote of confidence in Google’s PageRank algorithm. Nofollow links allow site owners to say to search engines, “I’m linking here, but I don’t vouch for this page.”

Do follow links are links that pass link equity from one site to yours, which is how Google figures out who to trust. This is the type of link everyone in SEO wants. 

When building links, ensure that the publisher does not add a nofollow tag. This is another one of those annoying points of SEO link building. 

A high quality backlink is a topically relevant link from a high authority website with real traffic. 

The link should also be placed contextually with optimized anchor text. In other words, not all backlinks are created equal. You want links from real, trusted websites within your industry, because if a site that Google trusts links to you, that is like the site “vouching” for you with Google, which boosts your rankings in the search results.

There’s some debate on which is more valuable: relevance or authority. As always, it depends. In general, relevance is probably the #1 factor in determining link quality, but if a website has a high enough domain rating, you can throw relevance out the window. For example, if Healthline (a DR 90+ site) wants to link to your SaaS tool, then you 100% should take the link. 

Let’s cover more on what makes a high quality backlink in SEO:

Relevance

Relevant links are priority #1 for your website. Google wants to see a natural link profile full of topically relevant links and not a profile that looks like you bought each link from a random website with no traffic.

A link from a cooking blog pointing to your SaaS company looks random, and Google treats it that way. But when sites in your industry link to you, it tells Google your content belongs in that topic cluster, which strengthens your rankings for those keywords. The Blog Starter, for example, earns links from online marketing publications like HubSpot, and the links also come from posts about writing. Those links carry more weight because they come from topics related to the site, and the traffic is much more likely to convert.

Authority

Authority is priority #1b. A backlink from a high authority domain passes more link equity to your site. For example, a link from a DR 90 site is usually better than one from a DR 40. Remember all that link juice stuff we were talking about earlier? That comes into play here. 

While I admit that it’s important to build a natural, varied link profile with a mix of high, mid, and low authority sites, I advise you to focus mostly on building high authority links (or at least sites that match your authority level).

While we’re on this topic, let me muse a bit on the golden days of authority spamming. 

Authority isn’t as important as it was a few years ago.

In 2022, Google rolled out an update that dialed back the raw power of domain authority as a ranking signal, and a lot of SEOs panicked. Back in the day, you could just spam random high authority links (like .ph government footer links to your .com cooking blog) and crush. Nowadays, it’s not so easy.

My advice? Just use Ahrefs or SEMrush to check a domain’s authority. Pop the URL into Site Explorer and see what you get:

Placement

Placement in link building refers to where your link is on the page and within the content where it’s published.

Where your link sits on the page matters more than most people think. 

For example, a link buried in the footer or shoved into a sidebar carries less weight than one placed naturally within the body content. Why is that? Because links higher up on the page tend to pass more link juice (potentially due to being clicked more frequently…I cover that below).

Let me give you an example…

Picture a blog post. A link in the first two paragraphs gets more eyeballs and more link juice than one tacked on as an afterthought near the end. And one in the footer or sidebar might not get any eyeballs or clicks at all.

I wouldn’t obsess over placement. But when you’re negotiating a link, try to land it toward the top of the page (more on this further below).

Pro Tip: Please regularly monitor your links, including where they are placed. If you land a link in a listicle, but you’re product number 15 out of 15, then it’s not doing you much good at all. Make sure to cover this in negotiation. It’s an annoying aspect of link building, but necessary.

Anchor Text

The anchor text (or link text) is the visible text of a link. It tells both readers and Google something about the page being linked to. In the context of link building, the anchor text that you (or the publisher) use to link back to your site gives Google a clue as to what the site is about. If you are linking to a page on “how to start a blog,” you should use anchor text that reflects that. It could be “starting a blog” or an exact match, “how to start a blog.” Just make sure it’s relevant.

Let’s use The Blog Starter again. 

Notice all of the anchor text to his website is either an exact match or contextually relevant (e.g, monetize a blog for how to make money blogging):

Organic Traffic

A backlink from a page or domain with real organic traffic is more valuable than a dead blog (or a zero traffic page on that blog).

Let me break this down so it’s easier to understand.

First, you want to build links on websites that have solid organic traffic. If a website is already ranking for keywords and getting regular visitors, Google sees this as a sign that it’s a trustworthy source of information and that it’s “real,” for lack of a better term. This increases the amount of link equity you get from a link on this site.

