How to Build Backlinks That Actually Move the Needle
Written by Gabriel Bertolo
June 2, 2026
I’m going to be blunt about something the SEO industry doesn’t like to admit.
Most backlink strategies are a waste of money.
Businesses spend thousands of dollars a month on link-building campaigns that produce dozens of links from sites nobody has heard of, with no topical relevance, no real traffic, and no editorial intent behind the placement. Then they wonder why their rankings aren’t improving.
The problem isn’t that backlinks don’t matter. They absolutely do.
The #1 result in Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2 through #10. And 95% of all pages on the internet have zero backlinks. Source: Backlinko
That gap is massive. The sites that earn quality links dominate. The sites that don’t are invisible. But “more links” is not the answer. Better links are the answer. And understanding the difference is what separates SEO that works from SEO that bleeds money.
Google’s Gary Illyes said in 2024 that links are no longer a “top three” ranking factor and that Google needs “very few links” to rank pages. The SEO world lost its mind.
But here’s what actually happened when researchers looked at the data instead of the soundbite.
The 2024 Semrush ranking factors study confirmed that earning backlinks from unique domains remains important at both the page and domain levels. Backlinko’s analysis of 11.8 million search results showed the same thing. Every large-scale ranking study conducted in the last two years shows a strong positive correlation between backlinks and rankings.
What Google actually meant is that they got better at detecting manipulation. Mass directory submissions, PBN links, paid placements on irrelevant sites. Those links are less important because Google devalues or ignores them. But genuine, editorial, topically relevant backlinks from authoritative sources? Those still carry enormous weight.
And here’s the piece most SEO companies miss entirely. Backlinks aren’t just links. They’re entity relationships. When an authoritative entity in your industry links to you, it’s third-party validation that you can’t manufacture yourself. It’s another entity saying, “this source is credible and worth referencing.” Search engines understand that distinction. And so do AI platforms.
This is foundational to how we approach SEO at Radiant Elephant. We don’t build links. We build entity relationships that earn links.
A relevant link from a DR 30 site in your industry outperforms an irrelevant link from a DR 70 site. Every time.
Search engines evaluate whether the link makes contextual sense. A plumber getting a backlink from a plumbing trade publication is a natural entity relationship. A plumber getting a backlink from a cryptocurrency blog is noise. Even if the crypto blog has a higher domain authority.
The SEO industry has been obsessed with Domain Rating and Domain Authority scores for years. Those metrics are useful shorthand, but they tell you almost nothing about whether a link will actually help. Relevance is the variable that matters most.
Links embedded in body content as genuine editorial endorsements carry more weight than footer links, sidebar links, or directory listings. A journalist referencing your research in an article is an editorial decision. A link in a paid directory listing is not.
The test I always apply: would this link exist if SEO didn’t? If the answer is yes, it’s a real editorial endorsement. A journalist would have cited you regardless. An industry peer would have referenced your data regardless. That’s the standard.
If the link only exists because someone paid for it or traded for it, it’s manufactured. And manufactured links are increasingly a liability.
Natural link profiles look messy. And that messiness is a trust signal.
A natural anchor text distribution looks something like this: 40-50% branded anchors (your company name), 20-30% generic anchors (“click here,” “this article,” “learn more”), 15-25% partial match anchors (variations of your target keywords), and 5-10% exact match anchors (your specific target keyword).
Over-optimizing exact match anchors is one of the fastest ways to trigger a penalty. If 60% of your backlinks use the exact same anchor text, that’s a manipulation signal. No natural link profile looks like that.
Sudden spikes in backlink acquisition look manipulative because they usually are. A site that goes from 5 referring domains to 500 in a month raises flags. Steady, gradual growth over time signals organic authority building.
This is why “buy 100 links this month” campaigns are fundamentally flawed, even when the links themselves are decent. The pattern is wrong.
This is the strategy nobody wants to hear because it requires actual work. But it’s the only strategy that compounds over time.
Original research, proprietary data, comprehensive guides, free tools. If your content doesn’t add something new, nobody has a reason to link to it. A “10 Tips for Better SEO” blog post that says the same thing as 500 other posts will never earn a link. A study that analyzes 1,000 local business websites and reveals what separates the top performers and what gets cited.
Long-form content generates significantly more links than short content because it covers topics comprehensively enough to become a reference. Our guide to SEO for small and mid-sized businesses is a good example of this. It exists to be the definitive resource on the topic.
HARO (now Connectively), expert commentary for journalists, and being available as a quotable source in your industry. This is how you earn links from major publications without paying for them.
