Link Building: What It Is, How It Works and What to Expect From It

An offer for link building arrives sooner or later in every company inbox. It tends to contain a number, the word “package” and a promise of Google rankings. This text is about what really hides behind that word – and how to tell whether somebody is selling you work, or just rows in a spreadsheet.

What it is

Link building is the work of getting other websites to link to yours. It is sometimes called building backlinks. The reason is simple: search engines and language models read a link as a recommendation from a third party. A website nobody links to looks, to them, like a website nobody knows about.

The word “building” is essential in the name. It is not a one-off purchase but the gradual creation of a situation in which there is a reason for somebody to write about you. Whoever treats it as shopping ends up with a list of addresses. Whoever treats it as building ends up with a media profile that works for them by itself two years on.

How it runs

An honest cooperation has five phases. They need not be called this, but all of them must be there.

Two of them deserve elaboration, because that is where it most often breaks:

• Media selection (step 2). Demand a list of specific websites with prices and parameters before ordering. If you do not get one, you are not buying links but a promise. “Websites with DA 40+” is not a list.
• Measurement (step 5). Agree on it in advance: your own tagged link so you recognize visits from the article in analytics, and one specific question you will ask yourself in six months. Without that, a year later you are arguing from impressions.

What you pay for

The price of link building consists of three items. A reasonable offer has them itemized.

When you see just one number for a “package” in the offer, you do not know how much of it goes to the media and how much into the margin. That by itself is not fraud – an agency has a right to a margin for the work done – but it is a reason to ask where the publication will actually run.

How many links a company needs

Fewer than expected. According to an Ahrefs analysis of roughly a billion pages, 66.3% of them have not a single link from a foreign domain and another 26.3% have one to three. The bar is low – a handful of links from relevant media puts you above the average of your surroundings. We summarized the other numbers, caveats included, in the overview of what the studies say.

A reasonable annual plan for a smaller company looks more like three to six well-chosen publications than fifty links from nowhere. The cost is similar, the result incomparable.

How long it takes

Link building is not a performance channel. Almost nothing happens in the first weeks, the effect adds up over months and then stays. A reasonable horizon for evaluation is three to six months from publication.

Whoever promises rankings within a month is either not telling the truth or selling something else. And whoever guarantees a specific position in Google guarantees something they do not control – not even Google itself can do that.

Who should do it

In practice there are three options and each has its price:

1. An agency. Delivers everything including strategy and reporting, and charges a margin for it. Makes sense when you have neither the capacity nor the overview and want a single partner.
2. A marketplace. You see the media, parameters and prices up front and order yourself in one place. The calling round of newsrooms and ten invoices from ten suppliers disappear, but the selection and the texts stay with you or your copywriter.
3. By yourself. Cheapest in money, most expensive in time. Realistic mainly when the company has something to say and somebody in it can write.

Whatever you choose, the questions stay the same: where will it run, how many readers does it have, will it stay online and how will I know it worked.

The most common mistakes

• “The more links, the better.” That has not held for years. Ten links from websites without readers are a worse investment than three from the right media.
• “Doing it once is enough.” The competition carries on. A media profile is maintenance, not a big purchase once every five years.
• “Link building is just SEO.” Not any more. Mentions in trustworthy sources are what AI assistants build answers from – and that is where it is decided whether they name you at all.
• “A link to the homepage is enough.” The visitor comes from an article about a specific problem and lands on a generic front page. Link to the page that follows on from the text.

Four questions to vet an offer with

1. Which specific websites are they? A list up front, not after payment.
2. How many readers do they have and who are they? Not just a domain authority number – that can be inflated.
3. Will the article stay online permanently? And what if the medium deletes it?
4. How will it be measured? A specific metric and date, not “you will see it in the rankings”.

When all four get a specific answer, you are dealing with someone who understands the work. When not, you save yourself money and half a year of waiting – a detailed list of warning signs is in the article about buying links. And if you are considering a publication in a medium specifically, read what to expect from a PR article.