Link building remains one of SEO’s most powerful growth levers – it’s essential to getting those all-important backlinks to your site.
Yet it’s one of the hardest SEO strategies to execute well.
In this article, we’ve collected the most relevant and up-to-date link building statistics for 2025.
Key link building statistics
- 86% of marketers employ link building as part of their SEO strategy
- Over a quarter of an SEO budget is spent on link building
- 56% of companies plan to increase their link building budgets in 2025
- Digital PR is the most successful link building strategy for 1 in 5 SEOs
- The average backlink comes from a site with a Domain Rating (DR) of 41
- Boosting SERP ranking is the most popular goal of link building: 68% use it for this reason
What are the financial costs of link building?
Link acquisition isn’t cheap – this section breaks down the spending directed towards link building, and the potential returns on investment.
How much of an SEO budget is spent on link building?
A survey from Authority Hacker found that 28% of a typical SEO budget is dedicated towards link building.
- A separate survey by Backlinko estimates that the typical SEO budget is £1,100 per month; we can therefore deduce that £308 per month is spent on link building.
- Link building agency uSERP found that 60% of companies outsource their link building efforts to agencies or freelancers.
What is the cost of acquiring links with different methods?
Not all links cost the same – BuzzStream and Ahrefs data break down the average price tag per link by tactic.
| Link building method | Cost per link |
|---|---|
| Guest post | £267 |
| Link insertions | £104 |
| Digital PR | £950 |
| Paid links | £61 |
It’s worth noting that Google can – and often will – penalise the use of paid links.
How has the demand for link building changed?
A 2025 report from BuzzStream found that 56% of companies expect their link building budgets to increase in 2025, reflecting an increasing demand.
Only 9% intend to decrease their budget, while the remaining 35% will keep it the same.
What is the ROI for link building?
Authority Hacker found that 78.1% of SEOs see a satisfying ROI from link building.
First Page Sage found that SEO has a 748% ROI.
What is the impact of backlinks?
This section examines how backlinks influence rankings and site performance metrics.
How does your backlink count correlate with your search rankings?
A thorough analysis from Backlinko determined that the #1 SERP result has 3.8x more backlinks than those in positions 2 to 10.
- Data from Ahrefs suggests that these top results get backlinks faster than lower results.
- Overall, 96% of results on the first page have over 1,000 referring domains, according to Backlinko’s study.
- Backlinko’s data also found that 94% of all content gets no backlinks.
How many links are nofollow (vs. dofollow)?
Ahrefs analysed the top 110,000 sites and found that 10.6% of backlinks are nofollow (meaning 89.4% are dofollow).
What is the average Domain Rating (DR) or linking sites?
SEO agency Digitaloft’s analysis of 45,753 links from 12,587 different domains found that the average link earned comes from a site which has a DR of 41.
Only 20% of links come from domains with a DR of 70 and above.
What are the best link building strategies?
Review the most common tactics used today and how effective each one is in securing valuable links.
Most popular link building strategies
uSERP’s survey uncovered which tactics are the most popular amongst marketers. Digital PR was the most popular at 16%, with the other responses listed below.
| Tactic | % who use it |
|---|---|
| Digital PR | 16% |
| Content marketing | 13% |
| Guest posting | 12% |
| Link insertions | 10% |
| Link exchanges | 10% |
| Unclaimed brand mentions | 10% |
| Directory link building | 9.5% |
| Redirecting domains | 8.5% |
| Press releases | 4% |
| Broken link building | 5% |
Which link building tactics provide the most success?
Similarly, uSERP asked which of the above tactics were the most successful, with the results presented below.
| Tactic | Provides the best results for % |
|---|---|
| Digital PR | 20% |
| Content marketing | 18% |
| Guest posting | 12% |
| Unclaimed brand mentions | 12% |
| Link insertions | 10% |
| Link exchanges | 10% |
| Directory link building | 5% |
| Redirecting domains | 5% |
| Broken link building | 5% |
| Press releases | 2% |
Which content types earn the most links?
Backlinko’s analysis of 912 million blog posts found that “Why Posts”, “What Posts”, and infographics perform best: they earn 25.8% more links than video content and “How-to” posts.
Longer content performs better
Blog posts with 3,000+ words get 77.2% more referring domains than blog posts with under 1,000 words.