This is how I’ve been quoted in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, HubSpot, and Shopify. Not by buying placements. Not by running a link-building campaign. By responding to journalist queries quickly with genuinely useful insights and being the kind of source they want to come back to.
Every small business owner has expertise that journalists need. A local contractor knows more about building code issues in their region than any national reporter. A therapist understands insurance billing challenges better than a healthcare journalist. That expertise has value. Use it.
For local businesses, local links carry outsized weight because they validate your geographic entity.
Chamber of commerce memberships. Local business association directories. Sponsoring community events. Getting featured in local media. Partnering with complementary local businesses.
A link from your regional newspaper validates your local entity more than a link from a national blog. A link from your city’s chamber of commerce confirms that you’re a real business embedded in the community. These signals matter enormously for ranking in Google Maps and the local Map Pack.
Sometimes your brand gets mentioned online without a link. A client references you in a testimonial on their site. A blogger mentions your business in a list. A journalist quotes you but doesn’t link.
Set up Google Alerts or Ahrefs Alerts for your brand name. When you find unlinked mentions, reach out politely and ask if they’d add a link. The conversion rate on these requests is high because the person already thought enough of you to mention you. The link is a small ask.
Not guest posting on “write for us” farms that accept anything with a pulse. That’s a link scheme, not a strategy.
I’m talking about contributing genuinely valuable content to authoritative publications in your space. Writing for your local business journal. Contributing expert analysis to an industry trade publication. Providing insights for a professional association newsletter.
The goal isn’t collecting links. The goal is to build entity relationships with authoritative sources that reinforce your expertise and position in your industry’s knowledge graph.
Here’s something that isn’t getting enough attention yet. Backlinks don’t just help you rank in Google. They directly influence whether you get cited in AI search results.
76.1% of pages cited in Google AI Overviews also rank in Google’s top 10 organic results. Source: Ahrefs
That’s a strong signal that traditional ranking factors, including backlinks, directly correlate with AI citation likelihood. If you want to show up when ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews generate an answer about your industry, you need to be ranking well in traditional search first. And quality backlinks are a primary driver of those rankings.
Semrush’s latest analysis found a direct correlation between higher Authority Scores and increased brand mentions in AI-generated responses. The correlation for link quality specifically was the strongest relationship in the entire study.
This is why we approach backlinks as a core component of our Generative Engine Optimization strategy. The GEO results we achieved for a national B2B manufacturer, taking their Domain Rating from 21 to 35 and earning the #1 AI search position ahead of FDA.gov, were built on strategic link acquisition combined with content and technical SEO.
Backlinks build the domain authority and entity signals that AI platforms use to determine which sources deserve citation. The businesses that invest in this now will own AI search visibility in their markets. The ones that wait will be playing catch-up for years.
I see these mistakes constantly. And the damage they cause is real.
Buying links from link farms or private blog networks (PBNs). These sites exist solely to sell links. They have no real audience, no editorial standards, and no authority. Google has gotten very good at identifying these networks and devaluing or penalizing sites that use them.
Mass directory submissions to irrelevant sites. Submitting to 200 random directories is not a link-building strategy. It’s busywork that produces low-quality signals.
Excessive link exchanges at scale. “I’ll link to you if you link to me” is fine when it’s natural. When it’s systematic and scaled across dozens of sites, it’s a link scheme.
AI-generated “link-building” sites. There’s been a surge in sites built by AI solely to sell backlinks. They look real at first glance but have no genuine audience, no real content, and no authority. Links from these sites are worthless at best and toxic at worst.
Exact match anchor text manipulation. If every backlink to your site uses the same keyword as anchor text, that’s an obvious manipulation signal.
The test is always the same. Would this link exist if SEO didn’t? If no, it’s manufactured. And manufactured links are increasingly a liability.
There is no shortage of backlink vendors. And back in the day, you could buy a bunch of links off of Fiverr and be in good shape. Those days are long gone. Even backlinks from top backlink providers are low-quality these days.
I’ve spent untold amounts of money over the years testing out different backlink vendors. And most of them fail my test. My research has led me to the conclusion that most backlinks you can buy are placed on websites that exist solely to sell links. Many of these are PBNs, or old domains that were bought and rebuilt.
So how can you evaluate a backlink you bought from a vendor?
Is the link on a topically relevant site, or just a topically relevant post?
If you’re a plumber, you want a link on a website that is completely dedicated to plumbing. You don’t want a link on a generalist website on a post about plumbing. Topical and geographical relevance are crucial.
Does the website get any traffic?
