Link building tactics that actually work. And the ones that quietly stopped.

Why tactic choice matters more than effort

The fastest way to waste $20,000 on SEO is to pick the wrong link-building tactics. Most of the agencies we audit start the conversation with "we will get you 30 links a month". The honest answer is that nobody competent should be promising 30 links a month, because half of any 30-a-month link campaign is the kind of link backlink SpamBrain neutralises before it has a chance to move rankings. The number is not the goal. The pattern is.

A small Perth client we work with earned eight links in 2025. Eight. The first was a piece in The West Australian on small business survival rates. The second was a Reddit AMA cited in a Whirlpool thread. The third was an Australian Mining feature. The other five were industry association directory upgrades. Inside six months their commercial keyword rankings moved more than the previous two years of a 30-link-a-month campaign at a previous agency. Editorial links from Australian sources beat volume every time.

So the right question is not "how do we get more links". It is "which two or three tactics produce the kind of links Google still counts". The list below is that answer.

The seven tactics still working

1. Digital PR with original data

Producing a small piece of original research, survey data or industry analysis and pitching it to relevant Australian journalists. A real example: a Perth conveyancing client surveyed 200 recent first-home buyers about hidden settlement costs and we pitched the dataset to The West, REIWA's publication, Domain and four regional papers. Six covered it. Six editorial links to a service page. Yield: 4 to 8 links per quarter when run consistently. Time cost: high (30 to 60 hours per asset). Risk: nil. See the digital PR chapter for the full playbook.

2. Expert commentary on news stories

Subscribing to journalist request platforms (Sourcebottle in Australia, HARO globally, Featured.com) and responding to commentary requests in your category. When a journalist needs an expert quote on Perth property, mining services, family law, healthcare or whatever your category is, you respond inside an hour with a short, useful, quote-ready answer. Yield: 1 to 3 links per month at moderate effort. Time cost: low (20 minutes per response, several responses per week). Risk: nil. Bonus: the commentary builds personal entity recognition for the founder, which feeds E-E-A-T.

3. Supplier, customer and partner cross-links

The easiest links to earn and the most under-used. Email every supplier, customer and partner whose website lists case studies, partner logos, or "trusted by" sections. Ask for inclusion. Half will agree, most will link, all will improve the relationship. Yield: 5 to 15 links in a focused quarter. Time cost: low (an hour of outreach gets the first wave going). Risk: nil. This tactic alone gets a typical Perth small business its first ten Australian editorial links.

4. Industry association membership

Most industry associations and chambers of commerce maintain member directories with editorial-style member listings that link out. Master Builders WA, REIWA, the Law Society of WA, AMA WA, the Australian Industry Group, the CCIWA, plus the various specialty colleges and professional bodies. Yield: 2 to 5 links from a single year's membership, often higher-trust than expected. Time cost: low once the membership is in place (an hour to write the listing). Risk: nil. Particularly strong for trades, healthcare, legal, real estate and mining categories.

5. Podcast guest appearances

Australian business and industry podcasts have grown sharply since 2023, and most include guest websites in the show notes with editorial links. Pitch yourself or a senior staff member as a guest on relevant industry podcasts. Yield: 2 to 6 links per quarter with consistent pitching, plus the audio reach. Time cost: moderate (an hour to record, an hour to pitch a list). Risk: nil. Strongest for founders, senior consultants and category experts.

6. Broken link replacement

Finding pages on relevant Australian sites that link to a dead URL in your category, then emailing the site owner to suggest your live page as a replacement. Tools like Ahrefs or Semrush can surface broken outbound links on a target site. The pitch is value-positive (you are pointing out a broken link). Conversion rate is low (5 to 10 percent) but the links are editorial. Yield: 2 to 4 links per month with a regular workflow. Time cost: moderate. Risk: nil if pitched honestly.

7. Resource page placement

Many Australian universities, government departments, chambers of commerce and industry bodies maintain resource or recommended-reading pages. A targeted pitch suggesting your guide, tool or template for inclusion. Pre-condition: the resource you suggest has to be genuinely useful and non-promotional. Yield: 1 to 3 links per quarter. Time cost: moderate. Risk: nil. Strongest for businesses that publish substantial educational content. Our own Learn Hub gets resource-page placements off the back of pillar pages like this one.

That is the working list. Two or three of these run consistently for twelve months will move a Perth small business's rankings meaningfully. Picking all seven and doing none well is the most common failure pattern.

Three tactics that quietly stopped working

1. Mass guest post networks

The model: a network of thin sites that publish guest posts on a wide range of topics, with the deal being a link to the contributor's chosen page. SpamBrain has been neutralising these since 2022. The sites in the networks tend to share traffic patterns, content templates, link patterns, and SpamBrain has identified most of them. The links no longer count. Genuine guest posts on credible industry publications still work. Mass-network guest posts do not.

2. Link exchanges and three-way trades

Site A links to Site B, B links to A. Or A links to B, B links to C, C links to A. The pattern is visible in the link graph and Google's algorithm has identified excessive reciprocal linking for years. A small amount of organic reciprocity is normal and harmless. A coordinated trade scheme is not. We see Perth agencies still running these as "partner exchanges". The links are usually ignored.