Source: Backlinko
Who is using link building?
Explore how many marketers are making use of a link building strategy and why.
How many marketers use link building as part of their SEO strategy?
Digital marketing agency Aira found that 86% of marketers produce content with the goal of generating links.
Another survey from AuthorityHacker reveals that 79.7% of SEOs consider link building an important part of their strategy.
What are the goals of link building?
Companies invest in link building for a range of reasons: Buzzstream’s survey uncovered the following main reasons.
Link decay
Explore why links get lost over time and what the data shows about retention rates and lifespan.
What are the most common causes of link decay?
According to Ahrefs, almost half of all links are lost due to being dropped. They determined the 7 most common causes of link decay.
How many links are retained after 12 months?
Backlink tracking tool Linkody found that after a year, 82.36% of links remain, meaning 17.37% have been lost.
- After 7 years, only 56.51% links survive.
- Dofollow links tend to last longer than nofollow links.
What is the future of link building?
See how AI is shifting the role of backlinks and what might come next for link signals.
What’s the impact of AI on link building?
Predictably, the introduction of AI Overviews (AIO) has affected the clicks search results get. 18% of all searches have an AIO.
The presence of AIO reduces clicks: only 8% of users click a link if there’s an AIO, compared to 15% of users when there’s none present.
Do backlinks affect LLMs?
A study from Seer Interactive suggests that brands are strongly correlated with LLM mentions, while backlinks have a weak impact.
ChatGPT mentions brands 3x more than it cites them, meaning that recommendations are more important than linked sources, according to BrightEdge.
Will backlinks remain a top ranking factor?
According to an analyst on the Google Search team, Gary Illyes, the consensus is “probably not”.
In 2023, Gary Illyes, an analyst on the Google Search team, stated that “I think [backlinks] are important, but I think people overestimate the importance of links. I don’t agree it’s in the top three [search ranking factors]. It hasn’t been for some time.”
Meanwhile, Google’s Senior Webmaster Trends Analyst, John Mueller, expects that links “won’t be such a big factor as sometimes it is today.”
However, data analysis from Ahrefs consistently proves a strong correlation between a site’s backlinks and its search traffic and ranking position.
Additionally, the founder of Backlinko, Brian Dean, stated in 2025, that “the authority of the page linking to you matters more than any other factor.”
Sources
- Backlinko – SEO Pricing: https://backlinko.com/seo-pricing
- uSERP – State of Backlinks for SEO: https://userp.io/link-building/state-of-backlinks-for-seo/
- BuzzStream – Link Building Pricing: https://buzzstream.com/blog/link-building-pricing/
- Ahrefs – Buy Backlinks: https://ahrefs.com/blog/buy-backlinks/
- BuzzStream – Link Building Trends: https://buzzstream.com/blog/link-building-trends/
- Search Engine Land – Link Importance: Google Top 10 Study: https://searchengineland.com/link-importance-google-top-10-study-443024
- Backlinko – Content Study: https://backlinko.com/content-study
- Backlinko – Search Engine Ranking: https://backlinko.com/search-engine-ranking
- Ahrefs – Backlink Growth Study: https://ahrefs.com/blog/backlink-growth-study/
- Ahrefs – Nofollow, UGC & Sponsored Links Explained: https://ahrefs.com/blog/nofollow-ugc-sponsored/
- Digitaloft – Digital PR Success Study: https://digitaloft.co.uk/digital-pr-success-study/
- Aira – State of Link Building: Content-Led Link Building: https://aira.net/state-of-link-building/content-led-link-building/
- Authority Hacker – Link Building Survey: https://www.authorityhacker.com/link-building-survey/
- Ahrefs – Link Rot Study: https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-rot-study/
- Pew Research – Google Users Are Less Likely to Click on Links When an AI Summary Appears in the Results: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/07/22/google-users-are-less-likely-to-click-on-links-when-an-ai-summary-appears-in-the-results/
- Search Engine Land – Links as a Google Search Ranking Factor (Gary Illyes): https://searchengineland.com/links-google-search-ranking-factor-gary-illyes-432422
- Seer Interactive – STUDY: What Drives Brand Mentions in AI Answers?: https://www.seerinteractive.com/insights/what-drives-brand-mentions-in-ai-answers