Link Building 2026 Statistics (Updated September)

Top 10

SEOs consider $508.95 an acceptable price for one high-quality backlink, on average, in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey of 518 SEO professionals.
A guest post costs $295 on average when bought directly from the site and $461 when bought through a vendor, in BuzzStream's 2026 study of more than 257,000 sites on link vendor lists.
13 of the 25 sites on Google's first page for three link-building queries sell links or link-building services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026.
Only 1.37% of the sites on link vendor lists qualify as high-quality or top-tier, in BuzzStream's 2026 study of more than 257,000 sites.
Brand web mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks, in Ahrefs' 2025 study of 75,000 brands.
43.8% of respondents in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey use link exchanges, and none named them their best-performing tactic.
66.5% of the links pointing to 2,062,173 sampled websites since January 2013 have rotted, according to Ahrefs' 2024 link rot study.
The #1 result on Google has 3.8 times more backlinks on average than positions 2 to 10, in Backlinko's analysis of 11.8 million search results.
5 of the 27 pages ranking on Google for link building statistics, backlink statistics and cost of a backlink repeat the claim that 94% of content gets no links, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026; 1 of the 5 names a source in the same sentence.
96.55% of the pages in Ahrefs' index get no traffic from Google, and 1.94% get one to ten visits a month.

How much does a backlink cost

1
6 of the 10 Google results for "cost of a backlink" are published by companies that sell links or link-building services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026.
Source: CrossMention · Google US, 2026-09-24 · 10 organic results · method
2
SEOs consider $508.95 an acceptable price for one high-quality backlink, on average, in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey of 518 SEO professionals.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
3
76% of link buyers in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey will pay $300 or more for a single link, and 31% are in the $500 to $1,000 range.
Source: Reporter Outreach, 2026 ^[2]
4
Only 6% of link buyers in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey still shop for placements under $100.
Source: Reporter Outreach, 2026 ^[2]
5
A guest post costs $295 on average when bought directly from the site and $461 when bought through a vendor, in BuzzStream's 2026 study of more than 257,000 sites on link vendor lists.
Source: BuzzStream, 2026 ^[3]
6
Through a vendor, a guest post on a high-quality site costs $3,130 on average, according to BuzzStream's 2026 guest post price study.
Source: BuzzStream, 2026 ^[3]
7
Vendor prices for guest posts run from about $200 on DR 0 to 9 sites to about $3,000 on DR 80+ sites, according to BuzzStream.
Source: BuzzStream, 2026 ^[3]
8
Sports sites were the most expensive category at $572 per vendor guest post in BuzzStream's 2026 data, followed by News & Media at $567.
Source: BuzzStream, 2026 ^[3]
9
When Ahrefs contacted sites to buy links for its 2024 test, paid links cost $83 on average and paid guest posts $77.80.
Source: Ahrefs, 2024 ^[4]
10
Only 12.6% of the sites Ahrefs contacted for its 2024 link-buying test were willing to sell a link.
Source: Ahrefs, 2024 ^[4]
11
80.9% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey expect link-building costs to rise over the next two to three years.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
12
75.1% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey name the high cost of premium backlinks as their biggest challenge.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]

How much do companies spend on link building

13
SEOs in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey put the minimum monthly link-building budget for highly competitive niches at $8,406 on average.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
14
Agencies put 32.1% of the overall SEO budget into link building on average, and in-house teams 36.03%, in Editorial.Link's survey.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
15
64% of respondents in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey spend $3,000 or more a month on link building, and 38% spend $6,000 or more.
Source: Reporter Outreach, 2026 ^[2]
16
58% of respondents increased their link-building spend year over year in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey; 14% cut it.
Source: Reporter Outreach, 2026 ^[2]
17
47% of link builders in FatJoe's survey of more than 500 SEOs, run in late 2024, spent more than £600 a month on link building.
Source: FatJoe, 2025 ^[5]
18
61% of link builders in FatJoe's survey expected their link-building spend to rise in 2025; 4% expected it to fall.
Source: FatJoe, 2025 ^[5]
19
61.0% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey say gambling needs the highest link-building budgets, followed by finance at 18.4% and law at 16.4%.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
20
56% of respondents in Editorial.Link's survey outsource at least part of their link building; 44% keep all of it in-house.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
21
Among in-house respondents to the 2025 BuzzStream and Citation Labs survey, 61% handle link building entirely in-house.
Source: Citation Labs, 2025 ^[6]

