Link building strategies: improve online visibility through quality links

Link building strategies: improve online visibility through quality links, because links from other websites remain, after content, the signal with the greatest weight in Google's rankings. This guide explains what makes a link valuable, which methods work in 2026 for companies in Romania, which methods lead to manual actions, and how to assess and measure your link profile, drawing on what we have learnt building links for clients and our own websites.

A link is a vote of confidence that another website gives your page, and Google has counted it since the beginning (PageRank). What has changed is what it counts: the relevance and trustworthiness of the linking website, not volume. A link from an article in an industry publication is worth more than a thousand from directories and comments.

Link building strategies: improve online visibility through quality links

What makes a link valuable

• Relevance: the linking website is in the same or a related field, and the page the link comes from discusses the subject of the target page.
• Trust in the source: the website has real content, real traffic, authors and a history; it is not an "article publishing" platform with ten unrelated subjects.
• Position and context: in an article's text, with surrounding sentences, not in the footer or a list of "partners".
• Anchor: the link text describes the target page in natural words; repeated commercial anchors ("cheap seo services") are the pattern Google associates with manipulation.
• Attributes: links without rel=nofollow, sponsored or ugc pass the signal; the others are treated as hints, not votes. Google says it may also follow nofollow links, but do not rely on them.
• Diversity: many links from the same domain count once; distinct domains matter.

Types of links

Dofollow (default): passes authority. Nofollow: does not pass it, but brings traffic and diversifies the profile. Sponsored: mandatory for paid links, including sponsored articles; its absence is a violation. UGC: for user-generated content (comments, forums). A natural profile has all of them, with the majority dofollow from relevant sources.

Methods that work

1. Content worth citing

The foundation of any strategy. Not "quality content" in general, but types of pages others cite: your own data (a survey, an analysis of industry figures), free tools (calculators, checkers; ours are in SEO tools), reference guides on a narrow subject, case studies with figures, definitions and explanations journalists look for. A service page does not attract links; a guide cited by ten blogs does, and passes them on through internal links to service pages.

2. Articles for other publications

Publishing an article on an industry website, with a contextual link, remains a good method if you follow the rule: the article has value for that website's readers, and the website is real. Choose publications with their own organic traffic, editors and coherent subjects; avoid "guest post blogs" that publish anything, for a fee, for anyone. Your pitch should be a specific subject, not "I want to publish on your website".

3. Editorial partnerships and press mentions

Companies have partners, suppliers, clients, professional associations and local sponsorships. Each has a website and often a partners page or blog. A real collaboration naturally shows through a link. Local and industry press cite experts: a quick answer to a journalist's question, a figure from your own experience, or a comment on a news story brings linked mentions from highly authoritative sources. For local businesses, institutional directories (chamber of commerce, town hall, associations) provide few but trustworthy links.

4. Recovering lost links

Links pointing to pages of yours that no longer exist (404) are lost votes. Search Console's links report and an external tool show the target URLs; a 301 redirect to the relevant page recovers the vote without contacting anyone. Likewise, unlinked mentions (the company's name written but not linked) can become links with a polite email.

5. Resources others list

"Useful resources" pages from universities, associations and industry blogs list tools and guides. If you have one, suggest it, explaining the benefit for their readers. The response rate is low, but the links are exactly the ones that matter.

6. Google Business profile and industry platforms

For local businesses, the Google Business profile, review platforms and industry marketplaces (where they exist) bring nofollow links, but also traffic and a stronger entity; setup is covered in the guide to optimising Google Business Profile.

7. Internal links

They are not link building, but they distribute the authority received: a page with 20 external links that does not link to service pages leaves them without a vote. The internal linking structure, with descriptive anchors pointing to pages that bring revenue, is described in the guide to optimising a website step by step.

8. Competitor analysis

External tools show where competitors who outrank you get their links. Some sources are also accessible to you (publications accepting articles, industry directories, associations); others show methods you should not copy (networks, purchases). The list, sorted by authority and relevance, becomes your three-month plan.

What Google prohibits and why it is not worth it

• Buying links without rel=sponsored, including "sponsored articles" with a dofollow link: an explicit policy violation, with manual actions and spam updates that neutralise them.
• Networks of your own websites (PBNs) created to link to the main website: detectable through common ownership, common hosting and anchor patterns; we saw this on our own websites, where network links had commercial anchors and were rewritten.
• Mass link exchanges and footer "partnerships".
• Automated comments, forums and profiles.
• Widgets and templates distributed with hidden links.

The effect of these methods is not zero in the short term; it is negative in the medium term, and cleaning up costs more than building correctly. What happens after a manual action for links and how disavowing is used are described in the guide to recovering from a penalty.

What changes with AI-generated answers

AI assistants cite sources and use trust signals to choose a source, among which links and brand mentions carry considerable weight. Unlinked mentions (the company's name in the press, in reviews, on platforms) become more valuable than before, because models learn the brand-industry association from everything they read; this direction is described in the article on Generative Engine Optimization. The link strategy for 2026 therefore also includes mentions: interviews, quotations in articles, presence in industry supplier lists, even without a link.

How to evaluate a link before asking for it

1. Does the website have its own organic traffic? (check with a tool or, at least, whether it appears in Google for its subjects)
2. Does it have authors and coherent subjects, or does it publish anything?
3. Is the page that would link relevant to the target page?
4. Would the link be in the text, with a natural anchor?
5. Would you accept the link even if Google did not exist, for its traffic and reputation?

Five yeses mean a good link. Two noes mean wasted time or risk.

Anchors: what a natural profile looks like

On websites with natural profiles that we have analysed, 50-70% of anchors are the brand name or address (goai.ro, GOAI), 15-25% are generic phrases ("here", "this guide", "their website"), and under 15% are descriptive or commercial phrases, rarely identical to one another. A profile with 40% "seo services" anchors is the signature of a campaign, and Google's systems recognise it. Do not request anchors; let the author link as feels natural, and if asked for a suggestion, propose the company name or page title.

How to measure

Search Console's Links report (a free sample), an external tool for the complete profile, and, each quarter: the number of distinct linking domains, the proportion of links from relevant websites, anchor distribution (mostly brand names and URLs, a minority of commercial phrases), target pages (not just the home page), and lost links. Proper growth is slow: a few new, relevant domains a month. The ranking effect appears in two to four months and is visible on the target pages, not the whole website.

For small companies, in order of effort

1. The Google Business profile, local associations and institutions, suppliers and partners: one week, few good links.
2. Recovering lost links and unlinked mentions: one day per quarter.
3. A reference guide or tool on the main subject, promoted to industry publications: two months for the first links.
4. Two to three articles a year in real industry publications.
5. Press presence as a source of opinions or figures: ongoing.

Links are the half of SEO you do not control directly; the other half, content and the website, you control entirely and we describe it in the guide to what SEO is. Our link building service applies exactly the methods above, with a monthly report on domains and target pages.

Sources

• Google Search Central, spam policies: the section on manipulated links and mandatory attributes.
• Google Search Central, links Google can crawl: the technical form of links and anchor text.

Source references

• Google Search Central, politicile privind spamul în Căutare
• Google Search Central, legături pe care Google le poate urmări