Service
Authority & Link Building
Links and mentions earned from sites that matter in your market, planned as part of the strategy.
Competitors' link profiles show which sites will link to a business like yours, but most of what competitors have is not worth copying. I build outreach lists from sources that pass a quality check, and plan the authority work alongside the content that needs it, not as a separate package.
- Domain Rating, client-reportedSee the case study
- 0 → 37
- Referring domains in three monthsSee the case study
- +547
Why it matters
What is at stake.
In competitive searches, content alone is often not enough: the pages that rank are backed by domains that others trust. Authority decides whether good pages can compete at all.
Bad links are worse than no links. A quality-first approach protects the site while building the reputation that search engines and AI assistants both rely on.
Workflow
How the work runs.
Each step builds on the evidence from the one before, and every finding is checked against the live site before it becomes a recommendation.
01
Baseline your profile
Audit the site's existing links and trust signals first, confirming anything suspicious in a second tool before acting on it.
02
Competitor link gap
Find the sites linking to competitors but not to you, then remove the spam, link networks and irrelevant sources that inflate most gap lists.
03
Prioritise targets
Rank real opportunities, such as industry directories, associations, publications, partners and resource pages, by relevance and value.
04
Outreach and assets
Plan and run or supervise outreach, supported by pages that deserve links: data, tools, guides and expert content.
05
Monitor
Track new referring domains, authority and the rankings of the pages they support.
Results
What it can bring.
- Stronger domain authority built from relevant, trusted sources.
- Better rankings for competitive pages held back by authority.
- More brand mentions on the sites AI assistants quote.
- A clean profile with no paid-link risk.
Typically includes
- Backlink profile and gap analysis
- Quality-checked outreach target list
- Outreach planning and supervision
- Linkable asset recommendations
- Trust and E-E-A-T signals
In practice
How authority was built alongside content
A floor plan app with no domain authority: top three on Google for searches about both market leaders, one of which has 60 times its links.
Common questions
Questions about Authority & Link Building.
- Do you sell link packages?
- No. Links bought by volume are a risk, not an asset. Authority work is planned from a quality-checked list of relevant sites, as part of the wider strategy.
- How many links does a site need?
- There is no fixed number. It depends on the authority of the pages ranking for your targets, which is why the gap is measured against the real competitors for each search.
- What makes a good backlink?
- A link from a relevant, genuine site that your audience or industry actually reads, placed naturally within useful content. Relevance and trust matter far more than the number of links or a single authority score.
- Are paid links or link networks risky?
- Yes. Links bought from networks or placed purely to manipulate rankings can be ignored by search engines or lead to penalties. They also leave a pattern that is hard to undo, which is why every target is checked for quality first.
- Should I disavow bad links?
- Rarely. Most low-quality links are already ignored by search engines. A disavow is only worth considering when there is clear evidence of a harmful pattern, confirmed in more than one tool.
- How long does link building take to show results?
- Usually several months. New links need to be discovered and trusted, and their effect builds gradually, which is why authority work runs alongside content and technical improvements rather than after them.
Need help with Authority & Link Building?
Describe what is happening on your site. You will get a direct answer about what I think is going on, how I would approach it, and whether it is work I should be doing.
Or email directly
hello@ivanseo.com