Which link-building tactics work

22
48.6% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey think digital PR is the most effective link-building tactic.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
23
34% of respondents in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey named digital PR their best-performing tactic, against 21% for HARO and 18% for guest posts.
Source: Reporter Outreach, 2026 ^[2]
24
43.8% of respondents in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey use link exchanges, and none named them their best-performing tactic.
Source: Reporter Outreach, 2026 ^[2]
25
73% of link builders in FatJoe's survey planned to use digital PR in 2025, and 68% planned blogger outreach or guest posts.
Source: FatJoe, 2025 ^[5]
26
68% of respondents to the 2025 BuzzStream and Citation Labs survey build links to blog content, and 41% prioritise product or commercial pages.
Source: Citation Labs, 2025 ^[6]
27
52.7% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey consider service and product pages the most important pages to earn links for.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
28
Partial-match anchor text is the first choice of 41.7% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey, ahead of exact-match (25.1%) and branded anchors (20.5%).
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
29
53% of respondents in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey target sites rated DR 40 to 60; 9% target DR 70 and above.
Source: Reporter Outreach, 2026 ^[2]
30
Only 8.5% of outreach emails get a reply, in Backlinko and Pitchbox's analysis of 12 million outreach emails.
Source: Backlinko, 2019 ^[7]

How good are the sites that sell links

31
6 of the 10 Google results for "link building statistics" are published by companies that sell links or link-building services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026.
Source: CrossMention · Google US, 2026-09-24 · 10 organic results · method
32
13 of the 25 sites on Google's first page for three link-building queries sell links or link-building services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026.
Source: CrossMention · Google US, 2026-09-24 · 25 distinct sites across 30 results · method
33
5 of the 27 pages ranking on Google for link building statistics, backlink statistics and cost of a backlink repeat the claim that 94% of content gets no links, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026; 1 of the 5 names a source in the same sentence.
Source: CrossMention · Google US, 2026-09-24 · 27 distinct ranking URLs · method
34
Only 1.37% of the sites on link vendor lists qualify as high-quality or top-tier, in BuzzStream's 2026 study of more than 257,000 sites.
Source: BuzzStream, 2026 ^[3]
35
78% of the sites on link vendor lists get fewer than 1,000 organic visitors a month, and 3% get more than 50,000, according to BuzzStream.
Source: BuzzStream, 2026 ^[3]
36
Almost 80% of guest-posting sites on vendor lists have a Domain Rating below 40, according to BuzzStream's 2026 data.
Source: BuzzStream, 2026 ^[3]
37
91.89% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey believe their competitors buy backlinks.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
38
56.0% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey do not think Google can identify and discount paid links effectively.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
39
63.1% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey would place links on sites listed on link-building marketplaces if the quality were right.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
40
In a 2024 study presented at ECIR, pages with affiliate links made up 29% of Startpage (Google) results, 42% of Bing results and 41% of DuckDuckGo results for 7,392 product review queries, against 2.35% of pages in the ClueWeb22 web crawl.
Source: ECIR (Advances in Information Retrieval), 2024 ^[8]
41
73.6% of the 140,592 domains in an Ahrefs sample have reciprocal links, meaning some sites they link to also link back to them.
Source: Ahrefs, 2020 ^[9]
42
43.7% of 112,440 top-ranking pages studied by Ahrefs have some reciprocal links.
Source: Ahrefs, 2020 ^[9]

