Link Building: The Backlinks Google Counts

An offer for “dofollow” backlinks on high-authority sites landed in your inbox. Or a link building proposal priced per link. Or maybe you were the one searching for a place to buy them.

On September 14, 2026, a search for “backlinks” on Mercado Livre, a large Brazilian online marketplace, returned 87 listings. There were packages of 10 to 7,000 links, guest posts, and site networks, many of them with free shipping. ¹ That same day, in Semrush’s Brazil database, “comprar backlinks” (buy backlinks) had 2,900 searches a month. “Link building” had 2,400. ²

There is a market, and it has customers. The question in this piece is what Google does with what gets sold there. And what work is left once buying is off the table.

The bigger map is in the piece on off-page SEO. It separates link, mention, review, and press story, and shows how Google reads each one. Here, only the link stays, along with the work of earning one.

A note on method. In the spreadsheet, “link building” and “backlinks” show up as two searches of 2,400 a month each. ² Live on Google in Brazil, where we are based, both open with a guide from RD Station, a Brazilian marketing software company. Semrush and Wikipedia appear in both. ² It is the same subject under two names, and this piece answers both. How to read the screen before the number is in search volume traps.

I opened the 21 text pages from the two readings. Only three link to Google’s spam policy. None of them mentions SpamBrain, the system Google uses against bought links. ²

The citation that became a vote

Think of a scientific paper. The more papers cite it, the more weight it carries in its field. And it carries more when the papers citing it are heavily cited too.

On the web, the citation is a link from another site to yours. This is called a backlink. The work of getting backlinks has a name too: link building.

The idea has a patent with a number. US 6,285,999, filed in January 1998 by Stanford University, lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. ³ The text says a document should be important when other documents cite it heavily. In the next sentence, it warns that citations do not all carry the same weight. ³ The method became known as PageRank.

The limit comes with it: a patent does not prove implementation. This one, by the way, has expired. ³ What Google states today is in its official guide to ranking systems. There, it writes that PageRank has evolved a lot since launch. And that it continues to be part of the core ranking systems. ⁴ The guide itself links to that patent.

Not every link has the same chance of a click

Open any site and scroll down to the footer. There you find the terms of use, the privacy policy, and the logo of the agency that built the site. Almost nobody clicks there.

A patent granted to Google in 2010, US 7,716,225, starts from that observation. It describes a visitor who is more likely to follow some links than others. ⁵ Its examples of rarely followed links are Terms of Service links, banner ads, and links unrelated to the document. ⁵ The features it lists include the link’s position, footer included, and how commercial the anchor text is. ⁵

A patent does not prove implementation, and this one is also listed as expired. ⁵ It shows Google engineers treating the link as a likely click, with a weight that changes by location. Keep the footer in mind, because it comes back in the spam policy.

What Google calls a link scheme

Google’s spam policy has a section on links. Link spam is creating links to or from a site mainly to manipulate rankings. ⁶ The off-page piece listed the bulk of it: paying for links, trading products for links, excessive link exchanges, advertorials, and optimized anchor text in guest posts or press releases. ⁶

Anyone doing link building needs to read the rest of the list too. That is where the tactics sold as scalable live. ⁶

Automated programs or services that create links to your site.
A contract or terms of service that requires a link, without letting the other site’s owner qualify it.
Text ads or text links that do not block ranking credit.
Keyword-rich, hidden, or low-quality links embedded in widgets distributed across many sites.
Links widely distributed in the footers or templates of many sites.
Low-value content created mainly to manipulate link signals.

The fourth and fifth items describe the link nobody chose to give. The widget ships with the link built in. The site template ships with the credit in the footer. Whoever installs it takes the link along, without deciding anything.

Guest posts at scale

A guest post is an article you write for publication on someone else’s site. Google does not ban the format. In May 2017, it wrote that it does not discourage these articles. They have a place when they inform users, educate another site’s audience, or bring awareness to your cause or company. ⁷

The problem, says the same post, is when the main intent is building links at scale back to the author’s site. ⁷ Google listed four factors that, taken to an extreme, point to that:

Keyword-rich links stuffed into the articles.
Articles published across many different sites, or many articles on a few large sites.
Writers who do not know the topics they write about.
The same text, or nearly the same, repeated across these articles. ⁷

Read item 2 with the marketplace open next to it. One of the listings sells 20 guest posts with permanent links, in a single package. ¹ ⁷

The three labels, and when each one is required

Think of the #ad an influencer adds to a sponsored post. The post stays up just the same. The label only tells you that someone paid.

