Links from other websites are still one of the three things that decide where you rank, and they are still the part of SEO where Sydney business owners get burned most often. This is the version of the backlink conversation I have with every client: what to do, what not to do, the traps that look like good ideas, and what actually works in 2026.
Why links still matter
A link from another site is a vote from someone who did not have to give it. Google has used that signal since the beginning, and nothing in the last few years has retired it. What has changed is how good Google has become at telling an earned vote from a bought one. The links that count come from sites with real audiences in your field or your area. The links that hurt are the ones that exist only to be links.
For a Sydney service business, that means a handful of relevant links from suppliers, industry bodies, local media and partners does more than hundreds of links from directories nobody visits. Quality over quantity is not a slogan here. It is how the algorithm is built.
The dos
- Publish something worth citing. A page with original data, a genuinely useful guide, a price list most competitors hide, a tool, or a plain answer to a question people keep asking. Links follow usefulness. Nobody links to “our services”.
- Ask the people who already know you. Suppliers, manufacturers you are an authorised dealer for, trade associations, chambers of commerce, sponsorships, the clubs and charities you support. Most have a partners or members page, and most will add you if you ask.
- Be useful to local and industry media. A quote for a journalist, a comment on a local issue, a case study a trade publication can run. Earned coverage brings links and the kind of mention Google’s AI answers draw on.
- Keep your details consistent. Business name, address and phone number written the same way everywhere you are listed. This is a local search signal in its own right and it makes every citation you do have count properly.
- Check who links to you twice a year. Search Console’s Links report is free. Look for sites that have closed, pages that now redirect somewhere odd, and anything you do not recognise.
- Link out, and link within. Citing your sources is a trust signal, and internal links from your strong pages to the ones you want to rank are the links you fully control.
The don’ts
- Do not buy links. Paid links that pass ranking signals are named in Google’s spam policies. Sellers will tell you their links are “natural” and “from real sites”. If money changed hands for the link, it is a paid link.
- Do not join link networks or swap schemes. “You link to me and I link to you” across dozens of unrelated sites is a pattern Google has detected for well over a decade.
- Do not spam directories. A listing on the two or three directories your customers actually use is fine. Submitting to 200 directories is not.
- Do not stuff anchor text. If every link to you says “plumber Sydney”, that is a footprint, not a strategy. Natural links use your business name, your URL, or a sentence.
- Do not publish guest posts for the link. An article you would be proud of on a site your customers read is fine. A thin article on a site that exists to host guest posts is the same thing as a bought link.
- Do not let anyone build links you cannot see. If a provider will not show you exactly where every link is coming from, assume the worst and stop.
The traps
These are the ones that catch sensible people, because each of them sounds reasonable in the sales pitch.
The cheap “SEO package” with links included
A few hundred dollars a month that includes “20 high-authority backlinks” is buying links from a network, with your site as the one that carries the risk. The provider moves on; the links stay in your profile. I have audited sites still carrying links from packages bought in 2015.
The private blog network dressed as “digital PR”
Real digital PR earns coverage on sites people read. The imitation places your article on a dozen sites with generic names, no audience and a hundred unrelated topics. If you cannot picture a human reading the site, Google cannot either.
Sponsored and paid placements without the right markup
Sponsoring the local footy club or paying for a listing is fine. The link just needs to be marked as sponsored (rel=”sponsored”) so it is not treated as an editorial vote. Most legitimate sites do this by default. If a seller insists the link must be “dofollow”, that is the tell.
Expired-domain tricks
Buying an old domain for its links and pointing it at your site, or publishing unrelated content on it, is now called expired domain abuse in Google’s spam policies. It worked once. It does not now, and it is a clean way to lose a site’s trust.
Panic disavowing
The opposite trap. Someone sees a few odd links in a tool, uploads a disavow file with half their profile in it, and loses links that were doing good work. Google says the disavow tool is for sites that have a manual action or a clear history of paid links. For most small businesses it should never be touched. Google ignores most junk links on its own.
Counting instead of weighing
Dashboards that report “backlinks: 1,240” reward the wrong thing. One link from a Sydney industry body is worth more than a thousand from scraped directories, and the thousand can hold you back. Report the links that matter, by name.
What best practice looks like in 2026
- Fix the site first. Links pointing at a slow, thin or duplicated site are wasted. Technical quality and content come before link earning in every plan I write.
- Make one list of the twenty sites that matter in your world. Suppliers, associations, local media, partner businesses, the directories customers use. Work that list, in person where you can.
- Create one thing a quarter worth linking to. Not a blog post about your news. A resource: a guide, a price explainer, a local data piece, a checklist. Then tell the twenty.
- Mark paid relationships properly. Sponsored links get the sponsored attribute. You lose nothing honest and you avoid the risk.
- Review every six months. Search Console Links report, a look for lost links, a note of any new ones worth thanking someone for.
- Measure the result, not the count. Organic traffic and enquiries to the pages you were building links for. If they are moving, the links are working. If not, the problem is usually the page, not the links.
If you inherited a bad link profile
Do not panic and do not pay someone to “clean” it with another round of links. Get the full list from Search Console, sort it into links you would be happy to show a client and links you would not, and leave the second group alone unless there is a manual action in Search Console or a documented history of buying them. Then start earning the first kind. A good profile dilutes a bad one over time; a disavow file does not build anything.
Links and authority are one of the five parts of the audit, which is where I look at who links to you, who links to your competitors, and where the realistic opportunities are. If you want the short version first, the how SEO works explainer covers where links sit against content and technical quality.