External links are links from other websites that point to yours. Search engines treat them as votes of trust: the more quality sites link to a page, the more authoritative it looks. But links vary a lot in how you get them, how much weight they carry, what they cost and how risky they are. Below we break down the main types and explain which ones your site actually needs.
Key points in 30 seconds
- By acquisition method we distinguish crowd links, outreach, guest posts, directories, social media and PBNs.
- By technical attributes: dofollow/nofollow, anchor/naked, permanent/rented.
- The safest and most natural: crowd links and outreach on live sites.
- PBNs and spammy directories are the riskiest: the weight is unstable and the chance of a penalty is high.
- A healthy profile needs a mix of types, not just one, because that is what looks natural.
What external links are and why you need them
An external link (inbound link, or backlink) is a hyperlink from someone else’s domain to yours. Search engines use backlinks as one of the key authority signals: a link from a trusted, topically relevant site passes part of its “weight” to your page and helps it rank higher. Google does not hide this: its guide to ranking systems explicitly lists “Link analysis systems and PageRank”. That is why managing your link profile is a core part of off-page SEO. We covered the mechanics in more detail in the article What Is Link Building.
But not all links are equally useful. Some strengthen your profile, some are worthless, and some can drag your site into a penalty. Links are a bit like wedding guests: some bring a gift, some just come for the buffet, and some start a fight by the end of the night. That is why it pays to understand how links are classified. You can split them by at least four criteria: by attribute, by source (acquisition method), by placement on the page and by anchor text. Each answers its own question: does the link pass weight, how natural is it, will a reader notice it, and how will a search engine “read” it.
Classification by attribute: dofollow, nofollow, ugc, sponsored
The rel attribute is a technical label the owner of the linking site uses to tell Google how to treat the link. Google’s official documentation on qualifying outbound links describes three values:
| Attribute | What Google recommends it for | Where you see it | Value for your profile |
| No attribute (dofollow) | A regular editorial link | Articles, reviews, some forums and signatures | The main source of weight |
| rel=”nofollow” | When a site doesn’t want to associate itself with the link | Social media, many large news sites, profiles | A natural-looking profile, referral clicks |
| rel=”ugc” | Links in comments and forum posts | Forums, comments, Q&A | Naturalness, clicks, partial weight as a “hint” |
| rel=”sponsored” | Ads and paid placements | Native ads, sponsored articles | Traffic and brand, not rankings |
An important nuance: since 2019 Google has treated nofollow, ugc and sponsored as “hints” rather than strict directives. In other words, the search engine decides for itself whether to count such a link. So nofollow is not “junk” but a normal part of any real link profile: on the actual web a large share of links carry exactly these attributes. A profile made only of dofollow links looks unnatural, a bit like a CV where the candidate is “fluent in everything”. For more on this, see Ahrefs’ guide to nofollow links and our article Dofollow vs Nofollow: Do They Pass Weight.
From our practice
What does the attribute split actually look like on forums? In our check of 16.5 thousand forums in October 2026, among the 2,765 forums where external links appear at all, dofollow made up 49%, nofollow/ugc 32%, a mixed setup 10%, and 8% went through a redirect. Signatures look similar: among 1,611 forums with visible signatures, links in signatures were allowed on 43%, and of those, 48% were dofollow. That is why our packages honestly plan for roughly half dofollow depending on the niche, instead of promising “100% link juice”.
Classification by source: type, weight, price, risk
The main way to classify links is by how you get them. The table below compares the main types by SEO weight, approximate price and level of risk.
| Link type | SEO weight | Price (approx.) | Risk |
| Crowd links | Medium, grows with traffic to the thread | $2–8 per placement | Low |
| Outreach (link in someone else’s article) | High | $30–150+ | Low–medium |
| Guest posts | High | $40–200+ | Medium |
| Directories and listings | Low | $0–20 | Medium–high |
| Social media and profiles | Low (usually nofollow) | Low | |
| PBN (site networks) | Potentially high, but unstable | $50–300 | High |
Prices are approximate and depend on the niche, volume and competition. We will calculate the exact cost for your project.
For a market benchmark: according to Ahrefs, citing an Authority Hacker survey of 755 link builders, the average price of a paid link is $83. At Links-Buy, manual crowd links cost from 86 down to 70 UAH each depending on volume (minimum order of 20 links); current terms are on the Pricing page.
