Backlink & SEO News
Real news and sharp analysis from the world of backlinks and search — Google updates, link-spam policy, and what actually works right now.

Google's Rewritten Site Reputation Abuse Policy: What It Means for Paid Placements
On August 28, 2026, Google rewrote its site reputation abuse policy and split enforcement between the EEA and everywhere else. The four factors it now judges third-party content on are, in effect, a spec for a paid placement that survives.

Google's September 2026 Spam Update: What It Means for Bought Backlinks
Google's fourth spam update of 2026 rolled out on September 24. It does not target link spam - but that does not make bought links safe. Here is what shipped, why paid placements can still get caught, and the checklist to run while the rollout finishes.
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YMYL Link Building for Finance and Health: E-E-A-T First
In finance and health, Google applies the most scrutiny and trust outweighs everything. What that means for links, what the Medic update revealed about anchor patterns, the three tests a YMYL link must pass, and a 12-week plan.
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E-commerce Link Building for Category and Product Pages
Category and product pages earn the money and almost none of the links. Why that happens, why the category page is the lever, five tactics that land links on commercial URLs, and a 90-day plan built around the seasonal calendar.
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How Long Until a Backlink Moves Your Rankings? (Time-to-Impact)
A new backlink does not move rankings the day it goes live. What the data says about the 10-week lag, why Google waits, what shortens or stretches the timeline, and how to plan link building around it.
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Link Decay: Why Most of Your Backlinks Disappear (and What to Do)
Two-thirds of backlinks die within nine years, and links from news pages go first. What link decay is, how fast it eats a profile, how to catch it before rankings move, and how to plan the replacements.
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Backlink Gap Analysis: Win the Links Competitors Have
Backlink gap analysis finds sites that link to your competitors but not to you. How to run it, score the list, and turn it into a link plan you can execute.
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Unlinked Brand Mentions: How to Reclaim Links in 2026
Someone already wrote about you and forgot the link. How to find unlinked brand mentions, which ones to chase, and the short email that turns them into links.
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Is HARO Dead? Expert-Quote Links After Connectively
HARO died as Connectively in December 2024 and came back free under Featured in April 2025. What expert-quote links are worth now, and how to still win them.
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Linkable Assets: Content That Earns Links on Autopilot
94% of blog posts earn zero external links. Linkable assets are the few that do: the types that work, what makes them cited, and how to build one a quarter.
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Digital PR for Backlinks: The #1 Link Method in 2026
48.6% of SEOs call digital PR the most effective link method in 2026, and a campaign averages 42 referring domains. Why it won, and how a small team runs it.
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How AI Agents Are Starting to Buy Backlinks
Link buying is becoming something an AI agent does on your behalf: it finds relevant, real-traffic sites, drafts the brief, places the order and reports back — while a human keeps the only key that moves money. What actually changes, where agents go wrong, and the procurement contract to give one.
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