An editorial link is a link that a writer, journalist or site owner chose to place in their content because they judged your page worth pointing readers to, with no payment, exchange or influence from you over whether or how it appears. It is the kind of link search engines were designed to count.
How editorial links work
Search engines treat a link from one page to another as a vote of confidence. That only works if the vote is freely given. When a trade magazine cites your survey of UK landlords, a regional news site links to your guide on new parking rules, or a university blog references your free calculator, the link exists because it helps their reader. That is what makes it editorial.
Links you place yourself are different: directory submissions, forum signatures, profile pages and blog comments. So are links you pay for or trade. Google’s spam policies say paid links must carry a rel="sponsored" or nofollow attribute, and that schemes built to manipulate rankings, including excessive link swaps and guest posts written mainly for the link, can be ignored or penalised.
Editorial does not mean unprompted. Pitching a story to a journalist, offering expert comment, or telling a site that its resource list is missing a useful page are all legitimate. The test is whether the publisher had a free choice and made it on merit.
Why it matters
Editorial links are the hardest to fake, so they carry the most weight. A handful of relevant ones from respected sites usually does more for a link profile than hundreds of low-quality links, and they rarely create risk. They also send real visitors and put your name in front of an audience who already trusts the publisher.
For UK small businesses, local and trade sources are often the most realistic route. A Bristol architect whose analysis of local planning decisions is picked up by the local press, a Yorkshire brewery featured by a regional food site, or a specialist supplier cited in a trade body’s guidance all earn links that a competitor cannot simply buy.
Common mistakes
- Calling bought links editorial. Paying for a “feature” with a followed link and no disclosure is a paid link, whatever the invoice says.
- Nothing worth linking to. Most service pages are not citable. Without something useful to point to, outreach has nothing to offer.
- Spray-and-pray outreach. Hundreds of identical emails to irrelevant sites waste time and damage your reputation with editors.
- Chasing metrics over relevance. A link from a respected local site in your sector is often worth more than one from an unrelated site with a high third-party score.
- Ignoring unlinked mentions. Publishers who already mention you are the easiest people to ask.
How to act on it
Start by listing what you can offer that others would want to cite: data from your own work, a clear explanation of a confusing rule, a free tool, strong photography, or a named expert available for comment. Build one or two of those properly. Then identify who writes about the subject, from trade press to local news to industry newsletters, and approach them individually with something relevant to their readers. Digital PR is the structured version of this, and setting up alerts for unlinked mentions catches the easy wins.
Track new links in Search Console and a backlink tool, note which assets earned them, and do more of what worked. This approach is how I run link building: fewer links, earned on merit, from sites your customers actually read.