LLM Best Practices

Backlinks and link building

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Overview

Backlinks are the durable ranking signal Google has never fully replaced. The current shape of the signal is “referring domains, weighted by authority, with a clean anchor-text profile.” Chasing raw link counts, buying placements, or stuffing exact-match anchors all backfire under modern spam detection. Earn links by publishing something other sites have a reason to cite, and the count grows on its own.

Ten links from ten different sites move rankings more than one hundred links from one site. After the first link from a given domain, each additional link from that same domain delivers sharply diminishing returns. Optimize for the domain count, not the link count.

  • Track unique referring domains, not total backlinks, as the primary metric.
  • A site-wide footer link from one publisher counts as one domain, not as one link per page.
  • New referring domains in the last 90 days is the leading indicator; total domains is the lagging one.
  • A domain that links to you twice in a year is more valuable than ten new links from a single content farm.

Publish original research, reference tables, and data nobody else has

The most reliable link earners are pages other writers cite as the source. Three formats account for most natural links:

  • Original research: surveys, benchmarks, scrape-based studies, anything with a methodology section and a downloadable dataset.
  • Reference tables: comparison matrices, status code references, character encoding charts, anything writers cite mid-paragraph rather than rewrite.
  • Definitions for terms with no canonical source: when a glossary page becomes the de facto definition, it accrues links forever.

A 1,500-word listicle restating common knowledge earns few links. A 600-word page with one chart from data you collected earns links for years.

Broken-link building finds dead links on third-party sites pointing at topics you cover, then offers your page as the replacement. The conversion rate is high because the recipient is fixing a broken link, not adding a new one.

  • Use Ahrefs, Semrush, or a custom crawler to scan target sites for 404s in their outbound links.
  • Filter to pages on topics where you already have a strong page.
  • Email the editor with the broken link, the page it sits on, and your replacement URL.
  • Skip the pitch language. Two sentences are enough.

The win rate is 5 to 15 percent on cold outreach, higher when the page you offer is genuinely the best replacement.

Source citations through HARO and Connectively

Reporters and bloggers need expert quotes on tight deadlines. Connectively (the successor to HARO) is the standing marketplace for that exchange. Respond to queries that match real expertise; the placement comes with a contextual link from a publisher you would not reach by pitching cold.

  • Filter for queries where the byline and the publication match your beat.
  • Respond within two hours of the query opening; later responses rarely get used.
  • Provide the quote, the credential, and a one-line bio with the source URL.
  • Skip queries where the reporter wants a free product review; those rarely include a link.

Source citations stack with e-e-a-t because the author signal compounds across publications.

Disavow only after a manual action; otherwise ignore the tool

The disavow tool tells Google to ignore specific backlinks. Most sites should never use it. Google’s spam filters discount low-quality links on their own; a disavow file submitted preemptively can downweight links that were carrying positive signal.

  • Use disavow only after receiving a manual action notice in Search Console.
  • Never disavow because a third-party SEO tool flagged links as “toxic.” Those tools have no access to Google’s actual scoring.
  • The disavow file is a plain text upload via the Disavow Tool; one domain or URL per line.
  • Once submitted, expect 4 to 8 weeks before Google re-crawls and applies the change.

Paid links violate Google’s link spam policies and trigger demotion on detection. The rule is unconditional: any link bought for SEO purposes carries the same risk.

  • Sponsored content, paid product reviews, and influencer placements get rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".
  • Affiliate links get rel="sponsored".
  • User-generated content (comments, forum posts) gets rel="ugc".
  • Link insertions sold through outreach agencies are the highest-risk category; the agency’s footprint is what Google detects, not yours alone.

The publisher pays the penalty as well as the buyer. Reject inbound link-buying offers and report the persistent ones.

Anchor-text mix matters more than any single link

Over-optimized anchor text is one of the cleanest spam signals. A page where 40 percent of inbound anchors are “best CRM software” is flagged; a page where 10 percent are exact-match, 30 percent are partial-match, 30 percent are branded, and 30 percent are generic looks natural.

  • Track the anchor-text distribution across the inbound link profile.
  • When the exact-match ratio drifts above 15 percent, stop building exact-match anchors.
  • Branded anchors (“Example Corp,” “according to Example”) are the safest filler.
  • Generic anchors (“click here,” “this page”) are weak but neutral.

Internal links from high-authority pages on your own domain pass ranking signal the same way external links do. A new page with no external backlinks but five internal links from the highest-authority pages on the site can rank.

  • Link from the homepage, the relevant section index (MOC), and three to five sibling pages on every new publication.
  • Use descriptive anchor text on internal links; the exact-match risk is lower internally than externally.
  • See internal-linking for the topic-cluster pattern and content-clusters for the hub-and-spoke model.

Common errors

  • Chasing high-DA links from off-topic sites. A DA-90 link from a casino site to a SaaS page is worth less than a DA-30 link from a directly relevant site. Topical relevance compounds the authority weight.
  • Exact-match anchor stuffing. Triggers an algorithmic penalty within weeks of the threshold breach.
  • Counting links instead of referring domains. The link count keeps climbing while the rankings stall.
  • Preemptive disavow uploads. Drops links that were helping; takes months to undo.
  • Buying placements through “guest post” agencies. Same penalty as direct link buys; detection is improving every year.
  • Ignoring internal links. The site has authority concentrated on the homepage and a few old pages; new pages never inherit it.

Graph View

Backlinks