White Hat Link Building in 2025: Strategies from Our Team

Link building is kind of like a game, but we need to play it the right way.

The goal is to help your website rank better and get noticed more online. To do this, you should focus on using honest and effective methods, like white hat backlinks.

You might be wondering, do you really need backlinks to rank higher? Well, a study from Semrush study shows that 92.3% of the top 100 websites had at least one backlink.

But not all backlinks are the same—some are more useful for SEO than others, and some don’t help much at all.

Keep reading to learn about the white hat backlink methods that can help your website stand out.

Before we dive into those, let’s quickly talk about what white hat link building is.

What is White Hat Link Building?

White hat link building is an important SEO strategy that includes building backlinks only with ethical techniques approved by Google. It includes creating valuable content, doing link building outreach, and suggesting a mutually beneficial link exchange collaboration to other websites.

These white hat links are safe and fully acceptable by Google and other search engines. A popular approach is organic link building, where other websites naturally link to your content because they find it valuable.

Another way is to do some outreach. This means reaching out to other websites and suggesting your content, showing how it could be valuable to their audience. Cool, right?

What Makes a Link White Hat?

So, what makes a backlink great, and how can we tell if it’s white hat link building? Let’s find out. And if any words seem confusing, just check an SEO glossary for a quick answer!

Here’s why they’re different:

• Relevant: The backlinks you get should come from websites related to your content or industry. For example, if you have a blog about digital marketing, backlinks from other marketing blogs or agencies are ideal.

• Authoritative: Backlinks from reliable websites can seriously boost your profile. Think of it this way — a link from a well-known website like a top industry blog or a news website adds weight to your content and shows search engines that you’re a trusted source.
• Contextual: White hat links should naturally fit the content they are placed in. When a website links to your page, it should make sense within the context of the article. For example, if your content is about SEO, a link to your page should come from a piece discussing SEO topics. It’s all about making the connection feel natural.
• Organic: The best white hat link building techniques happen when other website owners find your content valuable enough to link to without being paid. They might link to your article because they genuinely think it helps their readers — no financial exchange involved. This is the essence of organic link building.
• Valuable: A white hat link should direct users to useful information. The goal is to add value for the reader, so when they click your link, they should be able to find something that answers their question or solves their problem.

Now that we know what white hat links are, let’s finally answer the question of why you should invest in it.

Why We Trust White Hat Link Building for SEO

White hat link building can take time and effort. So you may wonder whether you should really invest in it. From our team’s perspective, it’s definitely a strategy you want to commit to.

Here are the pros of this tested strategy:

• Increased SEO rankings

Organically getting white hat backlinks from reputable websites will definitely skyrocket your website performance. Partnering with a company that provides excellent white hat link building techniques will ensure your website’s ranking will grow organically and steadily. Effective strategies not only boosts your website’s authority but also enhances its visibility in search engine results.

• Improved organic traffic

You will see your website’s organic traffic growth thanks to getting white hat backlinks through white hat strategies. The more traffic you get, the more you get a chance to convert website visitors into potential customers and boost your revenue.

• Boosted business reputation

If you don’t engage in manipulative or spammy black hat link building tactics such as engaging in PBNs or buying backlinks, not only will Google appreciate it, but users and other businesses should consider you as a reputable brand.

So, long story short, even if it takes longer to show actual results than black hat link building, it will definitely ensure steady website performance growth.

White Hat Link Building: Powerful Strategies We Use

Backlinks can really take your website performance to the next level. In fact, a study done by Ahrefs proves that the number of websites linking to a page has a positive impact on ranking position. 

In other words, you need to invest in link building, but only white hat link building techniques.

Create Linkable Assets

Building linkable assets is one of the most effective and popular white hat techniques. But what are linkable assets exactly?

These are any type of compelling and helpful content that organically attracts links from other websites. Having powerful content on your website can improve your SEO rankings. Most importantly, you will gain a lot of organic traffic․

So, how can you create content assets?

Start by carefully understanding your target audience, their interests, and needs. In this stage, you should do keyword research to help you define your audience’s pain points. In the next step analyze competitors’ content strategies to see what kind of content attracts the most. 

Let’s see how Ahrefs content gap analysis can help you with this.

It can be original case studies, listicles, or ultimate guides that truly give readers value. Those content assets should be:

• Well-researched 
• Full of deep insights
• With fresh perspective 
• Unique and engaging

By creating compelling and engaging content that matches those criteria, you will have linkable assets that organically bring traffic to your website. 

Make sure to  promote your content assets via email, social media, and other channels to increase their visibility and reach even more.

Find and Fix Broken Links

You need a strong and healthy backlink profile, right? 

So, you should try to avoid broken links. These are dead links and when users click on them they see 401 error pages. This happens when website owners delete them.

You can trust Ahrefs in this case as well.

After collecting this data, start analyzing it and decide whether it’s a good idea to replace those broken links with live ones. If the answer is positive, you should reach out to the websites linking to the dead pages and suggest changing dead links to live ones. Knowing how to fix broken links effectively will make this process smoother and help improve your website’s SEO and user experience. This is a key part of white hat link building.

If these backlinks are from spammy websites engaged in black hat SEO techniques, consider disavowing them. 

These steps will ensure your backlink profile remains strong and healthy with white hat links.

Keep an Eye on Competitor Strategies

Keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing can help you find new link building opportunities. First of all, you will find out new effective backlink techniques. Plus, you will discover what type of content performs best and will refine your content strategies.   

Ahrefs can be an irreplaceable tool for doing competitor analysis as well.

After finding the backlink gap, you should try to fill it. Start checking whether those websites that link your competitors are relevant and authoritative.

Then build a strong outreach strategy for getting backlinks from sites that meet those criteria. To make your email outreach efforts effective, avoid being in an email spam folder by regularly cleaning your email list and implementing authentication protocols. All these efforts will help you refine your link building strategies.

Find Unlinked Brand Mentions

The more popular your brand is, the more brand mentions you may have, but some of them can be unlinked. 

This happens when another website refers to your brand and mentions your brand name without linking. This presents a great opportunity to get backlinks because those websites are already familiar with your content or your product.

But first, you need to find those unlinked brand mentions, and again, Ahrefs can be your go-to tool for completing this task.  

After collecting this data you should reach out to these websites but only after carefully analyzing them. Avoid connecting to websites that are spammy or engaged in other black-hat SEO strategies. 

Instead outreach to authoritative websites and thank them for mentioning your product or business on their website. Suggest your website’s link insertion. 

This will be a win-win scenario: they will improve user experience by giving more information and you can get a backlink from reputable websites, using white hat link building techniques.

To wrap it up

It’s time to sum up what we’ve discussed about white hat link building.

• White hat links are relevant, authoritative, organic and valuable.
• Common white hat link building strategies include creating linkable assets, investing in guest posting and fixing your broken links. 
• Creating link-worthy content, doing competitor analysis, turning unlinked brand mentions into backlinks are other common white hat techniques.

FAQ about white hat link building