Is link building still important, and is it safe?

Google's spam policies define link spam to include buying or selling links for ranking purposes, excessive link exchanges and links from low-quality directories or widgets. Paid placements are acceptable for advertising when the links are marked with the sponsored or nofollow attribute.

Approaches that earn links safely:

• Original research and data that journalists and bloggers cite.
• Genuinely useful tools and calculators that people reference.
• Expert commentary for journalists and industry publications.
• Partner, supplier and association pages where a real relationship exists.
• Reclaiming unlinked brand mentions and fixing links that point to broken URLs on your site.

Quality matters far more than count. A handful of links from sites your customers read is worth more than hundreds from unrelated blogs, and those same sites are often the sources AI assistants rely on.

Avoid link packages priced by the number of links, private blog networks and sites that exist only to sell guest posts. If you've inherited risky links, review them carefully before deciding whether any action is needed.