SMB SEO

Link building for small businesses: what Google allows

Updated Oct 7, 2026.

Google publishes what it counts as link spam, and its SEO Starter Guide describes ways to promote your site. Read both before you buy links or hire a link-building service.

Google defines link spam as “creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings” (Google Search Central). Its examples include:

Google says buying and selling links is “a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes”, and that such links don’t break its policies as long as they carry rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" (Google Search Central). For advertisements and paid placements, Google prefers sponsored and still accepts nofollow (Google Search Central).

A paid link becomes link spam when it passes ranking credit: Google’s examples include text links that don’t block ranking credit, and paid articles whose links pass it.

How Google suggests promoting your site

Google’s SEO Starter Guide suggests promoting your site through social media, community engagement, advertising and word of mouth: “One of the most effective and lasting ways is word of mouth”. It also warns that you can overdo it, and that search engines “may perceive some of the practices as manipulation of search results” (Google Search Central).

  1. Ask whether any of the links are paid placements. If they are, Google expects them marked sponsored or nofollow, and a service that sells unmarked paid links is selling what Google calls link spam.
  2. Ask to see live links it built recently. We list a link-building service only once it shows us three live sample links from the last 90 days and passes the rest of our inclusion rules.

Sources

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