On a link, the label is the rel attribute, written inside the <a> tag. Google recognizes three values: sponsored, ugc, and nofollow. This is called qualifying the link. ⁸ A regular link, one you place by choice, needs no attribute at all. ⁸ You can combine values, separated by a space or a comma. ⁸

Since September 10, 2019, all three have worked as hints, which Google weighs along with other signals. ⁹ What each value means is in the off-page piece. Here the question belongs to whoever buys, sells, or trades links: when is the label required?

Situation	What Google asks for	Source
Ad, sponsorship, or paid link	`sponsored`; `nofollow` is still accepted	⁶ ⁸
Affiliate link	`sponsored`, whether added by hand or generated by a system	¹⁰
Sponsored post or guest post with a link	the appropriate `rel` value	¹⁰
Product sent in exchange for a text with a link	counts as buying a link; qualify it	⁶
Comment or forum post	`ugc`	⁸
Contract or terms that require a link	the other site must be able to qualify it	⁶
Regular link, given by choice	no attribute	⁸

The policy closes the section with the caveat that organizes everything. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web, for advertising and sponsorship. A paid link stays within the policy when it carries nofollow or sponsored. ⁶

The rule runs both ways. If your site sells space, runs affiliate links, or trades links, the links going out also need the label. Google has a manual action of its own for unnatural links from your site. ¹¹

What Google does with a link it does not want to count

Imagine a counterfeit bill that reaches a bank teller. It gets held and taken out of circulation. Whoever took that bill as payment loses the money.

The off-page piece covered the December 2022 announcement. SpamBrain, Google’s AI-based spam-prevention system, could now detect sites buying links and sites used to pass links along. ¹² When those links are neutralized, the credit they passed is lost. ¹² Google calls this neutralizing the link.

SpamBrain was not born there. The 2021 spam report, published in April 2022, says it launched in 2018. ¹³ The same report says links still help Google discover and rank results. And that, in 2021, it made a lot of progress protecting this core signal. ¹³ Today, SpamBrain appears in the official guide among the spam detection systems. ⁴

Before that, in July 2021, the target had been sponsored posts and guest posts. Google wrote that it had gotten much better at detecting and nullifying those link campaigns. ¹⁰ The same post warns that sites publishing or buying those posts in excess, without the right attribute, may face algorithmic and manual actions. ¹⁰

The manual action has a name in Search Console: Unnatural links to your site. The help page describes a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to you. It can hit part of the site or all of it. ¹¹ The spam policy sums up the consequences. A site that violates the rules may rank lower or not appear in results at all. ⁶

The link nobody asked for

Our company site in Brazil, seogenome.com, also gets links nobody asked for. On September 14, 2026, Semrush counted 64 domains linking to our site. ¹⁴ In 36 of them, the link text is a sales pitch for backlinks from a private blog network, with our domain in the middle. ¹⁴ The tool first saw that text on July 1, 2026. ¹⁴ We did not buy those links.

What Google says about this case is in two Search Console help pages. In the Links report help, it writes that it typically ignores links from known spam sites. ¹⁵ In the help page for the disavow tool, it says most sites will not need it. ¹⁶

The same help page gives two conditions, and both have to hold at once. A considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links. And links that have caused, or will likely cause, a manual action. ¹⁶ Used when it is not needed, the tool can harm the site’s performance in search. ¹⁶

So the decision runs through a single report: Manual actions. ¹¹ ¹⁶ And there is a measurement caveat. Semrush shows what its own crawler found, with its own coverage. What Google counts stays outside that table. ¹⁴

How to see the links Google knows about

Picture the visitor log at the front desk of an apartment building. The front desk writes down which building each visitor came from, without the apartment number. It does not log everyone. And the log keeps the names of people who have since moved out.

