In brief: Indirect link building creates a reason for others to link to content without individually requesting every link. It typically rests on data, a tool, research or other work worth citing.
How I use indirect link building in practice
With indirect link building, I start with the visitor’s task, not the designer’s idea. I go through the journey on a small mobile screen, with a keyboard and on a slow connection, then watch where the person hesitates or makes mistakes. Every adjustment should have a reason, a measurable signal and the smallest possible intervention, so that its impact can be identified.
What to watch out for
The most common mistake is changing several things at once without a baseline. Then it is impossible to know whether indirect link building really helped. A metric alone, without observation, also does not tell us why people hesitate or leave.
Questions for decision-making
- What task does a person want to complete on the page?
- Where can they hesitate, make an error or lose context?
- Does the solution work on mobile, with a keyboard and on a slow network?
- What signal will show that the change really helped?