How to do Link-Building in 2025: 8 Tips from SEO Experts
Natalia Toth
As we enter 2025, link-building remains a game of strategy and flexibility. We have to build links while adapting to AI advancements, never-ending Google updates, and shifting user behaviors.
How do you rank high in times of AI? Are cold emails still a thing? What pages shall you build links to, and how do you know if your efforts are paying off? We talked about all of this and much more to ten SEO thought leaders.
In this article, you'll find eight actionable tips to help you ace backlink building in 2025 - with insights from SEO pros at Hunter, Surfer, TrioSEO, and other companies.
1. Invest in Brand Awareness & Recognition
Tip #1: Brand awareness should be your priority in 2025.
To the fast-advancing AI, not all backlinks are equal.
The Google Algorithm starts to favor entity signals — mentions of your brand, citations, and topical relevance — over traditional backlink counts. As Google's AI grows more adept at understanding context, it values authentic brand presence over manufactured links.
Put shortly, it’s either an organic growth loop or a vicious circle.
Victory in the SEO game belongs to brands that are already well-known. Brands that nobody heard of and nobody ever mentioned will stay behind.
That’s why we need to make brand awareness our 2025 priority.
“With AI getting better at understanding context, Google is putting more weight on brand mentions, citations, and topical relevance than raw link counts. Digital PR and real brand storytelling will become the primary link-building strategies.”
Top SEO voice on LinkedIn
“The key change this year is the integration of AI in SERPs. This shift elevates the importance of branding — a well-known brand is more likely to be featured in search results.
The more credible sources mention your brand, the more recognized it becomes. So solidifying your brand presence is vital for long-term success.”
CEO and Co-Founder at EthicalSEO
“SEO is becoming a mature channel for established niches. As AI challenges Google Search, companies will care more about brand awareness to influence the AI-generated results.”
Director of SEO at Growth-onomics
If you’re not as famous as Hubspot or Amazon yet, how do you stay ahead?
- Invest in digital PR campaigns and brand storytelling. These tactics not only generate quality backlinks but also amplify your brand's visibility in ways that AI and search engines recognize as authoritative.
- Speak on podcasts. Being a guest speaker on a podcast is a great way to tell your brand’s story, boost your personal brand, and of course, secure a valuable backlink for free.
- Create content pieces like industry reports, data studies, step-by-step how-to guides with your personal experience, or visually appealing content (think infographics or short videos) is a long-term win.
Read more: How AI Affects Link-Building and What to Do Now: Interview with Antonio Gabric
2. Rethink Cold Outreach
Cold emails are losing their edge.
While automation tools make outreach faster, response rates are still going down as recipients grow wary of generic pitches and spam.
Instead of relying on this fading tactic, you can explore more efficient SEO outreach methods.
Here’s what Steven Schneider has to say about it:
“To me, cold emails are kind of a dead game, unless you send mass cold emails in addition to your primary method. I get a dozen emails a day that I just immediately block because I feel like I'm just a number on your outreach list.
The better way to go is social media. You can get a better feel for the person and their voice online, especially on LinkedIn. Personal brand aspect plays a huge role in the trust that goes into the link-building relationship.”
Co-founder and CEO at TrioSEO
Want to try an even simpler way to build links? Ranking Raccoon offers a smarter alternative, connecting you directly to real site admins and high-quality, free backlink opportunities, without endless cold emails. Try it for free!
3. Make AI Your Friend (But Don’t Overdo It)
AI is here to stay, and we’ll have to learn to turn its existence to our advantage.
If you’re still building links with emails, AI tools can streamline link prospecting and email personalization.
“With AI, we’ve been able to automate our link prospect review. AI filters out websites that don't match our criteria, and then a human does the final filtering.
We also generate personalized first lines. Instead of starting with the hyper-generic "Hey, I loved your post about [topic]," you can send an actual, genuine compliment. This has a great impact on response rates.”
Founder at MintSEO
Still, SEO experts agree:
AI cannot replace the good old networking in terms of long-term efficiency (not just for link-building, but for your business overall).
4. Networking and Human Relations > One-Off Link Exchange
In the AI-dominated age, genuine human connections become a rare treasure.
And in 2025, they can pay off multiple times beyond the simple backlink exchange.
“My advice: focus on relationship-building through personalized outreach. It sounds basic, but a thoughtful message — addressing someone by name, mentioning specific aspects of their site, and showing genuine interest — can go a long way. It’s time-consuming, but it’s an effective way to build natural links without needing to pay every time.”
Founder at AgilePR, Head of Marketing Communications at Lensa
“If you don’t cultivate relationships with publishers and influencers, this limits your opportunities for high-quality backlinks. Foster authentic relations with reputable websites - for example, by engaging with them on social media.”