Do backlinks still affect rankings

43
The #1 result on Google has 3.8 times more backlinks on average than positions 2 to 10, in Backlinko's analysis of 11.8 million search results.
Source: Backlinko, 2020 ^[10]
44
96.55% of the pages in Ahrefs' index get no traffic from Google, and 1.94% get one to ten visits a month.
Source: Ahrefs, 2023 ^[11]
45
Of about 20 million pages with no referring domains in Ahrefs' index, 2,997 get more than 1,000 search visits a month, roughly 1 in 6,671.
Source: Ahrefs, 2023 ^[11]
46
Across the top 20 results for 1 million high-volume US keywords, the number of referring domains correlates with rank at 0.255 and Domain Rating at 0.131, in a 2025 Ahrefs study.
Source: Ahrefs, 2025 ^[12]
47
In Ahrefs' 2019 study of backlinks and Google rankings, referring domains correlated with rank at 0.29; in Ahrefs' 2025 study of similar queries, links metrics sit at 0.22 to 0.24.
Source: Ahrefs, 2025 ^[12]
48
94% of blog posts have zero external links, in Backlinko and BuzzSumo's 2019 analysis of 912 million blog posts.
Source: Backlinko, 2019 ^[13]
49
64.9% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey say a website can rank high on Google without backlinks.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
50
78.8% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey think nofollow links affect rankings.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
51
10.6% of all backlinks to the top 110,000 websites are nofollow; 0.44% of their referring domains use rel=ugc and 0.01% use rel=sponsored, according to Ahrefs.
Source: Ahrefs, 2020 ^[14]

Do links and mentions affect AI search

52
Brand web mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks, in Ahrefs' 2025 study of 75,000 brands.
Source: Ahrefs, 2025 ^[15]
53
About 26% of the 75,000 brands in Ahrefs' 2025 study had zero mentions in AI Overviews.
Source: Ahrefs, 2025 ^[15]
54
Brands in the top quarter for web mentions average 169 AI Overview mentions, more than 10 times the 14 of brands in the next quarter down, according to Ahrefs.
Source: Ahrefs, 2025 ^[15]
55
73.2% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey believe backlinks influence the chance of appearing in AI search results.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
56
80.9% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey believe unlinked brand mentions affect organic rankings.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
57
74% of respondents in Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey believe backlinks affect AI search visibility, but 24% track it and 19% have changed how they build links.
Source: Reporter Outreach, 2026 ^[2]
58
11% of respondents to the 2025 BuzzStream and Citation Labs survey have a repeatable process for earning citations in AI-generated answers.
Source: Citation Labs, 2025 ^[6]
59
Google users who saw an AI summary clicked a regular search result in 8% of visits, against 15% for users who did not, in Pew Research Center's 2025 analysis of 68,879 Google searches.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2025 ^[16]
60
Google users clicked a link inside the AI summary itself in 1% of visits to pages with a summary, in Pew Research Center's 2025 analysis of 68,879 Google searches.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2025 ^[16]

How many links disappear

61
66.5% of the links pointing to 2,062,173 sampled websites since January 2013 have rotted, according to Ahrefs' 2024 link rot study.
Source: Ahrefs, 2024 ^[17]
62
Counting temporary errors and other issues, Ahrefs' 2024 link rot study counts 74.5% of the links pointing to 2,062,173 sampled websites since January 2013 as lost for SEO.
Source: Ahrefs, 2024 ^[17]
63
38% of webpages that existed in 2013 were no longer accessible in 2023, against 8% of pages that existed in 2023, according to Pew Research Center.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2024 ^[18]
64
23% of news webpages and 21% of government webpages contain at least one broken link, according to Pew Research Center's 2024 study.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2024 ^[18]
65
54% of Wikipedia pages have at least one link in their References section that points to a page that no longer exists, Pew Research Center found.
Source: Pew Research Center, 2024 ^[18]
66
One in five science, technology and medicine articles suffers from reference rot, and seven in ten of those that cite web resources, in a PLOS ONE study of over 3.5 million articles.
Source: PLOS ONE, 2014 ^[19]

How link builders measure results

67
40% of respondents to the 2025 BuzzStream and Citation Labs survey say their reports prove ROI, and 29% call their programs successful.
Source: Citation Labs, 2025 ^[6]
68
57.1% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey expect to see link-building results within one to three months; 3.9% expect it to take more than six.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
69
55.2% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey consider link building the most challenging part of SEO.
Source: Editorial.Link, 2026 ^[1]
70
43% of link builders in FatJoe's survey named quality control and measuring ROI as their two biggest challenges.
Source: FatJoe, 2025 ^[5]

Frequently asked questions

How much does a backlink cost?

