SEO · 11 min read
How to get backlinks: what earns them, and what is a link scheme
A link is a citation, and you cannot make anybody cite you. What you can do is become worth citing and then be findable by the people who would. This covers the methods that work, the honest cost of each, and the tactics Google’s published spam policies define as link schemes — with the reason each one is on that list.
Written by Zubair Afzal, FounderUpdated
The framing that matters
You cannot acquire a link, only earn a citation
A backlink is somebody deciding to point at you. That decision belongs to them, which is why the phrase "link building" quietly misleads: it describes an outcome as though it were a construction task with a schedule. It is closer to being cited in somebody else’s work — you can make yourself worth citing and easy to find, and then you wait.
This is why the market for links exists at all. Waiting is intolerable and the outcome is uncertain, so an industry grew up selling certainty instead. The certainty is the product, and it is manufactured by paying somebody to publish a link the publisher would not otherwise have written. That transaction is what the published policy describes as a link scheme, and the risk it creates sits on your domain rather than on the supplier’s.
The rest of this page follows that split. First, plainly, which common tactics the policy defines as schemes and why. Then the methods that genuinely earn references, with an honest account of what each costs and how unreliably it pays. There is no promise here about how many links any of it produces, because nobody can make one.
The published line
Tactics the spam policies describe as link schemes
These are not matters of taste. Each is described in Google’s spam policies as a link scheme, and each is still sold routinely, usually by people who will not put the description in writing.
The policy is worth reading directly rather than through anybody’s summary, including this one. What follows is a plain-language version of the tactics it names, with the reason each is there.
- Buying or selling links that pass ranking credit. This covers money, goods, services, and sending free products in exchange for a link. It is on the list because the link then reflects a payment rather than an editorial judgement, which is the only thing the signal was ever meant to represent.
- Excessive reciprocal linking. Two sites agreeing to link to each other, at scale, purely so both benefit. Occasional mutual references between genuinely related businesses are ordinary; a systematic exchange programme is not.
- Automated link creation. Programs and services that generate links across many sites. The output is indistinguishable from spam because that is what it is, and the accounts and pages it uses are frequently not yours to clean up later.
- Requiring a link as a condition of a contract or terms of service. A link somebody had to give you in order to use your product, receive a discount or complete a deal is not a citation, and the policy names this explicitly.
- Advertorials and paid articles that pass ranking credit. Paying a publication to run content containing links that carry credit. Paid placement is a normal advertising transaction; what makes it a scheme is not qualifying the link so it stops passing credit.
- Guest posting at scale primarily for links, particularly with keyword-rich anchor text. Writing for a publication whose readers matter to you is fine. Producing articles in volume as a delivery vehicle for anchor text is what the policy describes.
- Low-quality directory and bookmark submissions. Listings that exist to hold links rather than to be used by anybody. The tell is whether a human would ever visit the directory to find a supplier.
- Keyword-rich links distributed through widgets, badges or embeds. A calculator, badge or embeddable tool that carries an optimised link everywhere it is placed. The person embedding it did not choose the anchor text, which is the problem.
- Site-wide links in footers and templates across other people’s sites, including the developer credit repeated on every page of every site an agency has ever built, when it is keyword-rich and passes credit.
- Forum comments and signatures placed for ranking. Participating in a community is ordinary. Posting in order to leave optimised links in the post or the signature is named in the policy.
- Publishing your content on somebody else’s domain to borrow its ranking signals. The policy added site reputation abuse in 2024 to cover third-party pages hosted on an established site mainly to take advantage of its standing.
The work
How references are actually earned, in order
This sequence is unglamorous and it is the whole job. Note that outreach appears fourth, not first — it can only distribute something that already deserves to exist.
Find something only you can say
Go through what your business already records: job durations, failure and repeat-visit rates, price movements, seasonal patterns, application or approval outcomes, the questions customers ask most. You are looking for a fact that is unavailable elsewhere and that somebody writing about your field would need. Almost every business has several and considers all of them boring.
You get: A shortlist of facts nobody else can publish
Check that it is genuinely new
Search for it before you build anything. If three publications already state the same number, you are producing a fourth version of a settled fact and nobody needs it. If nothing comes back, or what comes back is a decade old or obviously guessed, you have found the gap. This step takes twenty minutes and prevents most wasted campaigns.
You get: Evidence that the fact is not already published
Publish it so it can be quoted and checked
State the number plainly and early, say where it came from, say how many cases it covers and over what period, and be explicit about what it does not show. A figure without a method is unusable to a careful writer, and careful writers are the ones whose references are worth having. Give the page a stable address you are not going to move.
You get: One page with the figure, the method and the limits stated
Take it to the people who would need it
Identify the specific writers, trade publications, associations, forums and community pages that cover this subject, and tell them what you found in three sentences. Not a pitch about your company: the fact, the method, and why it is new. Most will ignore you. The ones who reply do so because you handed them something they could not get elsewhere.
You get: A short, named contact list and a three-sentence note
Be reachable when somebody wants a comment
Name a person who can answer a question within the hour, on the record, about a defined set of subjects. Put their contact details somewhere findable rather than behind a form. This earns more coverage per hour than almost anything else and it fails almost entirely on operational grounds — the request arrives, the expert is in a meeting, the deadline passes.