Google’s log lives in Search Console. This is called the Links report. The help page defines a backlink as a link on a page from another site that points to a page on your site. ¹⁵

Under External links, the report has three tables. ¹⁵

Top linked pages. Shows your pages with the most backlinks. The help suggests checking whether you are getting the recognition you think you deserve.
Top linking sites. Shows the domains that link to you the most. The help says to confirm that you recognize each one.
Top linking text. Shows the text used in the links. The help says to confirm it is what you expect, and not spammy text.

The third table is where text like the one in our case shows up, if Google has recorded those links. Through the export, the Latest links list brings up to 100,000 rows, sorted by discovery date. ¹⁵

Now, what the log does not show, according to the help page itself. ¹⁵

It is a sample, and non-indexed or duplicate pages may be missing.
It groups everything by root domain. The subdomain disappears from the table.
It includes links found over time, which may have since been removed.
It does not say whether a link is nofollow.
The tables stop at 1,000 rows.

Nowhere does the help page promise to show which links count for ranking, or which were neutralized. ¹⁵ Tools like Semrush crawl the web with their own crawler. That is another sample, taken by another crawler, with its own coverage. ¹⁴

What is left: the link someone decides to give

A doctor refers you to a colleague in another specialty. She does it because she trusts that colleague’s work and because you need it. The referral is worth what she risks by giving it.

Google writes something similar in three places. In the SEO Starter Guide, it says other sites linking to you happens naturally over time. And that you can encourage people to discover your content by promoting your site. ¹⁷ In the 2021 post, it says links can be good to receive, as long as they are well deserved. ¹⁰ In the 2017 post, its best advice on link building is to focus on improving your site’s content. ⁷

My reading, which I flag as mine, finds four forms of earned link.

Your own data. A number only your operation has, and that someone else needs to write their piece.
A tool. A calculator, a spreadsheet, or a template that solves a visitor’s problem.
Research. A survey with a method, a sample, and a date, which someone cites as a source.
Editorial coverage. The story where a journalist did the reporting, chose the angle, and signed it.

All four have one thing in common. Whoever links decided to link, because the page solved something for them.

In the book SEO de Entidade, I classify every mention by a single question: who decided to publish it. ¹⁸ The same test works for the link. In earned coverage, the outlet decided. In the marketplace package, whoever paid decided.

Not every good citation comes with a link. A story can print your name without linking, and that is also a trail. The implied link patent is covered in the piece on brand authority.

That trail has a second use. Independent sources that spell your name the same way help Google work out who you are. That is corroboration work, one of the fronts of Entity SEO.

If you hire digital PR to earn links, count the stories a newsroom decided to publish, with a named reporter. ¹⁸ A disclosure, right where the advice sits: SEO Genome sells digital PR work. In the book, I position that work as the best substitute for buying links, and I declare the interest right there. ¹⁸ The yardstick above applies to any vendor, and it applies to us.

The first week of work

Set up a sheet with three columns: link, who decided to give it, and what label it carries. Then take this tour, in order.

Export the links. In Search Console, go to Links and export Latest links. The list comes sorted by discovery date. ¹⁵
Read the link text. In Top linking text, look for sales pitches, repeated keywords, and a language that is not yours. ¹⁵
Check manual actions. With no manual action, and no reason to expect one, leave the disavow tool closed. ¹¹ ¹⁶
List what you paid for. Advertorials, sponsorships, affiliate links, and paid guest posts. Check that each link carries sponsored or nofollow. ⁶ ¹⁰
Look at the links leaving your site. Footer, partners, and link exchange pages count too. ⁶ ¹¹
Pick one asset. A piece of data only you have, which a journalist or a peer in your industry would need to cite.

From now on, when someone offers you backlinks in a package, you will ask who decided to give each link. If the answer is “you, by paying,” the link needs a label. Without one, it is on the spam list.

Open Search Console today and export Latest links. The links that arrived without you asking show up there first.

Frequently asked questions

Does link building still work in 2026?