Many backlink vendors sell links according to metrics like the number of referring domains, the Domain Authority, etc. And these are all fine, but if the site has a lot of backlinks and a high DA and gets no traffic, it’s a clear sign that it’s a site built just to sell links. A low-traffic site will not do much for your SEO efforts. And these kinds of low-quality sites get penalized often, so you could pay $100 for a link that might not be there tomorrow. Unfortunately, most backlink vendors don’t supply traffic info, so you have to test it out, buy a link, and check the metrics.
Is the site healthy?
The biggest indicator of an unhealthy site and a bad link is when the website’s historical data shows huge traffic drops. This indicates the site got hit by a core update. If the website itself is being punished by Google, a link from it is not going to help you.
If the site does get traffic, what does it rank for?
If there is website traffic, you need to look at what the site is actually ranking for. If you own a restaurant and the site you get a link from is only ranking for blue widgets, that link will not reinforce your entity and your topic. Another great trick is to go into Ahrefs and look at the top pages for the site you got a link from. This gives a good idea of how Google and AI understand the site’s topics.
What should you look for when buying backlinks?
There are times we need to buy links. So many white hat SEOs preach against it, but they all do it too. So what do you want to see in a link? The most important is the site’s overall topic and whether it has any geographic relevance. I’d rather buy a link with a low DA that is all about the niche and/or location than a high DA site that is unrelated. Secondly, you want to look at: the number of Referring Domains (more is better), the organic traffic, and historical traffic data.
Before you build more links, understand what you already have.
Use Ahrefs, Semrush, or Google Search Console’s Links report to see your current referring domains. Look at the diversity of sources, the topical relevance of linking sites, and the quality trends over time.
96.55% of all pages on the internet get zero organic traffic from Google, mostly because they have zero backlinks. Source: Ahrefs
If your backlink profile is thin, start building. If it’s full of low-quality or toxic links, start cleaning. If it’s a mix, prioritize earning high-quality editorial links while disavowing obvious spam.
What I look for in a technical SEO audit is the ratio of earned editorial links to self-built links. If the profile is dominated by directory listings, forum links, and comment spam, but has very few genuine editorial citations, that tells me the entity hasn’t been validated by third parties. And without third-party validation, rankings will always be fragile.
You can see examples of how we’ve built link profiles that actually drive results in our SEO case studies.
Do backlinks still matter for SEO in 2026?
Yes. Every large-scale ranking study still shows a strong correlation between backlinks and rankings. What’s changed is that quality and relevance matter far more than quantity. Ten editorial links from relevant, authoritative sites will outperform 1,000 links from irrelevant directories.
How many backlinks do I need to rank?
There’s no universal number. It depends entirely on the competitiveness of your target keywords and the strength of the sites already ranking. The #1 result typically has 3.8x more backlinks than positions #2-#10. Focus on quality over quantity.
Are nofollow links worth anything?
Yes. Nofollow links don’t pass direct PageRank, but they drive referral traffic, build brand awareness, and contribute to your entity’s recognition across the web. A nofollow link from the New York Times is still extremely valuable.
How long does it take for a backlink to impact rankings?
On average, about 3 months. High-authority links from DR 70+ sites may show movement in weeks. Cluster-level link building often compounds over 3-6 months.
Should I buy backlinks?
It depends on the links. Most backlinks you buy will have no effect or a negative effect. We do buy backlinks when needed, but we have a few very select vendors we use for high-quality links that have a positive effect.
If your backlink profile is thin, toxic, or dominated by low-quality links, that’s a problem with a solution. But the solution isn’t buying more links. It’s building the kind of entity that earns them.
That starts with a clear assessment of where you are and where the opportunities are. Schedule a strategy call, and I’ll walk you through what your backlink profile looks like, what your competitors are doing, and what it would take to close the gap.
For the complete picture of how link building fits into a broader SEO and GEO strategy, read our guide to SEO for small and mid-sized businesses.
Gabriel Bertolo is a 3rd generation entrepreneur who founded Radiant Elephant over 13 years ago after working for various advertising and marketing agencies.
He is also an award-winning Jazz/Funk drummer and composer, as well as a visual artist.
His Web Design, SEO, and Marketing insights have been quoted in Forbes, Business Insider, Hubspot, Entrepreneur, Shopify, MECLABS, and more.
Check out some publications he's been quoted in:
Quoted in HubSpot's AI Search Visibility Article and HubSpot's Article on 6 Best Wix Alternatives
Quoted in DesignRush Dental Marketing Guide
Quoted in MECLABS
Quoted in DataBox Website Optimization Article and DataBox Best SEO Blogs
Quoted in Seoptimer
Quoted in Shopify Blog