A link building strategy is the plan that sets which links to get, from which sites, to which pages of your site, with which anchors, at what pace and on what budget. The link building campaign is how that plan is carried out over a set period, a quarter for example, and it is judged on the rankings of the target pages, not on the number of links acquired.
I will be blunt on one point: most of the campaigns I audit buy links that do nothing. Not dangerous links, just links with no effect, because no specific page was targeted in the first place. This guide follows the order in which I build a link building strategy, then covers the types of links, what a campaign costs, Google's rules and tracking.
Link building strategy at a glance
Audit your links and your competitors', choose the pages to push, strengthen internal linking, reclaim the free links, plan sources, anchors and budget, then measure. The first steps cost nothing and are almost always skipped.
- A backlink audit before the first link
- A few target pages, each with its own keyword
- Sources close to your topic, with real traffic
- Rank tracking for the target pages
- Every link pointing to the homepage
- Identical, over-optimized anchors
First effects: 1 to 3 months after the links go live Who it's for: sites competing on contested keywords
Key takeaways
- A link building strategy sets the pages to push, the sources, the anchors, the pace and the budget before the first link.
- The backlink audit, of your site and your competitors', tells you how many referring domains you are missing and where to find them.
- A link is worth what the source site's topical relevance and real traffic are worth, not its authority score.
- Google classifies buying links that pass ranking credit as spam: a compliant paid link carries the sponsored or nofollow attribute.
- A link building campaign is measured on the rankings of the target pages, two to three months later, never on the number of links acquired.
What is link building in SEO?
Link building (often called "netlinking" in France) means getting links from other sites to yours. Each inbound link, called a backlink, works like a recommendation: the more it comes from a recognized site close to your topic, the more weight it carries in how the receiving page is evaluated. Google says so itself in its documentation: it uses links as a signal of how relevant pages are and to discover new pages to crawl.
The difference between link building and a backlink is simple: the backlink is the link, link building is the work of getting one. Internal linking, for its part, refers to links between your own pages. It belongs to the same thinking, because it redistributes the authority that backlinks bring in.
The principle has not changed since search engines began. What has changed is how finely links are evaluated: the raw number of links no longer means much, it is the consistency of the whole that counts. Where your links come from, what they point to, with which words. In competitive industries, SEO link building is still often what separates two technically equivalent sites: when everyone has a fast site and decent content, authority makes the difference.
The 7 steps of a link building strategy
Here is the sequence I apply, in order. It works for a site that is just starting out as well as for a link building campaign to relaunch an established site.
1. Run a backlink audit of your site
A backlink audit takes stock of your link profile before you add to it. Five points are enough to get started:
- The number of referring domains, more telling than the number of links: a hundred links from a single site are not worth ten links from ten different sites.
- The pages that receive links: often the homepage alone, rarely the service pages or in-depth content.
- The anchor text distribution: brand name, site URL, descriptive phrases, exact-match keyword anchors.
- Lost links and links to error pages, to be reclaimed with a redirect.
- Dubious sources: sites with no audience, site networks, completely unrelated topics.
Search Console gives you a free first view: its Links report shows the top linked pages, the top linking sites and the top linking text. For history, lost links and comparison with other domains, you need a tool such as Ahrefs, Semrush or Majestic. For the rest of the diagnosis, my free SEO audit guide covers the tools you can use without a subscription.
2. Analyze the links of the competitors ahead of you
Take the three to five sites ranking above you on your main keywords. Compare their number of referring domains with yours, then list the sites that cite them but not you. Ahrefs (Link Intersect) and Semrush (Backlink Gap) do this cross-check automatically.
This analysis answers two questions. Is the gap ten referring domains or a thousand? And which sources are open to you on the same terms: a professional directory, a partner, a media outlet that publishes op-eds, an industry association. Look at the pace too: if the top-ranking sites gain three or four referring domains a month, that is your order of magnitude.
3. Choose the pages to push and the target keywords
Most campaigns send every link to the homepage. That is a mistake: your service pages and in-depth content are the ones that need authority to rank. Choose a few pages, not thirty, and note for each one the target keyword and its current ranking. This baseline will be used to measure the campaign.