Google says PageRank is still part of its core ranking systems. ⁴ It has also written that links still help it discover and rank results. ¹³ How much each link weighs, no official source says. What the policy makes clear is which kind of link it tries to nullify. ⁶

Does buying backlinks get you penalized?

It can. A site that violates the policy may rank lower or disappear from results, through automated systems or a manual action. ⁶ ¹¹ And SpamBrain neutralizes the credit from bought links. ¹² A paid link with sponsored or nofollow stays within the policy. ⁶

Do I need to disavow the spammy links pointing to my site?

In most cases, no. Google’s help asks for two conditions together: many spammy links and a manual action, present or likely. ¹⁶ For known spam sites, Google typically ignores the links. ¹⁵

Are guest posts banned?

The format is allowed. Google condemns large-scale campaigns built to earn links, with optimized anchor text and the same text repeated across many sites. ⁷ If there was payment or a trade, the link carries the right attribute. ¹⁰

Does internal linking count as link building?

A backlink, by Google’s definition, comes from another site. ¹⁵ Links between your own pages are a different job, covered in the piece on internal links.

Notes and sources

SEO Genome survey on Mercado Livre, a Brazilian online marketplace, search “backlinks,” https://lista.mercadolivre.com.br/backlinks, September 14, 2026, read in a dedicated browser tab. The page reported 87 results, in the category “Informática, Softwares, Internet e Redes” (Computers, Software, Internet and Networks). Among the listings on the first page, with titles quoted as published in Portuguese: “10 Backlinks Brasil Nacionais Dofollow Da50+”, “5000 Backlinks Brasileiros Para Link Building E Seo”, “7000 Backlinks Tiers Para Autoridade E Seo No Google”, “40 Pbns Backlinks Da50 Da60 Nacionais Ranqueamento Orgânico”, and “20 Ultra Poderosos Guest Posts Links Permanentes” (20 ultra-powerful guest posts, permanent links), several of them marked “Frete grátis” (free shipping). Listing prices are left out. Accessed September 14, 2026.
SEO Genome survey, September 14, 2026, in two readings, both from Brazil, where we are based. Semrush, Brazil database (phrase_these): “link building” 2,400 searches a month, KD 51; “backlinks” 2,400, KD 52; “backlink” 1,300, KD 61; “comprar backlinks” (buy backlinks) 2,900, KD 11. Semrush, Brazil database (phrase_organic), top ten for “link building”: dofollow.com.br, rdstation.com, conversion.com.br, mirago.com.br, en.wikipedia.org, ahrefs.com, pt.semrush.com (twice), br.hubspot.com, and searchonedigital.com.br; for “backlinks”: pt.semrush.com, rdstation.com, lista.mercadolivre.com.br, godaddy.com, a YouTube video, neilpatel.com, the Ahrefs tool page, conversion.com.br, pt.wikipedia.org, and seoptimer.com. Google Brazil live, with no personalization (hl=pt-BR&gl=br&pws=0), in a dedicated tab: “link building” with RD Station, Semrush, Yoast, dofollow.com.br, English Wikipedia, WordStream, IPOG, and a video; “backlinks” with RD Station, Semrush, Portuguese Wikipedia, GoDaddy, Conversion, Layer Up, SEOptimer, and a video. In all, 21 text pages were opened; the videos, the Ahrefs tool page, and the Mercado Livre listing page were left out of the count. Linking to Google’s spam policy: Ahrefs (https://ahrefs.com/pt/seo/link-building) and the two Semrush pages in Portuguese (one through the old link schemes address). None of the 21 mentions SpamBrain. Accessed September 14, 2026.
Patent US 6,285,999 B1, “Method for node ranking in a linked database,” inventor Lawrence Page, original assignee Leland Stanford Junior University, filed January 9, 1998, priority January 10, 1997, granted September 4, 2001, https://patents.google.com/patent/US6285999B1/en. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passage: “a document should be important (regardless of its content) if it is highly cited by other documents. Not all citations, however, are necessarily of equal significance.” Status on Google Patents: “Expired - Lifetime,” with the platform’s caveat that legal status is a presumption.
Google Search Central, “A guide to Google Search ranking systems,” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ranking-systems-guide, page last updated December 10, 2025. Accessed September 14, 2026. Section “Link analysis systems and PageRank”: “Among these is PageRank, one of our core ranking systems used when Google first launched”, with a link to patent US 6,285,999, and “How PageRank works has evolved a lot since then, and it continues to be part of our core ranking systems.” Section “Spam detection systems”: “We employ a range of spam detection systems, including SpamBrain, to deal with content and behaviors that violate our spam policies.”