And second, you want to build links on pages within that site that actually get traffic. For example, if you’re building links on a hiking website, you want a link on one of its most popular pages. For example, a link on “The complete guide to camping in the Grand Canyon” with 2,000 monthly visitors is better than a link in a case study with zero organic visitors.

Here’s a real example from a random site I found on that topic: JamesKaiser.com.

If you’re a hiking website, this isn’t a bad site to get a link from. It’s not super high authority, but it gets solid traffic and ranks for a lot of outdoor keywords.

But I wouldn’t choose just any ole’ page on this site to get a link from. Go into his Top Pages and see which ones actually get traffic. 

His guide on driving from Las Vegas to Zion National Park is a great page to place your link on:

Whereas his page on hiking Hidden Canyon…not so much:

Note: After reading some of the articles on his site, I’m 100% driving from Las Vegas to Zion National Park when I go to Vegas later this year. 

The Site Hasn’t Linked to You Before

Repeated links from the same sites offer diminishing returns, so getting links over and over again from the same sites is not that effective. Ideally, you want a steady stream of “fresh” links from high authority websites that have not linked to you before.

It’s also important to note that getting repeated links from the same site over and over again, especially with exact match anchor text, might look spammy to search engines. This shouldn’t be a big deal, though, so long as you aren’t building dozens and dozens of similar looking links.

Google analyzes how users navigate from linking documents to linked pages, so how users react to your link affects your rankings in a roundabout way. That means you want to build links that users are more likely to click. 

Consider how far up the page your link is, the anchor text, and the text surrounding it.

Here is the Google patent covering exactly this:

There’s no need to get into the technical details of Google’s patents, but the core idea is that Google tracks which links users click and which ones they ignore. Links that get clicked more often carry more weight in the ranking algorithm. Google calls this the “reasonable surfer model.”

If your link gets clicked, you get more ranking juice. If it gets ignored, you get less. Hope that’s all clear. Let’s move along.

The best ways to build links in 2026 are guest posts, building linkable assets, buying links from marketplaces, broken link building, and niche edits. Link exchanges are also a great way to get free links, especially when you have industry connections.

Keep in mind that the best ways to build links for your website also depend on your niche and business model. For example, building eCom links is different from building affiliate site links.

Note: Building high quality links in 2026 is extremely difficult and time consuming. I highly recommend you outsource link building to professionals or, at the very least, buy backlinks from a marketplace if you want to generate backlinks at scale. You need to have specialized expertise and industry experience to acquire high quality backlinks for SEO these days. If not, you’re risking getting zero results or even manual penalties.

Let’s get into my link building tips now.

Create Linkable Assets

A linkable asset is any piece of content that earns backlinks because people find it useful enough to reference, like a free tool, original research, or an in-depth guide. 

This is the best link building method because it compounds over time and looks natural to search engines. One strong asset can generate links for years without you sending a single outreach email. 

Here’s an example where I created a guide on a topic. It generated 700+ free links for my site:

Google tends to favor these links because they’re earned naturally by relevant sites in your niche, which means they check the relevance and authority boxes without looking like you bought them from a link spammer. 

All you need to do is find a gap in your industry where no great resource exists and create something better than what’s out there. 

Guest Posting 

Guest posting is when you write an article for another website in exchange for a backlink to your site. It’s the bread and butter of most SEO campaigns. The process is straightforward: You find a relevant blog in your niche, pitch a topic their audience would care about, and include a link back to your site within the content. And just a fair warning, it’s hard to find free guest posting opportunities.

A site like HubSpot, for example, accepts guest contributions and links out to the author’s website in the bio or body of the post. That said, guest posting at scale can start to look unnatural if every link uses the same anchor text or comes from similar types of sites, so you want to mix it up and keep your link profile varied.

Link marketplaces are platforms that connect people seeking backlinks with publishers offering guest posts, niche edits, or other types of SEO backlinks. Platforms like PressWhizz act as the middleman that facilitates link placements for you, so you don’t have to find prospects, do outreach, or negotiate prices. The biggest benefit for you as an SEO is that they’ve done the hard work of building the publisher relationship, and they’ve vetted the publisher for you.

