What are the different types of link building?

Link building is the practice of earning or acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. The main types include editorial link earning, digital PR, guest posting, business directory listings, resource page outreach, broken link building, and link reclamation. Each approach differs significantly in effort required and the quality of links it produces.

Key takeaways

• Editorial links, earned because your content genuinely deserves to be cited, carry the most ranking weight but require the most upfront content investment.

• Digital PR can produce dozens of high-authority links from a single campaign, making it one of the highest-return approaches for small businesses with a newsworthy angle.

• Directory listings and link reclamation are the lowest-effort starting points, but they have a ceiling: you cannot build a strong backlink profile on directories alone.

• Link quality matters more than link quantity. One link from a relevant, authoritative site outweighs dozens from low-traffic directories.

• Google's guidance is consistent: links that exist because content deserves them are the ones that move rankings. Manufactured links carry risk.

What actually counts as a link building type?

A link building type is a distinct method for getting another website to point a hyperlink at yours. The methods differ in three ways: how you initiate contact (or whether you do at all), what you offer in exchange, and the typical authority of the site that links back.

It is worth being direct about one thing before going further. Google treats links as a signal of trust and relevance. Links you genuinely earn because your content is useful tend to pass more ranking benefit than links you pay for or arrange through schemes. That is not a moral argument; it is a practical one about how the algorithm is designed to work.

The main types of link building, ranked by return

Editorial link earning

This is the approach that produces the most durable results. You publish content that is genuinely useful, original or data-driven, and other sites link to it because they want to, not because you asked. Research pieces, original surveys, definitive how-to guides and well-structured tools all attract editorial links over time.

The effort is front-loaded into content creation. The return compounds: a single strong piece can earn links for years without further outreach.

Digital PR

Digital PR means creating a story, study or asset with genuine news value and pitching it to journalists and publishers. A well-constructed campaign can generate links from national newspapers, trade publications and high-authority news sites in a short window.

The return-to-effort ratio is high when the campaign lands. The risk is that it does not always land, and producing credible research or a compelling angle takes real skill. This is an area where working with a practitioner who understands both PR and SEO pays for itself quickly.

Guest posting

You write an article for another site in your industry and receive a link in return. Done well, with genuinely useful content on relevant sites, this builds authority and referral traffic simultaneously. Done badly, through low-quality sites with thin content, it carries penalty risk.

The honest constraint: quality guest posting takes significant time per link, and the links rarely match the authority of editorial links earned organically.

Resource page outreach

Many websites maintain curated lists of useful tools, guides or services for their audience. You identify resource pages relevant to your topic and pitch your content as a worthy addition. The success rate depends entirely on whether your content is genuinely a fit.

This approach works well for genuinely useful tools, calculators and reference guides. It works poorly for promotional content dressed up as a resource.

Broken link building

You find pages on relevant sites that link to content which no longer exists, then offer your own content as a replacement. It is a legitimate value exchange: you help the site owner fix a problem and gain a link.

The effort-to-return balance here is moderate. Finding relevant broken links at scale requires tooling, and response rates are not high. It is, however, a clean approach with no ethical grey areas.

Business directory listings

Submitting your business to directories like Google Business Profile, Yell and relevant trade directories is the lowest-effort form of link building. These links carry modest ranking benefit individually, but they establish local relevance and citation consistency, which matters for local SEO.

Think of directories as the floor, not the ceiling. Every business should have them. No business should rely on them.

Link reclamation

Someone has mentioned your business, brand or content online without linking to you. Link reclamation is simply finding those unlinked mentions and asking the author to add the link. Because the relationship already exists, conversion rates tend to be high.

This is often the best place for a small business to start. The groundwork is already done; you are just completing the attribution.

How should small businesses decide where to start?

Approach	Effort	Typical link quality	Best starting point?
Editorial earning	High	Very high	No — needs existing content library
Digital PR	High	Very high	Yes, if you have a newsworthy angle
Guest posting	Medium	Medium to high	Yes, for building early authority
Resource page outreach	Medium	Medium to high	Yes, if you have a strong asset
Broken link building	Medium	Medium	Useful once basics are covered
Directory listings	Low	Low to medium	Yes — do this first
Link reclamation	Low	Variable	Yes — quick win, start here

A practical approach for most small businesses: begin with directories and reclamation to establish baseline coverage, then invest in one or two genuinely useful content assets that give you something worth pitching for editorial and resource links. At Revolve, we treat link building as an output of a broader content and PR strategy, not a standalone activity, because that is where the compounding return comes from.

What are the risks to be aware of?

Paid link schemes, private blog networks and reciprocal link arrangements that exist purely to manipulate rankings all violate Google's spam policies. The short-term gain rarely justifies the penalty risk, and manual actions can be difficult to recover from. If a link opportunity feels transactional rather than editorial, that is usually a signal to step back.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many backlinks does a small business website actually need? There is no target number. What matters is whether your backlink profile reflects the genuine authority and relevance of your site relative to competitors in your specific niche. A local service business competing in Banbury needs far fewer links than a site competing nationally, and link quality always outweighs quantity.

What is the difference between a dofollow and a nofollow link? A dofollow link passes ranking benefit (often called "link equity") from the linking page to yours. A nofollow link signals to search engines that the linking site is not vouching for the destination. Most editorial and guest post links are dofollow; most directory and comment links are nofollow. Both have value, but dofollow links are what move rankings directly.

Can I build links without producing new content? Yes. Link reclamation, directory listings and broken link building all work with your existing site. However, the ceiling is lower without content worth linking to. Original content is ultimately what gives other sites a reason to point at yours.

Is buying links ever acceptable? Buying links that are intended to manipulate search rankings violates Google's guidelines and carries genuine penalty risk. Paid placements that are clearly labelled as sponsored and carry a nofollow or sponsored attribute are acceptable, but they do not pass ranking benefit. For most small businesses, the risk-adjusted return on paid links is poor.

How long does link building take to affect rankings? Links are generally crawled and processed within a few weeks of publication, but their effect on rankings plays out over months rather than days. Competitive queries take longer to move than local or niche terms. Consistent, quality link acquisition over six to twelve months produces far more reliable results than short bursts of activity.

Written by the Revolve team — a UK digital marketing agency delivering SEO, AEO and content strategy for small and mid-sized businesses.

Last updated: 20 September 2026