Link building strategies that work in 2026, including the local links AI answers cite

Most link building guides still open with the same advice: get as many backlinks as you can from high-authority sites. In 2026 that's only half right. Google still uses links to rank pages, but it ignores a lot of the ones people build. And AI answers now pay as much attention to who mentions you as to who links to you.

So the useful questions are narrower: which links still count, and whether any of them help you show up when someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode for a recommendation. Get those wrong and you pay for links that do nothing.

Below, I cover what Google says about links today and the strategies that still earn good ones. Then I look at what changes for a Thai or Southeast Asian site, using page-one data for a few Bangkok searches that I pulled from Ahrefs in October 2026.

Does link building still work in 2026?

Yes. Google's guide to its ranking systems says PageRank, its original link-based system, has changed a lot since launch but is still part of its core ranking systems. Its link guidance says the same thing more plainly: links help Google judge what a page is about and find new pages.

What has changed is how many links Google discounts. The same guide lists spam detection systems, including SpamBrain, that look for content and behaviour breaking its spam policies, and link schemes are high on that list. Cyrus Shepard, who studies ranking factors at Zyppy, argues in an October 2026 post that Google likely ignores or discounts many of the links any site has. His evidence is Google's leaked API documentation and patents rather than tests, so treat the detail as informed reading, not proof.

The practical upshot is simple. A link only helps if Google trusts it, and Google trusts links that look like someone chose to give them.

What makes a backlink worth building

A backlink is worth having when a real site chose to link to you because your page helps its readers. Everything else is a variation on that test.

Google's own link best practices back up the anchor text row. Good anchor text is descriptive and natural, and the words before and after a link matter too. Shepard goes further: in his reading, Google gives more weight to links that are relevant, come from trusted sources, add something new and reflect an independent editorial decision.

Dan Petrovic of DEJAN offers a quicker test in his October 2026 piece on outreach for AI search. Show an experienced SEO the page and ask who wanted the link there. If they can point to yours straight away, the link was placed for you rather than for the reader. His argument is that Google's systems can spot the same pattern.

Link building strategies that work in 2026

The strategies that still work give another site a genuine reason to link to you. Some create that reason, such as data or expert comment. Others find places where a link is already deserved but missing.

Publish data or a tool other sites need to cite

Original numbers are the easiest thing to link to, because writers need a source for every figure. This is where Southeast Asian businesses have an edge: most published benchmarks are US-weighted, so a solid local number fills a gap that journalists and bloggers in the region can't fill elsewhere. It's why I published Thai and Singapore cost-per-click data with my Google Ads cost calculator rather than repeating US averages.

Your data doesn't need to be a big survey. Booking trends, average order values, response times or anonymised enquiry data can all work if they answer a question people in your market are asking.

Turn that data into a story (digital PR)

Digital PR means pitching a story to journalists and editors so that your brand appears in their coverage. In Editorial.Link's survey of 518 SEO professionals (updated March 2026), 48.6% picked it as the most effective link building tactic, far ahead of guest posting at 16%. Editorial.Link sells link building, so read that as practitioner opinion rather than a measured result.

The pitch matters more than the volume. One sharp angle sent to the few writers who cover your topic beats a press release blasted to hundreds of inboxes.

Be the expert journalists quote

Reporters need people who can comment on a market quickly and accurately. Reply to requests for comment in your field, and let the business and trade media you read know what you can speak about. A quote doesn't always come with a link, but as the AI section below shows, the mention still has value.

Turn unlinked mentions into links

Search for your brand name and look for pages that mention you without linking. A short, polite note asking the writer to add a link is often all it takes, because they already chose to write about you. Check for lost links at the same time: pages that used to link to you but now point to a moved or deleted page on your site.

Get listed where your partners and associations already link

Suppliers, technology partners, clients you've worked with, chambers of commerce and industry associations often keep partner or member pages. A listing there reflects a real relationship, which is exactly what makes it worth having. The line Google draws is at partner pages that exist only to swap links: its spam policies name excessive link exchanges as link spam.

Write for publications your buyers actually read

A guest article in a respected trade publication can put your name in front of the right audience. Treat the link as a bonus. Google's spam policies specifically call out keyword-rich anchors in guest posts that pass ranking credit, so write for the readers and accept whatever link policy the publication has, including nofollow.

