The Data-Backed Guide To SEO Link Building Techniques 2025

Entering the search engine optimization (SEO) space is one of the best decisions you could make for your business. In a time where competition is tough online, and there are more businesses than ever in every imaginable niche, finding a way to break through the crowd and come out on top is completely necessary. SEO can help you get there – it may be a long journey, but the road is one to success. Of those SEO techniques that will be part of this, whether you do the research yourself or get an expert’s advice, you’ll discover that link building is one area that brings triumphant results to your overall SEO efforts and is worth looking into.

However, to get these results, you have to put the hard work in, which involves learning what SEO link building techniques there are, how they work, and the benefits they offer. If you want to carry out your link building campaign rather than reach out to experts to run the entire thing, you must learn at least the top 10 link building techniques. Even if you outsource all your campaign work, some knowledge of these techniques and what works best for your industry can pay off in the long run – you will understand the reasons behind any suggestions the experts make and keep your eye open for positive results.

A link building technique is a specific process designed to get you a backlink to your website from another third-party site. You may hear link building techniques referred to as strategies, but they are the same thing and will be what helps you succeed with building backlinks. Without a technique to follow, you may struggle to earn the high-quality links you need to improve your SEO, instead finding yourself with spammy and low-quality links that harm your SEO. The alternative to spammy links is getting no links at all. Either scenario is something you want to avoid. The consequences revolve around not making any money back from your investment and putting yourself in a worse position on the search engine results pages (SERPs).

There isn’t just a single way to get backlinks – there are many techniques, meaning you have a choice regarding how you invest your money! While each link building approach differs, they all result in you earning a backlink if executed properly. You will want to familiarize yourself with each available method to decide which type suits your business the best – you may determine a combination is the best way forward if you have the budget.

There are at least 10 types of link building you should be aware of. However, you do not need to be concerned with learning all 10 right now. You can build these up over time. When you receive the return on investment from the initial techniques you try, you can pump this back into more complex strategies. To begin with, you will want to first focus on these 6 types of link building techniques:

1. Editorial links (the ones that you commission)
2. Editorial links (the ones that you gain naturally)
3. User-generated links
4. Digital PR
5. Listicles
6. Broken Link Building

As you build up your links, you will eventually want to move on to techniques like:

1. Skyscraper (or resource) link building
2. Niche Edits
3. Unlinked Mentions
4. Link Reclamation

Knowing more about these 6 types of links enables you to see what is involved and their value. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring these. By following these techniques, you can be confident that your link building investment will result in high-quality backlinks that improve your rankings, boost your sales, and bring more trust from search engines and Google. As the giant in the search engine world, Google uses backlinks as a significant ranking factor, it makes sense to prioritize learning the below.

Editorial Links (The Ones That You Commission)

Gaining the type of links you want to benefit your SEO requires manual help by asking for links. However, it is vital to note that commissioning editorial links doesn’t mean buying them outright from them – instead, it could mean investing in Guest Blogging. This involves knowing which sites to contact, how to grab their attention, and what they want from you in return for a link. You can easily find reputable, relevant websites with high DA scores using helpful online tools like Moz’s Link Explorer. However, the tricky aspect is giving them a reason for agreeing to host your link; they won’t link to anyone without good reason. You must prove to sites that you have something link-worthy, and that it can offer their readers value, providing them with high-quality content they can post on their site. The more high-quality content a website can post, the more Google (who rewards sites for providing helpful content) will favor them.

Editorial Links (The Ones That You Gain Naturally)

Most links created don’t involve anyone asking someone. Instead, they are naturally included by people who want to be helpful to other internet users in blog content, comments, social media posts, website copy, and more, showing them to reliable, relevant websites in the given context. Gaining links this way is a big goal for many businesses, so don’t be mistaken for thinking this is a more straightforward technique. It requires hard work to earn high-quality links, just not in the way you might think. You must make your content, products, or services link-worthy enough to capture people’s attention – something that people have to link to. This technique involves creating linkable assets and utilizing content marketing skills. Linkable assets you could make include original research, giveaways, infographics, online tools (free or not), interactive content like quizzes or calculators, case studies, and high-quality, evergreen listicle articles on your website. Videos and webinars are another viable asset to consider. Once achieved, a link gained naturally is valuable, giving you benefits for a long time.

