How to Build Links for SEO: A Beginner's Guide
A beginner's guide to the 6 most effective link building strategies for Australian businesses — what makes a good link, and what to avoid entirely.
Bhavleen Singh
SEO Specialist, Khalis Marketing
Quick Answer: Link building is the process of getting other websites to link to yours. The most accessible starting points for any Australian business: submit to 10-15 business directories, ask current clients for a footer link, join industry associations that offer member directory listings, sponsor a local community organisation, and publish one genuinely useful guide or resource that other sites want to reference. These strategies cost little or nothing and produce real, lasting results.
Backlinks are one of Google's most important ranking signals.
They're also one of the areas where the most money gets wasted on bad tactics.
This guide covers the six most effective link building strategies for Australian businesses, why each one works, and the things you should never do. If you want to understand the full strategy first: Link Building for Melbourne Businesses.
Why Links Matter
Google can read your content. It can crawl your site. What it can't verify directly is whether your business is genuinely trustworthy and worth recommending.
Backlinks are the signal it uses for that assessment. Every link from a real website to yours is a third-party vote of confidence. The page ranking #1 on Google has, on average, 3.8 times more backlinks than the pages in positions 2 through 10.
A site with zero backlinks is telling Google it hasn't been cited or referenced by anyone. In competitive markets, that's very difficult to overcome with content quality alone.
What Makes a Good Link vs a Bad Link
| Good link | Bad link |
|---|---|
| From a real website with real traffic | From a site that exists only to sell links |
| Relevant to your industry or location | Completely unrelated to your business |
| From a different domain than other links | Multiple links from the same IP or network |
| Earned or legitimately requested | Bought in a package |
| Includes natural, descriptive anchor text | Over-optimised keyword anchor text on every link |
Roughly 30% of backlinks on the average website have medium or high toxicity. If someone sold your site 50 links last year and you don't know where they came from, it's worth auditing that link profile in Ahrefs or SEMrush — or commissioning a full SEO audit.
Strategy 1: Australian Business Directories
Start here. No exceptions.
Directories are free, fast, and create legitimate backlinks from established, high-authority Australian domains.
Submit to these this week:
- 1Yellow Pages AU (yellowpages.com.au) — DA 72
- 2True Local (truelocal.com.au) — DA 64
- 3Yelp AU (yelp.com.au) — DA 60
- 4Hotfrog Australia — DA 48
- 5StartLocal — DA 43
- 6Local.com.au — DA 38
Include your exact business name, address, and phone number on every listing. These must match your website and Google Business Profile precisely. Inconsistencies suppress local rankings.
Strategy 2: Ask Your Clients for Links
You have clients. Most of them have websites. Many would happily add a credit link if asked.
Here's the exact request to send:
Client link request template — Subject: Quick favour, happy to return it. Hi [name], quick question. Would you be open to adding a small credit link on your site? Something like '[business name]' in the footer, linked back to us. Happy to add a link back to you from our site too. Either way, appreciate your support. No pressure at all.
Most clients say yes. A single link from a real Melbourne business in your industry carries more weight than 20 directory submissions combined.
Strategy 3: Industry Association Memberships
Most Australian industries have trade associations that offer member directory listings with a link back to your website.
- Trades: Master Plumbers Australia, Master Electricians Australia, Housing Industry Association
- Medical: Australian Medical Association, relevant specialty colleges
- Legal: Law Institute of Victoria, Law Society of NSW
- Accounting: CPA Australia, Institute of Public Accountants
- Marketing: Australian Marketing Institute, Digital + Technology Collective
These links carry high topical relevance because the linking site is authoritative in your specific industry.
Strategy 4: Local Sponsorships
Sponsoring a Melbourne community organisation, local sports club, or charity event generates a link from their website.
These are often .org.au or .edu.au domains. Both carry elevated trust signals in Google's eyes because they're harder to create fraudulently than .com.au sites.
Cost: typically $100 to $500 per year.
Benefit: a genuine community link that also provides brand visibility in your target suburb.
Start by searching '[your suburb] community organisations' or '[your suburb] sports clubs' and checking their websites for sponsor pages.
Strategy 5: Earn Links Through Content
The best links are ones you never have to ask for.
When you publish content that other sites want to reference, they link to it naturally. This compounds over time.
Content types that earn links most reliably in Australia:
- Original data or research: 'We audited 50 Melbourne business websites and found...' — this type of content is highly linkable because it creates a unique, citable source
- Comprehensive guides: Long-form (2,000+ word) guides that cover a topic more completely than anything else available
- Local statistics and market data: Content about Melbourne or Australia-specific data that other sites can't find elsewhere
- Case studies with real numbers: A plumbing business that grew 312% in 6 months through SEO is linkable. 'We help businesses grow' is not
The blog content we've built for Khalis Marketing is designed specifically to earn these links: SEO Blog.
Strategy 6: HARO and Digital PR
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a service that connects journalists with expert sources. When a journalist is writing about SEO, digital marketing, or small business in Australia, they send a query. You respond with a comment. If they use it, you get a link from a news site or publication.
This takes time and most responses don't result in coverage. But when they do, links from publications like SmartCompany, Business Insider, or the Sydney Morning Herald carry significant authority.
Sign up at connectively.us. Set alerts for marketing, small business, and SEO queries. Respond within 2 hours of receiving a query — timing matters.
What Not to Do: The Shortcuts That Backfire
Never buy bulk links. Any service offering 50 or 100 backlinks for a few hundred dollars is selling links from link farms or private blog networks. About 30% of these links are classified as medium or high toxicity by Google's spam systems. A manual penalty from link spam can suppress a site for 12 to 24 months. The cost in lost revenue consistently exceeds what the 'cheap' links cost. (Source: SE Ranking, 2025)
How to Track Your Link Building Progress
- Ahrefs or SEMrush free trial: Both show your total referring domains, domain rating, and which specific sites link to you. Check monthly.
- Google Search Console: Shows which pages are getting backlinks and any manual penalties related to link quality.
- Google Alerts: Set alerts for your business name. Every mention is a potential link opportunity — reach out and ask if they'd add a hyperlink to the mention.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many links do I need to rank in Melbourne?
No fixed number. The goal is to have more quality backlinks than the direct competitors ranking above you for your target keywords. Check their domain rating in Ahrefs and use that as your benchmark, not an arbitrary target.
Is it safe to use a link building agency?
Yes, if they're transparent about their methods. Ask to see examples of recent links they've built — real URLs, real sites, real domain authority. Avoid any agency that can't or won't show you exactly which sites they use.
Do social media links count?
Social media links are nofollow, meaning they don't pass ranking authority directly. However, content shared widely on social media gets more eyeballs, which leads to other sites finding and linking to it. Social presence also builds brand mentions, which are an indirect trust signal.
Want link building included as part of a full campaign? Get a free audit.
Bhavleen Singh
SEO Specialist, Khalis Marketing
Bhavleen is an SEO specialist with 10+ years of experience helping businesses across retail, hospitality, medical, finance, and trades rank on Google. He founded Khalis Marketing to offer transparent, no-contract SEO that actually delivers results.
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