Before you buy a link to a page, check that it deserves to rank: content that matches the search intent, clean technical SEO. A link does not make up for a weak page. My SEO audit example lists the points to check before launching a campaign.
4. Strengthen internal linking
Your own pages pass authority to each other. Linking the pages that already receive external links to the pages you want to push is free, immediate and carries no risk at all. In my work, an internal linking audit always comes before an acquisition campaign.
5. Reclaim the free links
Brand mentions without a link, partners who do not cite you, old broken links to redirect. Then your suppliers, your clients, the trade bodies you belong to, the schools where you teach, the events you take part in. These links are free, legitimate, topically relevant, and nobody thinks of asking for them. That is always where I start an engagement.
6. Plan sources, anchors, pace and budget
The campaign plan fits in a table: for each month, the target pages, the types of sources you are aiming for, the planned anchors and the budget. Three rules make it credible:
- Varied anchors. Mostly the brand, the site URL and descriptive wording, rarely the exact-match keyword. When every anchor is the same commercial keyword, the profile becomes artificial and loses its effect.
- Varied sources. Guest posts, niche directories, partners, media, and not just sponsored articles bought in the same place.
- A steady pace. Twenty links acquired in one week on a young site is as unnatural a signal as it is ineffective. Spread them out, in line with the competitors who are moving up.
7. Measure and adjust
Every month, compare the rankings of the target pages with the baseline, check that paid links are still live, and move budget toward the pages that respond. The metrics to track are detailed further down.
Types of links in a link building campaign
| Type of link | How to get it | Value | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural editorial link | Someone cites your content of their own accord | Highest | None |
| Guest post | You write for a site in your industry | High | Low if the anchor stays natural |
| Amplified brand mention | Press, partners, clients, suppliers | High | None |
| Niche directory | Listing, often paid | Medium | Low, high for mass directories |
| Sponsored article | Bought on a marketplace or directly | Variable | Medium |
| Link exchange | Reciprocal links between two sites | Low | Medium if systematic |
| Private blog network | Sites created or bought to sell links | None to negative | High |
The hierarchy is clear, and it is also the hierarchy of difficulty: the most useful links are the hardest to get. That is precisely what makes them valuable.
The only way to earn natural links continuously, without paying for each one, is to create a reason to be cited: a study, original data, a free tool, a reference guide. This work belongs to SEO content strategy as much as to link building, and it makes every other source easier to convince.
The 5 criteria of a good link
A useful link meets five conditions. None is enough on its own, and the raw authority of the domain, the one marketplaces put forward, only comes third in my grid.
1. Topical relevance
A link from a site that talks about your line of work is worth more than ten links from unrelated general sites. It is criterion number one, and it is the one marketplaces highlight least, because it limits their inventory.
2. Real traffic on the source site
A site with no visitors is a site that search engines rarely crawl and give little weight to. Always check the estimated organic traffic before buying, and be wary of domains with a high authority score but no audience at all: it is often the signature of a site that was bought and recycled to sell links.
3. Link placement
A link in the middle of a text that deals with the topic passes far more than a link in a footer or in a sidebar shown on thousands of pages. The simple rule: the link must have a reason to be there.
4. Anchor text
This is the clickable text. Google asks for anchor text that is descriptive, concise and relevant, with no keyword stuffing. A natural profile mixes your brand name, the site URL, descriptive phrases and sometimes neutral wording.
5. The landing page
The link must point to a page you want to move up, and whose topic matches that of the article citing it. A link to a page unrelated to the context passes little and gets noticed.
Before you buy or exchange anything, assess the opportunity. Fill in the five criteria and the tool tells you whether the link is worth the asking price.
How much does a link building campaign cost?