Konstantin Sadekov
CEO and Co-Founder at EthicalSEO
5. Offer Clear Value to the Other Party
Asking for a backlink without explaining the benefits for the other side is a no-go in 2025.
"Give more than you ask! If you’re providing real value upfront, people are much more likely to engage and link back to you."
Co-founder & Head Of Marketing at Surfer
Whether you’re offering free content, backlinks from your future posts, or exclusive insights, make sure your pitch gives the prospect a reason to say ‘Yes!’
Here’s what Nick Zviadadze, Founder at MintSEO, recommends:
“Offering value is the best strategy in 2025.
Most people don't care about your super high-quality B2B blog post, and they're not going to link to it just because you asked. You need to offer something of real value if you want to get that backlink.
Here are some messages that work:
1. "I'll write a blog post targeting a keyword of your choice (they get a free blog post)"
2. "I'll write a thought leadership post, and share it with my audience of X (they get exposure)”
Nick Zviadadze
Founder at MintSEO
6. Build Links to the Right Pages
Your time is precious, so start with selecting which pages you’ll be building backlinks to in the first place.
Ideally, prioritize pages that:
- Are UX-optimised
- Have a real opportunity to rank well
- Are Bottom-of-the-Funnel, or conversion, pages
Here are some tips from Antonio Gabric, Outreach Manager at Hunter:
“Before anything, make sure the page you’re building links to is optimized and has a real chance to rank well.
For instance, focus on BoFu pages, not just informational top-of-funnel content. This helps demonstrate early wins to stakeholders by showing tangible results like revenue or conversions.
If you an article isn’t converting despite high traffic, it might be because of UX-related issues like poorly placed CTAs. Simple UI/UX tweaks can significantly improve conversions.”
Outreach Manager at Hunter
7. Play the White-Hat Game
SEO thought leaders agree: in 2025, ethical SEO practices are more crucial than ever.
What does this mean?
Bulk link purchases (especially the ones that promise quick results), backlink farms, and spamming forums with links to your homepage are big no-nos.
They are red flags for Google and can be a big waste of money and time.
Instead, focus on building links from relevant, high-quality sites with healthy traffic trends. Prioritize contextual relevance over high Domain Authority scores alone. That's what white hat link-building is about.
“I’d steer away from trying to cheat the system with tactics like forum links. I even heard of people posting fake job posts trying to get backlinks.
Anything that seems shady shouldn’t be allowed. There will always be ways for people to try and cheat the system, but it’s not worth it in my opinion.”
Steven Schneider
Co-Founder and CEO at TrioSEO
“Mass guest posting campaigns and PBNs are dying a quick death as Google's AI gets better at spotting manufactured links.
One of the biggest misconceptions I see among businesses is that more links = better rankings. I still see businesses dropping thousands on bulk guest posts or PBNs, and I still see those ‘10 links for $5’ gigs on Fiverr having dozens of orders. People are obsessed with the quantity of links completely missing that 1-2 quality mentions from authoritative sites can outperform 100 mediocre links.”
Ume Laila
Top SEO voice on LinkedIn
8. Measure Success with the Right Metrics
Track more than just backlinks acquired. Metrics like open rates, reply rates, and the quality of acquired links (assessed by traffic and relevance) are critical for evaluating your campaign’s impact.
That’s how Oussama Bettaieb, Marketing Lead at Aloa, evaluates the impact of his backlinks.
“Before starting a link-building campaign, I set clear targets for three or six months. After three months, I check what effect the backlink had on the target keywords, target pages, and website on the whole.
If there’s an increase in leads, that’s a strong indicator of link-building success. I take data from Google Search Console and Google Analytics 4 and ideally, build a predictive model for next steps in Google Sheets or with Python”.
Marketing Lead at Aloa
Avoid fixating solely on numbers like Domain Rating (DR), which don’t tell the full story. As Steven Schneider puts it,
“DR and DA are just arbitrary, inflated metrics from SEMrush and Ahrefs. They don't really matter from Google's point of view."
“Metrics like Domain Rating (DR) or Domain Authority (DA) are created by third-party tools and are not officially recognized by Google. Worse, they can be easily manipulated. Blindly following them without assessing the actual quality of the linking pages is a mistake.”
Konstantin Sadekov
CEO and Co-Founder at EthicalSEO
Read more: How to Measure Link-Building ROI with GA4: A 5-Step Guide
Let’s Make 2025 Your Best Link-Building Year Yet
With the link-building landscape evolving, staying ahead requires strategy, creativity, and adaptability. From embracing brand awareness to prioritizing high-value pages and ditching tiresome cold emails, these tips can elevate your SEO game.
Need a tool to streamline the process? Ranking Raccoon helps you skip the grind of outreach and connect directly with real site admins for quality backlinks - and all of that without hefty price tags.
Let’s make 2025 your most successful year for link-building yet!
Natalia Toth
Head of Marketing