Link Building
The practice of actively acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own through outreach, content creation, partnerships, and digital PR. Link building increases domain authority and improves organic search rankings.
Link building is the proactive effort to earn backlinks that improve your site's search authority. Effective strategies include creating original research that journalists and bloggers cite, guest posting on relevant industry publications, building tools or resources that others want to link to, digital PR campaigns tied to newsworthy data or events, and broken link building where you offer your content as a replacement for dead links.
For growth teams, link building should align with business goals rather than being pursued for SEO metrics alone. The best link building strategies also drive direct referral traffic, build brand awareness, and establish thought leadership. Measure link building effectiveness not just by the number of links acquired but by the impact on rankings and organic traffic for target keywords. Avoid paid link schemes, private blog networks, and excessive reciprocal linking, as these violate Google's guidelines and risk penalties. Focus on building genuine relationships with publications and creating content so valuable that linking to it benefits the linker's audience.
Related Terms
Core Web Vitals
A set of three Google-defined metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability. Core Web Vitals are a confirmed ranking factor in Google Search.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
A Core Web Vital that measures the time from page load start until the largest visible content element (image, video, or text block) is rendered on screen. Good LCP is 2.5 seconds or less.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
A Core Web Vital that measures the latency of all user interactions (clicks, taps, keyboard input) throughout the page lifecycle, reporting the worst interaction. Good INP is 200 milliseconds or less.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
A Core Web Vital that measures the total amount of unexpected layout shifts that occur during a page's entire lifespan. Good CLS is 0.1 or less, where layout shifts are calculated from the impact and distance of moving elements.
Time to First Byte (TTFB)
The duration from the user's request to the first byte of the server response reaching the browser. TTFB measures server-side processing speed and network latency, directly impacting all subsequent loading metrics.
Crawl Budget
The number of pages a search engine bot will crawl on your site within a given timeframe, determined by crawl rate limit and crawl demand. Crawl budget optimization ensures important pages are discovered and indexed efficiently.