Broken link building and resource pages still work too, for the same reason: you're offering a page that fixes a real problem on someone else's site. They just tend to produce fewer links in smaller markets, where there are fewer resource pages to begin with.

Link building in Thailand and Southeast Asia

For local searches in Thailand, the authority bar is lower than global guides suggest. To check, I pulled page one in Ahrefs for a few Bangkok searches in our industries on 24 October 2026. In each case, a local business's own site ranked on page one with a modest Domain Rating, alongside much larger sites.

These sites rank for many reasons, and local relevance is a big one. The point is narrower: a high DR isn't a ticket to page one for local searches, so a small business doesn't need hundreds of links to compete. It needs a handful of relevant ones pointing at the right pages.

The same Ahrefs data turned up something more useful. For "international school bangkok", the AI Overview listed a British Chamber of Commerce Thailand member directory page as one of its sources. A chamber listing is the kind of link most SEO guides dismiss, yet here it was feeding Google's AI answer about the school.

That points to the local sources worth working through first:

• Chambers of commerce and business associations: member directories with a profile and a link to your site. They double as the business citations that local SEO relies on.
• Industry bodies: professional associations in fintech, healthcare, education or tourism that list members or accredited providers.
• Local business and trade media: English and Thai outlets covering your sector, where expert comment and data stories land.
• Your real network: suppliers, partners, venues and events you're part of. If you have Thai-language pages, Thai sites in your industry are the natural place for links to them.

Link building for AI search: why brand mentions count

Links help with AI search indirectly, because AI answers lean on pages that already rank. Mentions seem to help more directly. In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands (updated April 2026), the number of times a brand was mentioned across the web correlated with its visibility in Google's AI Overviews about three times more strongly than its number of backlinks.

A Semrush study with Kevin Indig of 1,000 domains (October 2025) adds a related detail: nofollow links correlated with AI mentions almost exactly as strongly as followed links did. It's a year old now, but it fits the same picture. For AI answers, being named on a page people trust seems to matter more than whether the link passes ranking credit.

Two cautions keep this honest. Google's spam policies now describe spam as manipulating its search systems or its generative AI responses, so planted mentions are covered too. And Petrovic expects planted mentions to be quietly devalued rather than penalised, which means you'd pay for them and never find out they stopped counting.

So aim for the sentence written about you as well as the anchor. A line in a respected article that says what you do and who you serve is useful to Google and AI assistants alike. My guide to getting your brand cited in AI answers covers the rest of that picture.

Link building tactics to avoid

Avoid anything that creates links to manipulate rankings rather than to help readers. Google's spam policies list the main ones:

• Buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, including paying in goods or free products
• Excessive link exchanges, and partner pages built only for cross-linking
• Links created by automated programs or services
• Low-quality directory and bookmark sites
• Keyword-rich links in guest posts, advertorials or press releases spread across other sites
• Links in widgets, or in the footers and templates of many sites

Paying for a placement isn't banned in itself. Sponsorships and ads are a normal part of the web, and Google is fine with them as long as the link carries rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". What breaks the rules is paying for a link that pretends to be editorial.

How to start a link building plan

Start with the pages that need links, not with a target number of links. For most businesses the win condition is a few strong links to the right pages, not hundreds to the homepage.

1. Pick the pages: usually your main service or product pages, plus one piece of data or a tool that others can cite. In the Editorial.Link survey, 52.7% of SEOs named service and product pages as the most important pages to earn links to.
2. Look at where competitors get links: a link gap report in Ahrefs or Semrush shows sites that link to rivals but not to you. Copy the source, not the tactic.
3. Build the reason first: a piece of data or an expert angle. Outreach without something worth linking to is just asking for favours.
4. Work steadily: a few good pitches every week beats a burst followed by silence. Shepard notes that sudden spikes in similar links are one of the patterns Google can spot.
5. Measure what matters: referring domains to your target pages, rankings for those pages, and how often AI answers name you. My guide to running an AI visibility audit shows how to track the last one.

Expect results in months rather than weeks, since search engines need time to find and weigh new links. If you'd rather hand the outreach over, my link building service follows this plan and reports every link won each month.

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About the author Guy Sanohlam, Founder

Guy founded Wincon Marketing in Bangkok after nearly ten years in SEO, content and paid media, both agency-side and in-house. He moved early into AEO as AI assistants started answering buyers' questions, and now helps brands get found on Google and in AI answers.

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