Chances are you’ve landed on this article because you’re looking for a way to use link building as efficiently and effectively as possible for your business. Or you’ve realized the importance of increasing your website’s authority. The fact is: link building is one of the most challenging parts of the entire online marketing process. Elusive, dependent on many metrics, and like many aspects of SEO: ‘It depends’. In this (long) article, we dive into several key questions around link building. What exactly is it, why is it necessary, what are the costs in time and money, and which strategies should you use? If you have specific questions, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Because the information you need may differ, we use an internal table of contents.
Feel free to jump directly to the section that’s most relevant to you — we’ll start with the basics.
What is link building?
Link building is the process of acquiring backlinks with the goal of increasing a website’s authority.
By increasing authority, you show LLMs and search engines that your website is an expert within its niche. Link building is one of the fundamental pillars of SEO, alongside content marketing and technical optimization.
Of these three SEO pillars, link building is the hardest to visualize and is often considered the least transparent. This is mainly because link building is expressed in scores calculated differently by various tools (such as Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic, Semrush).
A common metaphor compares link building to a spider in a web. Your website is the spider in the center. The more threads (backlinks) leading to the center, the stronger the foundation. Of course, thickness (quality) matters just as much.
Why implement link building?
Now that we understand what link building is, it’s important to look at why it’s necessary. In some industries, link building isn’t required at all. What we often see is agencies implementing link building without a clear objective.
In less competitive markets, link building may not be necessary. In competitive markets, however, it’s often essential. When competitors all have strong technical foundations, correct search intent, and solid content strategies, authority becomes the deciding factor.
Especially since the rise of AI and GEO (call it what you want), authority has become increasingly important. AI systems often determine which companies to reference based on authority signals.
Internal vs external link building
Within link building, we distinguish between two types. One happens on your own website and is at least as important — if not more important — than external link building.
Internal link building
Internal links are links placed on your own website that refer to other pages within your site. This improves navigation and user experience.
External link building
With the self-service platform of Publisher Place, we focus on external link building. These are links from external websites that refer to your website as a source. Especially in blog articles, external links are commonly used to provide additional information.
Referring domains and backlinks
Within SEO, the terms backlinks and referring domains are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same.
A backlink is an external link from another website to your website. A referring domain is a unique website that links to you.
- 10 backlinks from 1 website = 1 referring domain
- 10 backlinks from 10 websites = 10 referring domains
Anchor texts and our recommendations
Besides the number of backlinks and referring domains, anchor text is also important — this is the clickable text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to understand what the linked page is about. Over-optimization (for example, using only exact match keywords) can appear unnatural and work against you. We still see this frequently, even with large marketing agencies. It’s worth checking your own website.
We recommend a natural distribution within your link profile:
- 40-50% branded anchors (brand name)
- 20-30% generic anchors (click here, read more)
- 10-20% keyword anchors
- 10-20% compound anchors (keyword + brand name)
What does link building cost and how do you determine your budget?
The costs of link building vary per niche, competition level, and the quality of the websites you publish on. A proper budget starts with a competitive analysis. We can check this for you within seconds.
This gives you an indication of what’s required to remain competitive. In highly competitive markets (such as Finance), investments are structurally higher than in niches like Sports or Travel.
How do you determine a realistic monthly budget?
A simple guideline:
Determine how many quality links you need per month (based on competition).
Multiply this by the average price in your category.
Below is an overview of the average link acquisition prices on our platform:
| Category | Q1 (€) | Median (€) | Average (€) | Q3 (€) | Avg. Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business | 71 | 132 | 194 | 252 | 5,552 |
| Home & Living | 68 | 180 | 186 | 258 | 8,153 |
| News & Media | 102 | 187 | 234 | 300 | 42,563 |
| Travel | 30 | 62 | 140 | 176 | 8,155 |
| Health & Lifestyle | 47 | 120 | 195 | 255 | 7,256 |
| Finance | 230 | 352 | 444 | 619 | 108,794 |
| Sports | 30 | 30 | 67 | 82 | 4,047 |
Setting up a link building strategy
A proper link building strategy doesn’t start with randomly purchasing backlinks, but with defining roles and cohesion. Not every publication serves the same function. We work with two strategic roles within link building (and three within our Digital PR campaigns):
Source publication
This is the foundational publication on a high-authority website. It contains original, strong content that supports your expertise. Impact: high — direct link value and strengthened by amplifiers.
Amplifier
Supporting publications that refer to the source publication and expand reach. Impact: medium — reinforces the signal through repetition and confirmation while building a logical link network.
Important to understand:
- Without a source publication, there is no foundation.
- Without amplifiers, there is no distribution.
In traditional campaigns, links are often placed randomly. No order. No reinforcement. With our method you create:
- More cumulative link value
- A more natural link profile
- Better pattern recognition (which LLMs and search engines value)
Example of a monthly structure:
Month 1 – Build the foundation – Focus on 1-2 strong source publications on authoritative websites.
Month 2 – Strengthen – Combination of a new source publication + multiple amplifiers.
Month 3 – Maximize – More amplifiers to increase reach, repetition and pattern building.
Don’t want to figure this out yourself?
Good news: we can set up these hyper-structured AI-powered link building strategies for you within minutes.
Simply create a free account on the Publisher Place platform and add a campaign (completely free). We will then generate a strategic link building proposal for you instantly.
