Link building for SEO: how to earn backlinks, and when buying them hurts
Link building for SEO without putting your site at risk: what Google calls link spam, 8 legitimate sources for an Israeli business, and a checklist.
Link building for SEO is the work of getting other websites to link to yours, so that Google treats it as a source people rely on. It is not about creating a hyperlink in HTML or dropping one into a WhatsApp message — it is about external links (backlinks) that affect your ranking. Search in Hebrew for "buying links" and, as of September 2026, most of what comes back is companies selling links, and some of the leading guides still present private blog networks (PBNs) as a method. In this article we explain what Google defines as link spam, set out eight legitimate sources for an Israeli business, and give you a checklist for assessing a paid link offer. By the end you will also know when Disavow is genuinely needed.
What link building is, and what Google defines as spam
A link from another site is a form of recommendation. Google counts it, but not every link is worth the same: a link from a relevant site with real readers is worth more than dozens of links from sites built only to link. We covered the general groundwork in our guide to organic ranking in Google. Here we focus on the links themselves.
According to Google's spam policies, link spam means creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate rankings. Among the examples the policy lists:
- Paying for links for ranking purposes. Money, goods or services in exchange for a link, including sending a product in exchange for an article with a link.
- Excessive link exchanges ("link to me and I'll link to you").
- Automated software or services that create links.
- Low-quality directory and bookmark sites.
- Footer or template links across many sites.
- Forum comments with optimised links.
- Thin content produced mainly to generate links. In our view a PBN — sites that exist only in order to link — belongs here.
Note the exception: Google states explicitly that buying and selling links for advertising and sponsorship purposes is a normal part of the web. It does not violate the policy, as long as the link is marked rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". In other words, the payment is not the problem. Paying for ranking is.
Buying links: risk, effort and cost
"Buying links" often comes dressed up as a "sponsored article" or an "authority package". The table below sorts the options by what actually matters. We have written the cost as our own relative estimate, without figures, because market prices vary enormously from one supplier to the next.
| Link source | Risk | Effort | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sponsored article on a content site, marked sponsored | low | low | high, and the value is exposure rather than ranking |
| Article on a niche blog, unmarked | high | low | medium |
| A PBN or a "package of 50 links" | very high | none | low, but your site is on the line |
| An interview, an expert article, a media mention | low | high | mostly time |
| Associations, suppliers and business partners | low | medium | time, sometimes a membership fee |
Our decision rule: if you are paying a site, do it for its readers and for the exposure, and insist on the sponsored mark. A supplier who refuses to mark the link is selling you ranking — exactly what the policy prohibits. And the penalty, if it comes, lands on your site and not on the supplier. What professional support that includes authority building costs, we set out in our SEO pricing guide.
8 legitimate link sources for an Israeli business
The best links come from the places where your business genuinely exists. In most cases these are the first places to check:
- Professional associations and chambers of commerce. Most keep a member list with a link to the member's site. That is a relevant link, and it cannot be faked.
- Suppliers, importers and brands. If you are an authorised reseller of a brand, ask to appear on its "where to buy" page.
- Business partners. A contractor and an interior designer, an accountant and a lawyer. One link on a partners page is natural; dozens of exchanges are exactly what the policy describes.
- Local and trade media. Journalists need experts who respond quickly. Offer a comment for an article in your field, or an interview on a local news site.
- Data people quote. A small survey among your customers, or a price table based on real jobs. Other sites link to the source of a number.
- A tool or a calculator. A return-on-investment calculator, a size checker, a downloadable checklist. A useful tool keeps earning links for years.
- Talks, conferences and podcasts. The speaker page or the episode description links to your site, and the audience already knows who you are.
- Mentions without a link. Search Google for your business name. An article that mentions you without linking is one small request away, from a source that already knows you.
A local business has another layer on top of this: citations in business directories, with an identical name, address and phone number. We covered that in our guide to local SEO.
Checklist: how to assess a paid link offer
If you are offered an article or a paid link anyway, run these six checks before you transfer a shekel:
- Real organic traffic, not a DA or DR score. Those are metrics belonging to tool vendors, not to Google, and they are easy to inflate. Use an SEO tool to see whether the site gets traffic from Google and whether it is stable. A collapsing graph is a warning sign.
- Topical relevance. A link to a plumber from a fashion site tells Google nothing good.
- The site does not sell to everyone. Open its last ten articles. If each one links to a business from a different field, you are looking at a link farm.
- Not in the footer, not on every page, not as part of a package. A link that appears on thousands of pages is precisely the example from the policy.
- The sponsored mark. Ask in advance. An evasive answer tells you what is being sold here.
- The exact URL and an indexing check. Get the address of the page, and confirm that it appears in Google. A page that is not indexed passes nothing on.
The same scepticism is worth applying to any supplier who promises "quality links". What else to check before you sign, we set out in our guide to choosing an SEO company.
Disavow: when you really need it
Plenty of site owners panic when spam links suddenly appear, and go looking for the Disavow tool. According to the Search Console Help Centre, most sites do not need it, because Google is able to assess for itself which links to trust. The tool is meant for a situation where two conditions hold together: you have a considerable number of artificial or low-quality links, and they have caused a manual action, or are likely to cause one.
What to do in practice:
- Random spam links from odd sites: ignore them. It happens to every site.
- You bought links in the past and received a manual action: check the "Manual actions" report in Search Console. Remove what you can with the site owners, and submit the rest in a Disavow file.
- The file: a UTF-8 encoded text file, one URL per line, with the
domain:prefix to disavow a whole domain.
Google warns that this is an advanced tool, and that using it incorrectly can harm your ranking. In other words, do not submit a file "just to be safe".
SEO without links, and what AI changes
Can you rank a site without building links? For local, long-tail phrases with low competition, yes. A page that answers "solar water heater repair in Holon" well can climb with very few links. For national, competitive phrases, in our experience, a site with no external mentions at all struggles to overtake competitors that have them.
AI engines also take account of what is written about you elsewhere. A mention of your business name in an article, even without a link, helps identify you as an entity and cite you in answers. We unpacked that side of things in our guide to AI search optimisation (GEO). Which is why good PR and genuine mentions now work twice over: in Google and in AI answers.
What Simple Web does about it
Simple Web is an AI-first marketing agency from Bnei Brak, certified Meta partners and Google advertising experts, working with 200+ businesses and holding 35 five-star Google reviews. Link building here is part of organic SEO: we build authority the clean way, quality before quantity, without shortcuts that can hurt you later. Alongside it come keyword research by purchase intent, technical fixes and content that people write and AI sharpens, in Hebrew and in English. A report arrives every month. The price is set in a quote based on scope, after a free diagnostic call. Anyone who needs ongoing content and technical maintenance first can start with Simpi, an AI agent that does your site's SEO over WhatsApp, at ₪750 + VAT per month at the launch price.
Summary
Link building is not measured in quantity. Google permits paying for a link only when it is marked, and PBNs and link packages put your site at risk, not the supplier's. The sources that work for an Israeli business are the ones where you genuinely exist: associations, suppliers, partners, media, data and talks. Disavow is needed almost only after a manual action. Want to know where your site's links stand and where to start? Book a free diagnostic call.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Spam policies (Link spam): the definition of link spam, the list of examples, and the exception for marked sponsored links
- Google Search Central: Qualify your outbound links: the difference between sponsored, ugc and nofollow
- Search Console Help: Disavow links: when to use Disavow, the file format and the warning against misuse
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