User-Generated Links

User-generated links are placed in user-generated content (UGC), which can be a significant value boost by adding a different perspective for readers. Often this content includes blog comments, ratings, reviews, forum posts, social media posts and profile pages, advertorials, and directories. You shouldn’t focus solely on this, as editorial links are still the goldmine that offers the best results, but they can help to drum up excitement and more engagement for your brand. They can even help your SEO, widening your reach and giving you more credibility! Therefore, having a strategy that works on creating user-generated links every so often could be worth it alongside other techniques. You can encourage UGC by running competitions or challenges on social media or by reaching out to sites to leave reviews on your products or services – this is where Blogger Outreach skills can come in handy as you can write the perfect pitch that grabs bloggers’ attention. Give them a good reason to write a review, such as offering to send them free products or samples.

Digital PR

A digital PR campaign is one of the most popular methods available, which can earn you a decent number of high-end backlinks when done right. It’s different from traditional PR campaigns, which focus on brand awareness. Digital PR is about earning backlinks and boosting organic visibility through an influential online presence. Like getting editorial links naturally, you must dedicate time to creating linkable assets that journalists and the media will be interested in and want to write about. Getting or being nominated for an award is a great news article that could capture the media’s attention, as can reports and whitepapers. As the links typically come from newspapers and industry resources, which all have high authority, they will help your backlink profile massively. Another benefit is that the high-quality links you earn will be hard for them to replicate, so competitors can’t copy what you’ve done and benefit from similar.

Listicles

Listicle articles dominate the internet, often comprising top 10 lists, best products/services lists, top tools for X, etc. Due to their easy readability, websites love posting these, and audiences love reading them – they can scan the headers and find the section they need if they want, and most people will, as they are often busy and in need of information fast. You can turn a complex subject into a clearly communicated blog containing all the information a reader needs. To get listicle backlinks, you want to have content or a product/service that is worthy of being used in a listicle on another website to earn credibility and trust in return. Find some suitable listicle options on Semrush that work for your product or content – you can also look for broken link listicle opportunities (see below for more on this)! Contact the site and ask for placement in their listicle when you’ve found something suitable.

Broken Link Building

The internet is full of links, including plenty of broken links, providing a fantastic opportunity for link builders. The Broken Link Building technique involves finding pages with broken links and asking that website to replace the broken link with your working page link. It is a widespread technique, but you should use this alongside other link building methods. With this, you can inherit all the authority the page has earned, take a competitor’s backlinks, and build up your profile with high-quality links. You can find broken links in numerous ways, from looking at your competition’s broken pages to looking at pages about particular topics and discovering link opportunities on resource pages and competing websites. Decide which of these links is worth pursuing based on the link quality and the reasons for the link, and then begin creating a better replacement piece of content. With this complete, you can start the outreach process, and if successful, you have a new backlink by the end.

Do Link Building Techniques Change In Different Niches?

With so many industries, niches, and business types, you may wonder whether the same approaches can be applied whether you work in education, the health industry, or the gambling industry. Fortunately, all niches can do link building campaigns and use every technique mentioned above – there are no restrictions. However, there are differences in how you carry them out depending on your industry, and some may be more suited to specific techniques than others. Those in the education industry may be better off focusing on editorial links and links only mentioned in blog content rather than using user-generated links in comments. This then differs from the iGaming industry. How businesses in the iGaming industry go about the entire link building process is different from other industries. They must follow strict regulations when building links, meaning they may find it harder to find high-authority sites that accept gambling links. The content created for a guest post may also vary – some websites may prefer topics less focused on gambling – so many turn to agencies to sort their iGaming Link Building for them. Even if you are in an industry that isn’t as highly regulated, reaching out to experts in your field for SEO and link building is beneficial, as they know the suitable approaches.