There is no public reference price list for the French market, where I work: each publisher sets its own price, site by site. The only sourced orders of magnitude I rely on are these.
| Source | What is measured | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Linkuma, a French platform | Price range of a backlink on marketplaces | From €7 to several hundred euros |
| Ahrefs, July 2024 article, English-language sites | Paid link insertion in an existing article (450 sites contacted) | $361.44 on average |
| Ahrefs, same article | Paid guest post (180 sites contacted) | $77.80 on average |
| Authority Hacker, cited by Ahrefs | Paid link, survey of 755 link building specialists | $83 on average |
In the same Ahrefs study, only 12.6% of the sites contacted agreed to sell a link. The sites that sell to everyone are rarely the most valuable ones.
What drives the price of a link
- The site's reputation and traffic: a national media outlet costs far more than a niche blog.
- The topic: industries with high commercial value (finance, insurance, real estate) are more expensive.
- The format: an article created for you, an insertion into an existing article, a partner page.
- The writing: included or up to you.
- The duration: link guaranteed for one year, several years, or with no commitment.
Estimate your campaign budget
The budget of a link building campaign is built from the audit, not from a package. Take the gap in referring domains to close against your competitors (step 2), multiply it by the average price observed for the target sources in your niche, then add writing, outreach time and tracking. A sample calculation, with made-up figures: if you are missing 20 referring domains and the target sources cost €150 on average, the purchase alone comes to €3,000 over the length of the campaign, excluding writing and time spent.
The free links from steps 4 and 5 narrow that gap before you spend anything. And if you are comparing with the cost of an ongoing engagement, my article on SEO pricing explains what makes the price of an SEO service vary.
Link building marketplaces: how to choose
Link buying marketplaces connect advertisers with publishers. In France, the best known include Paper Club, RocketLinks, SEMJuice, Getfluence and Linkuma. They make the process fast, but they also steer your choices toward what they have in stock.
Questions to ask before you use one:
- Does it show the sites' real organic traffic, or only an authority score?
- Is the topic filtering precise, or limited to broad categories?
- Do the sites listed have an audience beyond sponsored articles?
- Is the content written by you or mass-produced by the platform?
- Is the link guaranteed over time, and what happens if it disappears?
How I use them: I rely on them to spot sites, then I often contact the publisher directly. It is slower, cheaper, and the relationship gets you a real article rather than filler text.
Google's rules on links
Google defines link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate rankings. Its spam policies, updated on August 28, 2026, list in particular:
- buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, in exchange for money, goods, services or a free product;
- excessive link exchanges and partner pages created only to cross-link sites;
- links created by automated programs or services;
- paid advertorials whose links pass ranking credit, and optimized anchors in guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites;
- links from low-quality directories or bookmark sites;
- links widely distributed in the footers or templates of other sites, or hidden in widgets;
- forum comments with optimized links.
The same rules target expired domain abuse: buying an old domain to publish low-value content on it, only to benefit from its history. That is how many private blog networks work.
A paid link is not forbidden in itself: Google asks you to qualify it with the rel="sponsored" attribute (or nofollow). The rel="ugc" attribute is for links published by users, such as comments.
Since the December 2022 link spam update, Google says it uses SpamBrain, its AI-based spam detection system, to neutralize the effect of unnatural links and to detect both the sites buying links and the sites selling them. In other words, a detected artificial link can simply stop counting: the money is lost, with no warning.
What really puts you at risk
The risk is almost never a single link: it is a consistent set of signals, namely a profile that grows too fast, identical anchors, sites with no audience and inconsistent topics. One mediocre link will do nothing; a hundred mediocre links acquired in a month will stand out.
Should you disavow bad links?
In the vast majority of cases, no. Google writes that its disavow tool is not useful for most sites, and reserves it for sites with a considerable number of artificial links that have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action. Misused, it can do more harm than good. I only bring it out in one specific case: a site targeted by a malicious attack, with thousands of toxic links appearing within a few weeks.
Are nofollow links worth anything?
Yes, but perhaps not the way you think. They do not pass authority in the same way, but they bring real traffic and brand awareness, and they contribute to a natural profile. A profile made up of one hundred percent followed links is an anomaly in itself.
