March 6, 2026
A strong link building strategy is crucial to improving your search engine rankings and increasing your online visibility. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of link building, best practices, and helpful tips to build a strong link profile. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to improve your existing strategy, we’ll provide valuable insights to help you rank higher in Google. Read on to learn how to optimize your link building!
Table of Content
- What is link building and why is it important?
- Technique and content form the foundation of your linkbuilding strategy
- The basic principles of a good linkbuilding strategy
- Factors of a natural link profile
- Do's and Don'ts
- The best linkbuilding strategies
- Which tools will help you achieve the best linkbuilding strategy?
- Frequently asked questions
What is linkbuilding and why is it important?
Linkbuilding is the process of collecting external links that point to your website. These backlinks act as recommendations for search engines like Google. When reputable websites link to your page, Google interprets this as a signal that your content is valuable and trustworthy. This can lead to higher positions in the search engine results (SERP).
Linkbuilding directly contributes to the authority of your website. The more high-quality and relevant backlinks you collect, the greater the chance that your website will become more visible to potential visitors. In a competitive market, this can make the difference between being untraceable or being at the top of the search results.
In 2026 link building is no longer just about blue links. With the arrival of AI Overviews and Generative Engine Optimization or GEO the context surrounding a backlink is extremely important. AI models use this text to understand what your brand stands for. Even an unlinked brand mention without a direct link now has massive SEO value because it confirms your company as a real entity.
Technique and content form the foundation of your link building strategy
To get the most out of link building, we recommend paying attention to the other SEO pillars: content and technical. For example, think of a clear and well-organized internal link structure of your website. The most important pages may be a maximum of one or two clicks away from the homepage. This ensures an optimal flow of authority from the main page to the (category) pages that you want to have at the top in Google. Customers regularly contact us who want to use link building on pages with little content (text and images). Our advice is always - provide the searcher with the desired content and especially the search intent of the search query. The more complete you are in your answer to the searcher, the faster you will achieve top rankings.
The basic principles of a good linkbuilding strategy
Once the content and technical aspects of your website are in order, you can start linkbuilding. A strong linkbuilding strategy is based on obtaining backlinks from reliable and relevant websites. The authority of the website that links to your site has a direct influence on the value of the link. Below you can see the basic principles of a good linkbuilding strategy:
Relevance
Get links from websites that are thematically related to your niche or topic. For example, if you have a health website, links from medical blogs, sports sites, or health websites would be especially valuable. However, a link from a website about auto parts would be less relevant.
Authority
Links from high-authority websites contribute greatly to the credibility of your site. Major news websites or influential blogs in your field have a positive influence on the perception of your website.
Besides a high authority score real human traffic has become the most important metric in 2026. Due to the rapid rise of AI texts the internet is flooded with websites that have a high score but absolutely no real visitors. A backlink from a website with active readers is now the absolute standard to prevent you from placing links on useless spam networks.
Diversity in links
Create a diverse and natural link profile by getting links from different domains and a mix of dofollow and nofollow links. For example, getting links from both a reputable blog and a smaller niche site will create a more natural link profile, whereas only links from large sites can appear unnatural.
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Factors of a natural link profile
For a strong and natural link profile, we generally use a pyramid structure, where the top contains the most powerful, but hardest to obtain links. However, these do not form the basis of your profile. As you go further down, the links become easier to obtain and offer more space for commercial anchor texts, which is more difficult with PR links, for example. However, the type of backlinks is not the only thing that determines the naturalness of your link profile. Below we explain the different factors. If you ignore these, you run the risk of penalties from search engines, such as lower rankings or even removal from the index.
Type of backlink
There are different types of backlinks, such as business listings, in-content links from blog posts, and affiliate listings. Each link has a different value and difficulty to obtain. Business or affiliate listings are often useful for new websites, but pass less value than links in blog posts, which provide more context and are therefore more valuable to Google.
Inbound Links Ratio
The ratio of incoming links to the domain level versus the page level is important. It is good to get links to both the homepage and specific pages. A healthy ratio is 50% links to the homepage and 50% to subpages. Too many links to subpages can look unnatural to Google.
Anchor text division
An anchor text is the text to which a link is attached, such as "Click here". There are different types of anchor texts:
- Branded: Brand name, for example "Seeders".
- Naked: The URL of the page, for example "https://seeders.com".
