Glossary

Link building

Earning or acquiring backlinks: quality and relevance matter.

Link building explained

Link building is any effort to get other websites to link to yours. At its best it's earning links by creating things worth referencing and telling the right people about them. At its worst it's buying, swapping or manufacturing links, which Google's spam policies treat as link spam.

How it affects trust

Links still help search engines judge which sites are trusted, and the right links send customers too. But small businesses rarely need big campaigns. They usually already have relationships that could turn into genuine links: suppliers, trade bodies, local groups, partners, clubs they sponsor and customers who run their own businesses.

For most small businesses, a handful of relevant links each year from real organisations does more than any campaign. The work is mostly relationship-building you'd want to do anyway.

Risky habits

Buying link packages or "guest post" bundles.
Excessive link swaps with unrelated sites.
Paying for links without marking them as sponsored.
Ignoring the easy local and partner links you could have for free.

A realistic example

A specialist bike shop runs free maintenance evenings for a local cycling club. The club's website lists the events and links to the shop. A regional cycling blog writes about the evenings, too. Neither link was asked for in exchange for money, and both bring riders through the door.

How to review yours

List the organisations you already work with and check whether they link to you. Many will be happy to, for example in a stockists or members list. Look at Search Console's Links report to see which pages earn links, and create more of that kind of content. Avoid anything that involves paying for a followed link.

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