Type by type: when each one makes sense
Crowd links
Links from live discussions on forums, in comments, reviews and Q&A services. Their weight is moderate, but they look as natural as it gets and bring real traffic. They work well for a young site, for diluting your profile and for building a “background” around heavier links. What crowd marketing is and when it works is covered in What Is Crowd Marketing.
The main risk with crowd links is not the format but the execution. Google classifies automated programs that create links as spam, so template messages blasted by software across hundreds of forums are exactly the scenario to avoid. Crowd marketing that works is a hand-written, on-topic reply that would help the people in the thread even without a link. You can see examples of such placements on our Placement Examples page.
Forum profiles and signatures
A separate subtype is the link in a user profile or in the signature under posts. Profile links on their own are weak: profile pages are rarely indexed and carry almost no weight of their own. Signatures are more valuable because they appear under every post the author writes, but forum rules often restrict them. They are fine as a supplement to contextual crowd links, but not as the basis of a strategy.
Outreach and guest posts
Outreach means placing a link inside someone else’s topical article by agreement with the site owner; a guest post is your own article published on another site. Both carry high weight if the linking site is trusted and on topic. The risk rises when a site exists only to sell links. Google’s spam policies also single out large-scale guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchors: dozens of look-alike articles with exact-match commercial anchors are a warning pattern. How to choose between the formats is explained in Outreach vs Crowd Marketing. Use them to boost key pages and build topical authority.
PR placements and media mentions
Brand mentions in news, interviews, expert commentary and industry roundups. Media links are often nofollow, but they give you something a regular placement can’t buy: recognition, branded traffic and trust. For YMYL niches (health, finance, law) such mentions are especially useful as part of your expertise signals. The downside is that they are hard to scale and impossible to plan precisely. A journalist writes about you when they feel like it, not when your quarterly report is due.
Directories and listings
Mass directories lost their value long ago and often do harm. The exception is trusted niche and local listings (industry associations, maps, reputable city portals): they help with local SEO and brand signals, but there are only a few of them and they won’t move rankings much on their own.
Social media and profiles
Links from social media profiles and posts are almost always nofollow and don’t pass weight directly. Their role is diluting your profile, brand signals and extra traffic. As a standalone promotion tool they are weak, but a healthy profile should include them.
Blog comments
Comments under articles are the closest relative of forum crowd links, but less valuable: most CMSs automatically mark such links nofollow or ugc, and blog moderation is strict. One substantive comment on a topical blog with a real audience can bring clicks. A hundred “thanks, great article” comments bring nothing but risk and, quite possibly, a weary sigh from the moderator.
PBN (site networks)
A PBN is a network of sites you control, built purely for links. They can carry high weight, but this is a classic grey-hat method with high risk: once Google detects the network it can deindex all of it, and every link you placed disappears at once. On top of that, in March 2024 Google added expired domain abuse to its spam policies, and expired domains are exactly what networks are often built on. We don’t recommend PBNs as the basis of a strategy; building your profile on crowd links and outreach is more honest and safer. A detailed comparison is in Crowd Links vs PBN.
Classification by placement
The same link from the same site can be worth different amounts depending on where exactly it sits on the page. The general logic is simple: the closer a link is to the main content and the more naturally it fits into the text, the more likely both readers and search engines are to notice it.
| Placement | Example | Value | Risk |
| Contextual (in the text) | A link in the body of an article or forum reply | Highest: topical surroundings and a chance of clicks | Low, if relevant |
| Forum signature | A link under every post by the author | Medium | Low–medium |
| User profile | The “website” field in a forum or service profile | Low | Low |
| Sidebar, footer, blogroll | A sitewide link on every page of the site | Low, often ignored | Medium–high with commercial anchors |
| Comment | The author name linked under an article | Low | Medium at scale |
Sitewide footer links deserve a separate mention: hundreds or thousands of links from one domain still count as one referring domain, and if they use a commercial anchor they look like a textbook paid link.
Classification by anchor text
An anchor link sits on a keyword; a naked link sits on a URL, “here” or a brand name. Overusing commercial anchors is a common cause of penalties, so it’s important to keep the proportions right. In its link best practices, Google advises that anchor text should be descriptive, relevant and reasonably concise, and that the link itself should be a regular <a href> tag. The main anchor groups are:
- Branded: the company or domain name. The safest foundation for a profile.
- Naked (URL): a bare link. Typical of forums and comments.
- Generic: “here”, “on the website”, “read more”. Natural but not very informative.
- Partial match: a phrase that contains the keyword plus other words. Useful for relevance.
- Exact-match commercial: the exact keyword, such as “buy X”. The strongest signal and the biggest risk when overused.