You get: A named spokesperson, contactable, with agreed topics
Keep it current, and let it compound
Update the figure annually and say what changed. A number that is refreshed becomes the reference for that subject, and the references accumulate on one page rather than being spread across a series of one-off campaigns. This is the part that makes the whole exercise pay, and it is the part most programmes abandon after the first push.
You get: An annual update, dated, with the change described
What to build
Four kinds of thing people reference
These have different production costs and very different half-lives. Most businesses can start one of them this quarter without hiring anybody.
A number nobody else has
Counted from your own records, published with the method and the sample. Cheapest to produce and longest-lived, because a writer who needs the figure has nowhere else to go. It ages gracefully if you update it, which turns one page into a permanent reference rather than a campaign.
Something that works
A calculator, a checker, a template, a well-maintained reference table. Tools get referenced because they save the reader effort, and they keep earning references for years without further outreach. The cost is real: something that half works attracts nothing and is worse than not shipping it.
A definition of a mess
Fields with confusing rules, changing regulations or contested terminology reward whoever writes the clearest explanation and keeps it correct. The reference comes from other people needing somewhere to point when they do not want to explain it themselves.
A person who answers quickly
A named expert who can respond to a journalist within the hour on subjects agreed in advance. This produces the highest yield per hour of anything on this list, and it is an operations problem rather than a creative one, which is why so few businesses manage it.
Weighing it up
Five approaches, honestly compared
Two of these are slow and safe, one is fast and safe within limits, and two carry a liability whose timing you do not choose. All five are sold with equal confidence.
| Dimension | Who decides the link appears | Time to first result | What you carry afterwards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publishing original data | The writer who needs the figure. You supply the reason, not the decision. | Weeks to months, and it keeps arriving for years if the page is maintained. | An asset that has to be updated. No downside risk beyond the effort. |
| Building something usable | Anyone who found the tool useful enough to point at it. | Slow to start, then steady. Adoption is the constraint, not outreach. | A maintenance obligation. A broken tool costs you more than never shipping it. |
| Reactive expert comment | The journalist, on the day. You control only availability and quality. | Days, when the operational side is genuinely set up. | Nothing, provided the expert is real and the comment is defensible. |
| Sponsorship and memberships | You do — which is exactly why the link has to be qualified as paid. | Immediate, and the value is the audience rather than ranking credit. | A recurring cost. Safe when the link is qualified, a scheme when it is not. |
| Bought placements | Whoever was paid. The publisher would not have written it otherwise. | Fast, which is the entire appeal and the reason it keeps selling. | A liability on your domain, of unknown size, on a timetable you do not set. |
Related
Where to go next
If you are being sold something
If you want to do the work
Questions
The questions people ask before spending anything
Is buying links against the rules?
Buying a link that passes ranking credit is described directly in Google’s spam policies as a link scheme. That includes paying money, exchanging goods or services, and sending free products in return for a link.
Paying for placement is not itself forbidden. The published mechanism is to qualify the link with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" so it does not pass ranking credit. If a supplier objects to qualifying the link, they are selling you ranking credit, which is the part the policy prohibits.
Are guest posts allowed?
Writing for a publication whose readers you want to reach is ordinary marketing. What the policy describes as a scheme is producing posts at scale primarily to place links, particularly with keyword-rich anchor text, and advertorial content that passes ranking credit in exchange for payment.
The practical test is whether you would still write it if the link were removed. If the answer is no, you are buying a link with an article attached, and the article does not change what it is.
How many backlinks do we need?
There is no number, and any figure quoted at you is a sales device. Links vary enormously in what they represent, and a small number of genuine references from sites that are actually about your subject can matter more than hundreds of directory entries.
A more useful question is comparative and specific: for the handful of pages you need to compete on, who currently links to the pages that outrank you, and would any of those sources have a reason to reference you? That is a finite, answerable question. "How many links" is not.
Should we disavow the links a previous agency built?
Usually not, and the instinct to do so is stronger than the evidence for it. Search engines generally ignore links they do not trust rather than penalising the target, and the disavow tool is designed for the narrower situation where a manual action has been applied or is likely.
Check Search Console for a manual action first. If there is none, the money is almost always better spent earning references than removing old ones, and an over-broad disavow file can remove links that were doing you good.
Our industry is genuinely boring. What would anyone reference?
The thing you find unremarkable. Businesses sit on operational records that nobody outside can obtain: how long a job actually takes, how often something fails in year three, what a price did over five years, which months demand collapses.
That material is unremarkable internally because everybody sees it weekly, and it is unavailable anywhere else, which is the condition for being worth citing. It usually needs nothing more than being counted honestly and written up with the method stated.
Does a nofollow link have any value?
It has value that is not ranking credit, and that is worth being precise about rather than dismissive. It can send real visitors, it can be read by people deciding whether to trust you, and it contributes to the general record of what is said about your business.
What it does not do is what a link scheme is sold as doing. If a supplier is charging for authority and delivering qualified links, the pricing and the product do not match, and that is a fair thing to raise before renewal.
Find out what you already have that is worth citing
Most of this work starts with an hour going through what your business already records. If there is something publishable in there we will tell you what it is, and if there is not we will say so rather than sell you a campaign around nothing.
Related
Where to go next
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