3. Mass low-quality directory submissions

Submitting a business to dozens of low-quality, generic, foreign-language or auto-generated directories was a tactic that worked in 2010. It does not work in 2026. The directories themselves are mostly de-indexed or ignored. The links pass no signal. The time spent is wasted. Quality local directory listings (Yellow Pages Australia, True Local, Hotfrog, Yelp, plus a few category-specific ones) still matter as part of the citation foundation. The 200-directory submission package does not.

The one bucket we refuse to touch

Paid links and Private Blog Networks. Two related tactics, same risk profile.

Paid links: someone with an existing site or blog accepts payment for a do-follow link to your site. Google's link spam policy explicitly forbids it. The detection has grown more accurate every year. The medium-term result is one of three things: a manual action, a SpamBrain neutralisation that wastes the spend, or a trust erosion that takes months to recover from.

PBNs (Private Blog Networks): a network of sites someone owns, all linking out to a money site for ranking purposes. Same problem, larger scale. Almost always identified, almost always penalised. We have inherited several Perth clients who used PBN services and the recovery process is brutal. Months of disavow work, months of trust rebuild, and the ranking lift that justified the spend never returns.

The argument we hear is "but my competitor is doing it and ranking". Sometimes true, briefly. Almost never true twelve months later. The graveyard of formerly-ranking sites caught by spam updates is large. We do not advise clients to build a strategy on something that has a known expiry date.

How to pick three tactics and stick to them

Most small businesses cannot sustainably run seven link-building tactics in parallel. They can sustainably run three. The framework:

1. Pick one outbound tactic. Either digital PR or expert commentary. Both require pitching journalists. Pick the one your founder or senior expert can sustain. Block 4 hours a week for it.
2. Pick one relationship tactic. Supplier and customer cross-links is the easiest first-quarter win. Industry association membership is the easiest evergreen tactic. Pick the one that fits the business.
3. Pick one content tactic. Either broken link replacement or resource page placement. These are slower-burn but compound. Block 3 hours a week.

Three tactics, ten hours a week, twelve months. That is the realistic shape of a link program that moves Australian commercial rankings without the spam risk. Track it in a spreadsheet (one row per attempt, one column per outcome) and review quarterly. The SEO KPIs chapter covers the right metrics. The wrong metric is "links per month". The right metric is "relevant editorial links per quarter from Australian sources".

Common mistakes

Tools and checklists

1. Sourcebottle (Australian). The local equivalent of HARO. Daily journalist requests, free for the basic tier. Best single tool for the expert commentary tactic.
2. Ahrefs Free or Semrush Free. For broken link discovery, competitor link gap, anchor text monitoring.
3. A media list. Spreadsheet of 30 to 50 Australian journalists, bloggers and editors in your category. Name, publication, beat, contact, last pitched date.
4. A relationship list. Suppliers, customers, partners, association contacts. The cross-link tactic depends on it.
5. A simple link tracker. Spreadsheet. One row per earned link. Source URL, anchor, date, page linked to, tactic that produced it.

For a quick scan of your existing link profile (and to see which tactics have produced the most for you historically), our free SEO audit tool includes a backlink overview alongside the technical and on-page checks. For the broader service offering, see our SEO services page.

Perth and WA context

Three tactics carry above-average weight in Perth specifically:

Industry association memberships. Perth's professional and industry associations are unusually active and tend to maintain healthy member directories. Master Builders WA, REIWA, the Law Society of WA, AMA WA, the Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, the Pharmacy Guild WA branch and the various trade certification bodies all run member listings worth claiming. See the trades, legal, healthcare, mining and real estate SEO guides for the category-specific lists.

Regional newspaper coverage. The West Australian, Perth Now, Business News, plus the regional mastheads (Bunbury Herald, Kalgoorlie Miner, Sound Telegraph, Albany Advertiser) all run business-friendly editorial coverage at a much higher rate than equivalent metro papers in Sydney or Melbourne. Pitching them with WA-specific angles works. See SEO Bunbury, SEO Kalgoorlie and SEO Mandurah for the regional pattern.

Mining and resources publications. Australian Mining, Mining Weekly Australia, Australia's Paydirt, plus the supplier directories and industry conferences. Mining services firms targeting the resource sector get above-average link yield from this channel. See the mining SEO guide and SEO Karratha for the playbook in the Pilbara context.

Related guides

• Digital PR for SEO. The deep version of the tactic that produces the highest-trust links.
• Backlinks explained. The 101 if you are still building your mental model.
• Anchor text profile. How to pick anchors when earning new links without triggering over-optimisation patterns.
• Brand mentions as a ranking signal. The unlinked equivalent of these tactics, increasingly weighted by Google.
• How to disavow toxic backlinks. What to do if you inherit a profile from a previous agency that used the wrong tactics.
• Competitor keyword gap. Apply the same idea to links: find the relevant sites linking to your competitors but not to you.
• Internal linking strategy. The other half of link work. Inside your own site.
• Local SEO pillar. The citation foundation that link building sits on top of.