A simple and fair question was asked in an SEO community forum last month, and the ensuing thread went viral. The essence of Google’s updated stance on link building is that random low-quality links have no value. Almost every quality website now wants to get paid to link to you. So how do real people build links these days?
We read the entire thread for you. We cut out the spam and the filler. Here are the best ideas from the thread explained in simple terms. They can be applied to Tampa Bay businesses as well as any local business looking for search rankings.
The Problem in Plain Terms
Google has announced that random blog submissions, low-quality junk directories, and low-quality bookmark links are considered by Google to have little to no value and, in some cases, could actually be considered to have a negative value. On the other hand, quality relevant sites generally require payment for links to be added. This puts many small businesses in a difficult position.
The good news is that you don’t have to pay for links. The bad news is that you need a plan and some time to implement it.
Publish Research People Cannot Ignore
The most valuable comment in that thread came from a marketer named Dana. Dana works with a security client that has hospital buyers. Rather than trying to get links from the hospitals, Dana conducts research first.
Dana created an in-depth article about how hospitals lose revenue after researching studies, conducting surveys, interviewing hospital staff, and gathering public data. A friend at a large newspaper ended up publishing the article, and subsequently several other industry publications picked up the article and re-published it. The result was amazing free coverage with high-quality links, all for zero outreach budget.
Create something worth reading. Share your original research. Expose surprising statistics. Then find relevant publications to pitch to.
You Do Not Need Your Own Data
Commenter Marcus is also quite smart here. First, you grab the low-hanging fruit for local citations and fill out all of your social profiles to get a few foundational links. Then, you create content that other people will want to link to.
No data? No problem. Marcus used freely available data from census.gov to create a home infestation score for every state. He matched the data on the various pests to the state’s population numbers, ranked the states, and sent off the report to local publications. He earned about a dozen free links for his home insulation client with this one project.
Audit a Whole Industry and Own the Number
Instead of more outreach, Priya went and scraped an entire industry. She then ran an audit on every site in the industry and published the results for each sector of the industry one after another. Thousands of sites were covered in total, each sector taking around 2 days to build the tool once it had been created.
It’s helpful because someone trying to write about an industry will need numbers to support their claims, and previously, there were none. As a result, they’ll use hers. The same thing happens with AI answers a single statistic with a clear sample size and a date will get quoted over and over again.
The bar to create linkable assets is actually lower than what most people think. You need to use public data to pick one metric that is already debated by others and to clearly state the things that you did not measure. Most importantly, by clearly stating the limits of your numbers, you can actually earn the trust of your readers for the numbers that you did report. Nobody has studied your particular niche at this scale before. That gap is your link asset.
Directories Are Not Always Junk
Tom, a veteran SEO, challenged one of the points above. He said real directories are not listed randomly, and businesses typically list in relevant directories that are indexed. This is normal.
Tom set up a new business and added it to his solid list of trusted business directories, with immediate results. Quality is key here. These were relevant directories that had already been indexed by Google, as opposed to tiny websites that Tom had set up in minutes as spam. They were the kind of places that real businesses would list themselves.
I also had to come to terms with a tough reality: at times you have to pay for links. But there are also many linkable assets that you can create. With today’s AI tools, you can create quizzes, calculators, etc. in a matter of minutes, which, in turn, can bring in links on their own.
Start Close to Home
It’s also worth remembering that lots of people can link to you: your partners, your vendors, and your customers. Ask them. Can you create an award or badge for the best uses of your product and give the winner an HTML badge to display on their site, linked back to you?
Local Q and A content can be of great value to a community paper, i.e., an “ask the expert” column. Also don’t forget goodwill link building. Helping a local group or community do something good and then asking them for a link (tipping local reporters about the good deed) can make for great local stories in the press.
The example above is illustrative, and we can use a real client story if you have one. This would work well for many Tampa Bay businesses. For example, a business that sponsors a youth team in Riverview, runs a supply drive in St. Petersburg, or helps neighbors after a storm by cleaning up will have a real story to share.
Stop Overrating Backlinks
A 20-year SEO veteran by the name of Ray gave me a dose of reality today. Paid links are not organic links. They will be found out by search engines and AI tools sooner or later. Backlinks may account for up to one-third of a website’s ranking power, but the majority of the rest is down to the quality of the content and its relevance, as well as the user experience on the page.
Here are the relevance basics. Pick one target keyword. Put it in your page title, your URL slug, your H1, and the start of your first sentence. Then think about reader behavior. Write titles people want to click. Answer the question right away so visitors do not bounce back to the search results.
Commenter Sam is another in the top 5 for over 200 keywords. He never bought links, although he did pay for some press coverage. Sam’s finding is that many local businesses are competing for the most difficult keywords and are neglecting much easier, high-intent keywords that actually bring in buyers.
Use Free Digital PR
Commenter Jordan shares a secret to digital PR: you don’t have to spend a dime. Sign up for free services that facilitate introductions between sources and journalists, and then be sure to respond promptly. (Don’t try to send automated, AI-written pitches, though, as they can get you blacklisted from these services. A real quote from a true expert will earn you a real link.)
A Warning About Cheap Paid Links
The final voice of warning was Chris, who shared a scenario of a company he audited that had 20 or so paid links left behind from an SEO company from years prior. The AI flagged the paid links as either misleading or fake. Based on the high number of paid links left behind by prior SEO efforts, this company should have shown up in more than half of the relevant AI-based searches. In reality, the company showed up in less than 6% of relevant searches.
It can actually be more beneficial to remove links as opposed to adding more. Spammy links can even deter how AI tools view a brand.
What to Do Next
A shorter version. Get the foundation links published, create something worth linking to, and build some goodwill locally. Then, optimize the pages relevant to your audience, and go after the high-intent keywords that your competition is ignoring. You don’t need to buy links to win.
If you run a business in Tampa Bay and want links that hold up over time, we can help you build them the right way. Reach out to our team here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I have to pay for backlinks in 2026?
No. Paid links can be very risky for your online visibility. Stick to fundamental links, your own research, and local goodwill.
What are foundational backlinks?
The foundational links for any real business include local citations, business listings in directories, and social media accounts for your business. These should form the core of your online presence.
How many backlinks do I need to rank?
Not as few as you might think. While backlinks account for only about a third of ranking factors, content quality, relevance, and a good page experience on every page also play critical roles.
What’s the easiest way to get links if you have no budget?
Start close to home. Ask your partners and customers to link to you. Publish a simple data study. Share your local good deeds with local community papers.
Illustration created with AI