Patent US 7,716,225 B1, “Ranking documents based on user behavior and/or feature data,” inventors Jeffrey A. Dean, Corin Anderson, and Alexis Battle, assignee Google LLC, filed June 17, 2004, granted May 11, 2010, https://patents.google.com/patent/US7716225B1/en. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passages: “This reasonable surfer model reflects the fact that not all of the links associated with a document are equally likely to be followed. Examples of unlikely followed links may include ‘Terms of Service’ links, banner advertisements, and links unrelated to the document.”; among the link features, “the position of the link (measured, for example, in a HTML list, in running text, above or below the first screenful viewed on an 800×600 browser display, side (top, bottom, left, right) of document, in a footer, in a sidebar, etc.)” and “commerciality of the anchor text associated with the link”. Status on Google Patents: “Expired - Lifetime,” with the expiration adjusted to March 16, 2025, and the platform’s caveat that legal status is a presumption.
Google Search Central, “Spam policies for Google web search,” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies?hl=en, page last updated August 28, 2026 (Portuguese version updated September 2, 2026). Accessed September 14, 2026. “Link spam” section: “Link spam is the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings”; among the examples, “Using automated programs or services to create links to your site”, “Requiring a link as part of a Terms of Service, contract, or similar arrangement without allowing a third-party content owner the choice of qualifying the outbound link”, “Text advertisements or text links that don’t block ranking credit”, “Keyword-rich, hidden, or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites”, “Widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites”, and “Creating low-value content primarily for the purposes of manipulating linking and ranking signals”; and the caveat “Google does understand that buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes. It’s not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel=“nofollow” or rel=“sponsored” attribute value to the” <a> “tag.” At the top of the page: “Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.”
Google Webspam Team, “A reminder about links in large-scale article campaigns,” Google Search Central Blog, May 25, 2017, https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2017/05/a-reminder-about-links-in-large-scale. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passages: “Google does not discourage these types of articles in the cases when they inform users, educate another site’s audience or bring awareness to your cause or company. However, what does violate Google’s guidelines on link schemes is when the main intent is to build links in a large-scale way back to the author’s site.”; the four factors “Stuffing keyword-rich links to your site in your articles”, “Having the articles published across many different sites; alternatively, having a large number of articles on a few large, different sites”, “Using or hiring article writers that aren’t knowledgeable about the topics they’re writing on”, and “Using the same or similar content across these articles”; and “Our best advice in relation to link building is to focus on improving your site’s content” (the sentence continues in the original with an aside set off by dashes, omitted here).
Google Search Central, “Qualify your outbound links to Google,” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/qualify-outbound-links?hl=en, page last updated December 10, 2025 (Portuguese version updated March 8, 2026). Accessed September 14, 2026. Passages: for regular links, “you don’t need to add a rel attribute”; “Mark links that are advertisements or paid placements (commonly called paid links) with the sponsored value”; the nofollow attribute “is still an acceptable way to flag them, though sponsored is preferred”; “We recommend marking user-generated content (UGC) links, such as comments and forum posts, with the ugc value”; and “You may specify multiple rel values as a space- or comma-separated list”.
Danny Sullivan and Gary Illyes, “Evolving ‘nofollow’, new ways to identify the nature of links,” Google Search Central Blog, September 10, 2019, https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/09/evolving-nofollow-new-ways-to-identify. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passage: the three attributes “now work today as hints for us to incorporate for ranking purposes”. In the original title, the en dash became a comma.
Duy Nguyen, “A reminder on qualifying links and our link spam update,” Google Search Central Blog, July 26, 2021, https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/07/link-tagging-and-link-spam-update. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passages: “Links are one of the ways Google understands what content may be helpful to searchers, and they can be good for sites to receive, as long as they’re well deserved”; on affiliates, “We ask sites participating in affiliate programs to qualify these links with rel=“sponsored”, regardless of whether these links were created manually or dynamically”; on sponsored and guest posts, “While we have gotten significantly better at detecting and nullifying such link schemes, we still strongly recommend that site owners apply the appropriate rel values to these links” and “When we detect sites engaging in either publishing or acquiring links with excessive sponsored and guest posting without proper link tags, algorithmic and manual actions may be applied”.