Link building and AI answer engines
When ChatGPT or Perplexity answer a recommendation question, they cite sources. Those sources are often comparison pages, niche directories and industry reference sites, in other words the sites a well-run link building campaign targets. The same effort can therefore have two effects: the link strengthens your authority for traditional SEO, and the mention makes you visible in generated answers.
The practical consequence is a shift in priorities. An industry directory that AI assistants cite regularly can be worth more than a high-authority general blog that nobody cites. To find these sources, use the method from my AI visibility audit: ask the questions your customers ask, and note the sites that keep coming up. A mention of your brand without a link can also count in those answers, as I explain in my guide on ChatGPT SEO.
Tracking a link building campaign: the metrics
This is where most services stay vague, because the right metric is demanding.
| Metric | What it tells you | When to check it |
|---|---|---|
| Rankings of the target pages on the target keywords | The result of the campaign | Before, then every month, review at 2 or 3 months |
| Distinct referring domains | Actual activity, more telling than the number of links | Every month |
| Lost or modified links | How durable what you paid for is | Every month |
| Referral traffic | Whether the links also bring visitors | Every month |
| Competitor rankings | Your progress, separated from a market-wide shift | Every month |
What not to measure: the number of links acquired. It is an activity metric, not a result. You can buy a hundred without moving up a single position.
Allow one to three months before you see anything. A link has to be discovered, crawled, then factored into the evaluation of the target page. Any promise of results within two weeks is a red flag.
A link building strategy on a small budget
If your budget is limited, the following order gives the best ratio of effort to results.
- Internal linking. Free, and often the most profitable of the five.
- The links you are owed. Partners, clients, suppliers, trade bodies. One email is enough.
- Two or three niche directories in your industry, ideally the ones AI assistants already cite.
- One guest post per quarter on a site in your niche.
- One piece of content worth citing, published once a year: a study, data, a tool.
This sequence costs almost nothing and builds a perfectly natural profile. It is slower than a link buying campaign, and far more solid. In the audits I run, the sites that hold their rankings over time are the ones that went about it this way.
If you want an outside view of your link profile before you spend, the SEO audit I carry out covers your site's authority and your competitors', and my SEO services handle the acquisition of topically relevant links.
Frequently asked questions
What is a link building strategy?
A link building strategy is the plan that sets which links to get, from which sites, to which pages, with which anchors, at what pace and on what budget. It starts from an audit of your link profile and your competitors', and is measured on the rankings of the target pages.
What is the difference between link building and a backlink?
A backlink is a link placed on another site and pointing to yours. Link building covers all the work of getting those links: audit, choice of sources, outreach, possible purchase and tracking. In France, this work is usually called netlinking.
How do you run a backlink audit?
Record the number of referring domains, the pages that receive links, the anchor text distribution, lost links and dubious sources. The Links report in Search Console gives a free first view. Ahrefs, Semrush or Majestic add history and comparison with competitors.
How much does a link building campaign cost?
It depends on the number of referring domains to gain and the price of the target sources. The French platform Linkuma puts the price of a backlink between €7 and several hundred euros, and Ahrefs found an average of $361.44 for a paid link insertion on English-language sites. Add writing, outreach and tracking.
How many links do you need per month?
There is no universal number. The right benchmark is the pace of the direct competitors who are moving up: if they gain three or four referring domains a month, that is your order of magnitude. Going much faster than an entire market is an unnatural signal.
Does Google ban buying links?
Google classifies buying or selling links that pass ranking credit as spam. A paid link is compliant if it carries the rel "sponsored" or "nofollow" attribute. Since December 2022, Google says it uses SpamBrain to neutralize the artificial links it detects, and the money invested is then lost.
How long before a link building campaign shows results?
Allow one to three months after the links go live: each link has to be discovered, crawled, then factored into the evaluation of the target page. Record rankings before the campaign and two to three months after. A promise of results within two weeks is a red flag.
Do your competitors really have better links?
Backlink audit, comparison with your competitors and a realistic campaign plan, page by page. Free quote.
Written by
Anthony Courtin
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