Marketplaces are becoming extremely popular these days, because they solve some of the biggest bottlenecks in SEO link building:

  • Time spent prospecting and reaching out
  • Vetting publishers to ensure quality
  • Link building team salaries (you don’t need an agency or big outreach team to get links at volume from a marketplace)

With PressWhizz, you just toggle different filters like price, domain rating, and location, and we give you a curated list of sites offering link opportunities. 

Here’s what our marketplace looks like:

Niche Edits

We covered niche edits earlier in this guide, but they’re worth mentioning again because they’re one of the most efficient link building tactics out there. A niche edit is when you get a link placed into an existing, already indexed article rather than publishing something new. 

The reason they’re so valuable is that the page has already built up authority, trust, and rankings in Google’s eyes, so the link passes equity from day one. 

If you’re working with a limited budget and want links that move the needle fast, niche edits are a great option, especially for newer sites that need early momentum in competitive niches.

Broken link building is when you find dead links on other websites and offer your content as a replacement. If you’ve been in SEO for any amount of time, you’ve probably watched a million YouTube videos and a million more web course videos on broken link building. 

And why not? It’s one of the cheapest ways to build high quality links. I mean, the pitch practically writes itself because you’re helping a site owner fix a problem on their site while earning a link in return. 

So, how do you find these pitches? 

The best way to find opportunities is to use Ahrefs’ broken link checker, which lets you scan competitor backlink profiles and filter for links pointing to 404 pages. Just hop on to Ahrefs, pop in a website’s URL, and export the list of broken links.

Pro Tip: Use OpenClaw or Claude Cowork (or even a tool like PitchBox) to automate a personalized outreach workflow for building broken links.

Digital PR

Digital PR is a link building strategy in which you create a story or data driven piece that journalists and publications want to cover, which naturally earns you backlinks from major news sites and industry outlets. Those mega studies we’ve referenced throughout this piece count as digital PR, but so do case studies, news stories, statistics, and things like that.

Instead of pitching webmasters for a link, you’re giving reporters something worth writing about, and the links come as a byproduct of the coverage. It’s not quite the same as “SEO link building”. I recommend this for brands with bigger budgets that want high authority placements on sites like Forbes or TechCrunch, where a single link can be like gasoline on a fire for your SEO.

The last thing I want to leave you with is a few tips on managing your backlink profile long term. In my experience, most SEOs either skip this part entirely or put in minimal effort and then wonder why they barely get any results from their link campaigns.

For more details, read my complete guide on backlink management for any website.

Here are some of my top tips for managing your backlink profile:

  • Set up Link Tracking: Use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush to create a link tracking dashboard and keep an eye on your website’s link profile.
  • Monitor links you’ve built: Make sure to check whether your links are still live. You’d be surprised at how often they get removed, or pages go down.
  • Perform link audits: Every few months or so, you should audit your link profile to see which ones are contributing to your site’s ranking. Check for broken links, evaluate the performance of links, do some basic calculations for ROI on your links, and benchmark yourself against competitors. Speaking of that, let’s do an entirely separate bullet about competitors.
  • Audit your competitors: Regularly audit your top competitors to see where they’re getting links from and how many of their top posts have more links than you. You can even try to guesstimate how much they’re spending each month on links (as well as how much you’ll need to spend to keep up).

Pro Tip: I highly recommend investing in link building tools like Ahrefs, PitchBox, and Respona if you want to do link building right.

Final Thoughts

There is no way to overstate the importance of backlinks for SEO. I just wrote 6,000 words on the topic and still feel like I didn’t even scratch the surface on just how important building high quality, relevant links is to your SEO success.

If there’s just one thing I want you to take away from this article, it’s the following:

Do not listen to Google, white hat SEOs, or random forum posters who tell you links aren’t important. Anyone who tells you to just build links naturally instead of buying them is either a shill for Google or a direct competitor trying to outrank you (by buying links).

Buying links 100% works. Every successful business I know does it.

If you want to win at SEO in 2026, you need a natural, varied link profile from relevant websites with real organic traffic. I recommend that you mix up your link buying strategy between guest posts, niche edits, digital PR, and broken link building to make things look as natural as possible.

Whichever route you choose (in house, outsourced, freelancer, agency, marketplace, etc.), do due diligence on the links you build. Prioritize relevant pages with organic traffic on relevant websites in your industry, and don’t just look at top level domain metrics like DR.

I wish you luck.

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