Search Console Help, “Manual Actions report,” https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9044175?hl=en. Accessed September 14, 2026. Section “Unnatural links to your site”: “Google has detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site” and “This can result in some or all of your site getting a manual action.” Section “Unnatural links from your site”: “Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative outbound links on your site.”
Duy Nguyen, Ildar Akhmedyanov, Jacob N Scott, and Karthikgeyan Elangovan, “December 2022 link spam update releasing for Google Search,” Google Search Central Blog, December 14, 2022, https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/12/december-22-link-spam-update. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passages: “SpamBrain is our AI-based spam-prevention system”; “it can now detect both sites buying links, and sites used for the purpose of passing outgoing links”; and “Ranking may change as spammy links are neutralized and any credit passed by these unnatural links are lost.”
Cody Kwok, “How we fought Search spam on Google in 2021,” Google Search Central Blog, April 21, 2022, https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2022/04/webspam-report-2021. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passages: “SpamBrain was launched in 2018” and “Links still help us discover and rank results in meaningful ways, and we made a lot of progress in 2021 to protect this core signal.”
SEO Genome survey on Semrush, backlinks_overview and backlinks_anchors reports for the domain seogenome.com, September 14, 2026. Semrush counted 128 backlinks from 64 domains. The link text “high quality dofollow backlinks da 50 pa 40 premium pbn network service seogenome.com rank first page google fast seo link building buy backlinks online cheap” appeared on 36 domains (42 backlinks), first detected by the tool on July 1, 2026, and last on September 13, 2026. The tool measures what its own crawler found; the number does not equal what Google records or counts.
Search Console Help, “Links report,” https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9049606?hl=en. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passages: “A backlink is a link on a page from another site that links to a page on your site”; “Tables are limited to 1,000 rows”; “This report isn’t a comprehensive list of every link on your site. It shows a sample of internal and external links”; “Some URLs might be omitted for various reasons, such as non-indexed pages or deduped URLs”; the grouping by root domain; “The report includes links that Google has found over time. These links may have since been removed”; “The report doesn’t specify if a link is marked as nofollow”; the tables “Top linked pages,” “Top linking sites,” and “Top linking text,” with their uses (“Use this to see if you’re getting the recognition that you think you deserve”, “Confirm that you recognize the sites listed here”, “Confirm that the link text is what you expect, and not spammy text”); “For known spam sites, Google typically will ignore the links”; and the export “Latest links: The most recently discovered links to your site (up to 100,000 rows), sorted by discovery date”.
Search Console Help, “Disavow links to your site,” https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en. Accessed September 14, 2026. Passages: “If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance in Google Search results”; “In most cases, Google can assess which links to trust without additional guidance, so most sites will not need to use this tool”; and the two conditions, “You have a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links pointing to your site, AND The links have caused a manual action, or likely will cause a manual action, on your site.”
Google Search Central, “Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide,” https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/seo-starter-guide?hl=en, page last updated December 10, 2025 (Portuguese version updated December 18, 2025). Accessed September 14, 2026. Passage: “Other sites linking to you is something that happens naturally over time, and you can also encourage people to discover your content by promoting your site.”
Daniel Sócrates, SEO de Entidade (published in Portuguese), 2026, chapter 12, “Dê à sua entidade uma casa oficial” (Give Your Entity an Official Home), section “Quem decidiu publicar” (Who decided to publish). Drawn from it: classifying every mention by the question “who decided to publish,” with earned coverage decided by the outlet; the change of target to stories signed by a named reporter; and the author’s disclosure that he sells digital PR work and publicly positions it as the best substitute for buying links.

Link Building: How to Earn the Backlinks Google Counts