Healthy Link Building Practices That Get You Noticed in 2026

Why on Earth Do I Need to Build Links?

You have created a website and you are posting about your products and services, now Google has no way of knowing whether what you are selling is trustworthy, but it has a system of finding out.

When you want to try out something new, say, a new skincare product, you don’t know yet if it is a good fit for you, so you ask people who have already used it and can vouch for it. Google does the same. When other webpages endorse your product, a search engine reads it as trustworthiness and pushes your page up on its SERP (Search Engine Result Page). This increases your traffic and engagement.

Let us discuss some link building practices that are beneficial, that work, and are reverent to Google’s policies. These are called White Hat Links.

White Hat Link Building Practices

1. Obtaining Links From Legitimate Pages

If you get backlinks from pages that are spammy, unsecure and low quality, your ranking will be hurt. Always read the spam policies of major search engines like Google and Bing to make sure that you are not indulging in any.

2. Obtaining Links From Relevant Pages

Your backlinks must be obtained from pages that organically and meaningfully cite yours. For example, getting a link from a page that talks about interior decoration when you are selling indoor plants. 

3. Editorially Placing the Link

It also must be editorially placed, meaning, its placement within the content should make sense. The content must not simply list it, it should contextualise it.

4. Being Transparent About A Sponsored Link.

Google strictly prohibits the buying, selling and the exchanging of goods and services for links. Doing so can get your content demoted or removed entirely from search results. You can however have a sponsored link which you will have to be very transparent about. 

To do it, you have to use the rel attribute in <a> tag of your page’s HTML. You can use this attribute to let google know about user generated content (ugc) and issue nofollow instructions as well. 

Example of a sponsored link encoded in HTML. 

<a rel=”sponsored”href=”https://sunscreen.example.com/SPF50_sunscreen”>SPF50</a>

Black Hat Link Building Practices 

Since backlinks are so crucial for SEO, there are organisations and individuals who misuse this. They get a large number of low quality, irrelevant and sometimes even spammy links, to manipulate their position. Be advised to never take a shortcut such as this, it can harm your page’s reputation and earn you penalties. 

1. Links that are Bought and Sold or Exchanged for Goods and Services

Google has a no tolerance policy for practices such as buying and selling of links or engaging in the exchange of goods and services for the purpose of obtaining a link. Some organisations send products to creators and ask them to write about it and include a link, this too is looked upon as link spam. As mentioned earlier, if your link is sponsored, you need to be transparent about it. 

2. Excessive Link Exchanges 

Google monitors from which pages you most obtain links, if it notices a pattern, it will flag your links as “unnatural”. Do not engage in “link to me and I will link to you” practices or have a partner page that exists only to provide you with backlinks. 

3. Having Link Exchange as a Part of Terms of Service or a Contract 

Whoever is linking to your page should have the autonomy to qualify the link. That is be able to explain its presence to the users and the search engines (the attaching of “sponsored” tag in HTML is an example of qualifying an outbound link to a search engine). Entering into a contract with a partner website that takes away their right to do this is considered spam. 

4. Hiding a Link 

Hiding a link behind an image, adding a link to a small character like a comma or a hyphen, writing a link in the same colour as the background, are all spammy practices. Steer clear of them 

5. Forum Comments With Optimized Links in the Post or Signature

You may not include an optimised link to your page in the comments of another page. Or use a link as your signature. 

• Example of an Optimised Link in the Comments Section

Amazing post, and I saw it on my new mobile from the best cellphone store in Andheri, DigitalHub.  

• Example of an Optimised Link as A Signature  

         Really glad that I read this, very informative!

        -Srijani

          Srijani’s Shawarma House, Hyderabad, best in the city 

Here are A Few Things You can Do to Organically and Ethically Build Links

Guest Posting

You can offer to contribute a blog to another website and include a link to your pages. Here’s how you can do it:

• Search “write for us” and mention your niche on google. Example: “write for us” indoor plants. 
• Visit the appropriate result
• Read the submission guidelines carefully.
• Go through the page’s previous blogs, to understand what style and flavour of content they prefer, to maximise your chance of getting published. 

Offer a Replacement to a Page’s Broken Link

Use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Screaming Frog to identify the broken links on other websites. Reach out to the website owners and offer to write replacement content. Remember that the content needs to be relevant. This is one of the most useful yet underrated strategies of obtaining a link. 

Use HARO (Help a Reporter Out) 

Haro is a platform that connects journalists and bloggers to subject matter experts.The person seeking knowledge on certain aspects puts up a query and the experts then send in their pitches explaining how they would answer the said question. If chosen, you get to write your piece and include a backlink to your profile or website. 

Press Releases

When something eventful happens at your agency, like the opening of a new wing, a new partnership, the offering of a new service and so on, you may pay an online newspaper to publish a press release. Undoubtedly, such a piece of media will contain a link to your site. 

Infographics and Visuals

Infographics and images are very shareable and every time a webpage includes an infographic or an image that your site has created or uploaded, they provide a link to the relevant pages of your site from whence the media has been taken. 

White Label Link Building Services

If you are a digital marketing agency and you want to offer link building services to your clients, but do not have the resources to hire an in-house team of link builders, you may take the help of external white label link building agencies.

These specialised agencies provide  “white label” links, which you can then repackage as your agency’s own product and provide your clients. 

Conclusion

Backlinks form the backbone of SEO. Therefore, link building must be taken seriously. Building links requires patience, consistency and an ability to craft compelling content, be it written or visual. 

This may sound a tad scary but it is nothing that a little bit of honest to goodness research and planning cannot overcome. Have faith in your product, write confidently and keep at it. And to know in depth about various digital marketing terms and strategies check out our blogs at gyaner.com, the official site of Hyderabad’s eminent digital marketing institute.