Editorial link

How to tell whether a link is editorial

Google's link spam policy draws the line in almost these words: it treats links that were not editorially placed or vouched for by the site's owner as unnatural. Three questions settle nearly every real case.

• Who decided? A writer or editor at the publication chose to include the link and could have left it out. If you placed it yourself - in a profile, a comment, a directory form, an embedded widget - it is not editorial, however good the site.
• What was exchanged? Nothing. Payment, a free product, a link back, or an article written on condition that it carries your link all turn the link into a placement, whatever it looks like on the page.
• Does it serve the reader? The link sits where a reader would want it - beside the claim it supports, or as the obvious place to learn more - rather than wedged into a sentence that exists to hold it.

Outreach and guest posts: where the line sits

Asking does not disqualify a link. Telling a writer about your research, or telling a site owner about a broken link on their page, puts an option in front of an editor; if they take it freely, the result is editorial. The line is crossed when the link is a condition of something you gave them.

Guest posts are the honest grey area. The editor chose to publish the article, but the author wrote the link. A link to a genuinely useful resource that the editor would keep on its merits is close to editorial; a keyword-anchored link the article was written to carry is not, and at scale it is exactly what Google's policy on guest posting describes.

Examples of editorial links

Each of these exists because someone at the linking site judged the link useful to their own reader:

• A writer cites your survey in an article and links to the study as the source of the figure.
• A trade blog explaining a process links to your guide because it covers one step better than they could in a paragraph.
• A university or library resource page lists your free tool among the references for a subject it covers.
• A site that mentioned your brand adds a link after you point out that it was missing.

Links that look editorial but are not

Some placements are designed to be indistinguishable from editorial links on the page, which is precisely why the test has to be about how the link came to exist rather than what it looks like.

• Sponsored articles Paid for, whether or not the page says so - and if it does not carry rel="sponsored", it is a link-scheme violation as well.
• "Editorial fee" guest posts A site that charges to publish your article is selling a link with extra steps.
• Paid link insertions A link added to an old article for a fee (often sold as a niche edit).
• Link swaps A link given on condition of one in return, including the three-way versions designed to look unrelated.
• Self-placed links Profiles, comments, forum signatures and directory listings you created yourself.

How editorial links are earned

You cannot place an editorial link, only make one likely. The work has two halves: be worth citing, and make sure the people who would cite you find out you exist.

1. Publish something citable. Original data, a genuinely useful free tool, a definitive explanation, a specific expert view. Writers link to sources that support their own claims; a page that only sells gives them nothing to point at.
2. Find the people who already write about it. Writers and site owners covering your subject - found through search and through who links to similar resources - are the only audience whose links you want.
3. Tell them, specifically. A personal message about their page and why your resource helps its readers. Outreach does not compromise the link as long as nothing is offered in exchange for it.
4. Reclaim what you have already earned. Mentions of your brand without a link, and links pointing at your pages that now return a 404, are endorsements you can often recover with a short, courteous note.

How to measure editorial links

No tool can label a link editorial - that is a fact about how it came to exist, not about its HTML. What you can measure is whether the links you earned are live, where they sit, and whether they are doing anything.

• Live links, not placements. Re-check that each link is still on the page. Articles are edited and pruned, and a link counted once and never checked again overstates the program.
• Referring domains, not raw counts. Ten links from one site are worth far less than one link from each of ten relevant sites.
• Position and attributes. A link in the body of a relevant article carries more weight than one in a sidebar, and a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute changes how it is treated.
• What happened afterwards. Referral visits, and the linked page's clicks and impressions in Search Console before and after the link went live. That comparison shows correlation, not proof, but it measures the outcome rather than a model of it.

Common mistakes

• Calling paid links editorial. A placement bought from a site that sells "editorial" or "organic" links is a paid link. The word on the invoice does not change what the policy says about it.
• Insisting on exact-match anchors. Writers choose their own words. Requiring a commercial keyword as the link text is the clearest sign a link was negotiated rather than chosen.
• Judging targets by an authority score alone. A high third-party score with no real audience is a common profile for sites that sell links. Relevance to your subject predicts editorial value better.
• Asking without offering anything useful. A request that gives the writer nothing for their own readers is ignored, and the few sites that say yes to it tend to be the ones you did not want.
• Never checking again. Editorial links still disappear when pages are rewritten or sites are redesigned. Programs that do not re-verify lose links without noticing.