- Commercial: Keyword you want to score on, for example "Get higher in Google".
A good link profile contains a mix of these types of texts, with branded texts predominating. An excess of commercial anchor texts can appear unnatural.
Content on external website
There are a few important questions to ask about the content on the referring website:
- How many pages does the website have?
- How many words does the content contain?
- What language is the text written in? I
- s the content relevant to my website?
More text often means more valuable information. The language of the content should also fit your target group, for example a Dutch website with Dutch texts.
Total do-follow percentage
A do-follow backlink is followed by search engines, which transfers value. It is good to have between 70% and 90% do-follow links in your profile. No-follow links are also important for a natural link profile, because not every website wants to contribute to your rankings.
TLD of referring websites
TLD stands for Top Level Domain, such as .nl, .com, or .be. If you are targeting a specific market, such as the Netherlands, you want backlinks from .nl domains. A mix of national and international backlinks is fine, but the majority should be relevant to your target audience.
Referring IP addresses of websites
The number of referring IP addresses should be spread out as much as possible. If many links come from websites on the same IP address, Google may consider this as manipulation. It is better if the number of referring domains is equal to the number of referring IP addresses to maintain a natural link profile.
Do's and Don'ts
Do’s by Linkbuilding
Always choose quality over quantity. It is better to have a few links from reliable and relevant websites than hundreds of links from random or unknown pages. Also make sure to vary your link profile. This means that you get links from different types of websites, such as blogs, news platforms or company websites. This prevents search engines from seeing your website as manipulative.
Don'ts by Linkbuilding
Stay away from link farms and cheap link packages. These are services that promise to build a lot of links quickly, but often they work with unreliable or irrelevant websites. Search engines recognize this and can penalize your website. Also, don't use the same keywords too often as anchor text (the clickable text of a link). Variation is important to show that you are collecting links in a natural way. Finally, avoid links from websites that look unreliable or are full of spam, as these can damage your reputation and visibility.
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The best link building strategies
Digital PR
Digital PR is all about creating newsworthy content that you send to journalists and media via press releases. Because traditional links are increasingly automated Google sees links via national media and Digital PR campaigns in 2026 as the ultimate proof of human reliability. This has made it the most important and future proof tactic for brands.
Link earning
The most natural and long-lasting linkbuilding strategy is link earning, where you create great content that naturally makes people link to your website. This is exactly what Google likes to see, but it can be difficult to get right.
Guest blogging
Writing guest blogs on external websites offers an excellent opportunity to get valuable in content backlinks. In 2026 Google looks strictly at who wrote the article within the E E A T guidelines. A link in an article by a recognized expert with a strong online author profile passes on much more value than an anonymously posted piece.
Buy backlinks
Although Google does not like buying backlinks, it remains a popular strategy, provided you choose quality links. Websites, such as national media, often offer sponsored articles in which you can place links. This can be expensive, but the value of such a link can be enormous.
Swap links
Link exchange is a classic technique where you exchange links with other websites. Make sure that the website you exchange with is relevant and has sufficient SEO value, otherwise it can harm your ranking instead of improving it.
Infographics
Visual content, such as infographics, is shared frequently and can quickly generate many backlinks. Make sure people credit the original source when sharing your infographic. Infographics can be a powerful tool to increase your online visibility.
Skyscraper technique
The Skyscraper technique involves finding existing popular content and then creating a better, more comprehensive version. By approaching the authors of the original content, you can convince them to link to your improved version, which will give you more valuable backlinks.
Broken linkbuilding
Broken linkbuilding is where you look for broken links on websites you would like to get a link to. Then you ask the webmaster to replace the dead link with a working link to your content. This is a smart way to get backlinks without competition, as long as you offer valuable and relevant content.
Add links yourself
Adding links to your own website can be a quick way to collect backlinks. This can be done on homepages, forums, and social media. The downside, however, is that these links often have less value, because they are usually marked as "nofollow", which means that search engines do not follow them.
Which tools will help you achieve the best link building strategy?
To determine a good strategy, you can use different systems. Tools such as Ahrefs, SEMrush and Moz help analyze link profiles, find valuable backlinks and track rankings. Google Search Console provides insight into your existing links and performance. However, these tools can be expensive, which makes them less accessible for smaller companies or novice SEO specialists.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have questions about link building? We have the answers. Short, clear and exactly what you need to know to score higher in Google.
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