The “click here” anchor is a genre classic: perfectly honest, yet Google still has no idea what “here” actually is. Types and safe ratios are covered in What Is Anchor Text, and our anchor text generator will help you put together a balanced list.
Permanent and rented
A permanent link is placed once and stays forever; a rented one works only as long as you keep paying for it every month. Permanent links cost more upfront but are cheaper over a one-year horizon and more reliable. If you specifically need permanent placements, take a look at our permanent forum links.
Value and risk: the overall picture
No type is “good” or “bad” in itself: what matters is the combination of source, placement, attribute and anchor. It helps to look at any link through three questions:
- Would anyone have placed it without payment? If the link is useful to the linking site’s readers, it is natural no matter how it came about.
- Does it bring clicks? A link nobody clicks is most likely sitting in an unnatural spot.
- How does it look at scale? One exact-match link is normal; a hundred identical ones form a pattern Google is learning to recognise.
Keep the consequences in mind too. Since December 2022 Google has used SpamBrain to neutralise the impact of unnatural links: whatever weight they passed is simply lost. So risky link types often don’t “punish” a site directly; they make the money you spent worthless. You can vet a site before buying with our donor site checker.
How to break down your own profile by type
Before buying new links, it is worth understanding what your profile already consists of. Export the list of referring domains from Google Search Console or any SEO tool and tag each linking site using the four criteria from this article. Here is a short checklist:
- Attribute. Work out the share of dofollow versus nofollow/ugc. If there are almost no nofollow links, the profile looks artificial.
- Source. Group the linking sites: forums, articles, directories, social media, news outlets. A heavy skew toward one type is a sign the profile needs diluting.
- Placement. Flag sitewide links from footers and sidebars: they inflate the backlink count but not the number of referring domains.
- Anchor. Check your anchor distribution with the anchor text analyzer: branded and naked anchors should dominate.
This tagging immediately shows what is missing: one site needs stronger contextual links, another needs the opposite, a natural background of forum links and mentions. How to evaluate a profile as a whole is covered in What Is a Link Profile.
Which links your site needs
There is no single “best” type: a healthy profile needs a mix. A young site should start with crowd links for a natural background, then add outreach to key pages, keep a healthy share of naked and nofollow links, and use local listings selectively. It is better to skip mass directories and PBNs altogether. In its overview of backlink types, Ahrefs also stresses that a link’s value is defined not by its format but by its relevance and the authority of the source. Here are guidelines for different kinds of projects:
| Site type | Profile foundation | Supplement | What to avoid |
| New site / startup | Crowd links on topical forums, branded anchors | Social media, profiles, a few articles | Sudden spikes, exact-match anchors |
| Online store | Outreach to category pages, crowd links to products and reviews | Blogger reviews, PR | Sitewide footer links |
| Local business | Local listings, Google Maps, city portals | Regional forums, reviews | Mass generic directories |
| Content / media project | Natural mentions, outreach, guest articles | Crowd links in Q&A and forums | Buying on “link farm” sites |
| YMYL (health, finance, law) | Authoritative industry sources, PR, expert articles | Careful crowd links in specialist communities | PBNs, dubious linking sites |
From our practice
Clients often ask why we don’t just “use every forum out there”. In our check of 16.5 thousand forums in October 2026, 90% were alive, but among those where we could check registration, it was open on only 39%, and another 14% required accepting the rules first. Ukrainian-language forums made up about 10% of the live ones, and on 68% of the forums where we could browse threads, the threads we checked contained no external links at all. That is why the quality of crowd links comes down to selection: a live site, a relevant thread and moderation that lets useful links through.
Our link building services can build that kind of profile for your niche and budget, with a strategy, hand-picked linking sites and control over anchor ratios. You can map out a monthly schedule with our Link Building Plan tool.
Not sure which links your site is missing, or how many? Discuss your project with us: we’ll put together a safe mix of link types for your niche and calculate the cost.
Sources
- Google Search Central: Qualify your outbound links to Google: nofollow, ugc, sponsored
- Google Search Central Blog: Evolving “nofollow”: new ways to identify the nature of links
- Google Search Central: Spam policies for Google web search
- Google Search Central Blog: March 2024 core update and new spam policies: expired domain abuse
- Google Search Central Blog: December 2022 link spam update: SpamBrain
- Google Search Central: Link best practices for Google: anchor text guidance
- Ahrefs: Types of Backlinks
- Ahrefs: Nofollow Links