SEOs in Editorial.Link's 2026 survey consider $508.95 an acceptable price for one high-quality backlink, on average. BuzzStream's 2026 study of more than 257,000 sites on vendor lists found an average guest post price of $295 bought directly and $461 through a vendor, and $3,130 for a high-quality site through a vendor. In a 2024 Ahrefs test, paid links averaged $83, but only 12.6% of the sites contacted would sell one.

How much do companies spend on link building each month?

In Reporter Outreach's 2026 survey of 500 SEO professionals, 64% spend $3,000 or more a month and 38% spend $6,000 or more. Editorial.Link's respondents put the minimum for highly competitive niches at $8,406 a month on average. In FatJoe's late-2024 survey, 47% spent more than £600 a month.

Which link-building tactic works best?

Digital PR leads in every 2025 and 2026 survey we read. 48.6% of Editorial.Link's respondents call it the most effective tactic, and 34% of Reporter Outreach's respondents name it their best performer, against 18% for guest posts. Link exchanges are used by 43.8% of Reporter Outreach's respondents, and none named them their best tactic.

Do backlinks still matter for rankings?

They still correlate with rank, a little less than before. In a 2025 Ahrefs study of 1 million keywords, referring domains correlated with position at 0.255, down from 0.29 in 2019. Backlinko found the #1 result has 3.8 times more backlinks than positions 2 to 10. 64.9% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey say a site can rank high without backlinks.

Do backlinks help with AI search?

Ahrefs found that brand web mentions correlate with AI Overview visibility at 0.664, against 0.218 for backlinks, across 75,000 brands. 73.2% of SEOs in Editorial.Link's survey believe backlinks influence AI results, but only 11% of respondents to the BuzzStream and Citation Labs survey have a repeatable process for earning AI citations.

How many backlinks disappear over time?

Ahrefs found that 66.5% of links to 2 million websites since 2013 had rotted by 2024, and 74.5% counted as lost for SEO. Pew Research Center found 38% of webpages from 2013 were gone by 2023.

Sources

[1]Editorial.Link. 2026.↑2 ↑11 ↑12 ↑13 ↑14 ↑19 ↑20 ↑22 ↑27 ↑28 ↑37 ↑38 ↑39 ↑49 ↑50 ↑55 ↑56 ↑68 ↑69
[2]Reporter Outreach. 2026.↑3 ↑4 ↑15 ↑16 ↑23 ↑24 ↑29 ↑57
[3]BuzzStream. 2026.↑5 ↑6 ↑7 ↑8 ↑34 ↑35 ↑36
[4]Ahrefs. “Should you buy backlinks”. 2024.↑9 ↑10
[5]FatJoe. 2025.↑17 ↑18 ↑25 ↑70
[6]Citation Labs. 2025.↑21 ↑26 ↑58 ↑67
[7]Backlinko. “Email outreach study”. 2019.↑30
[8]ECIR (Advances in Information Retrieval). 2024.↑40
[9]Ahrefs. “Reciprocal links study”. 2020.↑41 ↑42
[10]Backlinko. “Search engine ranking study”. 2020.↑43
[11]Ahrefs. “Search traffic study”. 2023.↑44 ↑45
[12]Ahrefs. “Links matter less study”. 2025.↑46 ↑47
[13]Backlinko. “Content study”. 2019.↑48
[14]Ahrefs. “Nofollow, UGC and sponsored study”. 2020.↑51
[15]Ahrefs. “AI Overview brand correlation study”. 2025.↑52 ↑53 ↑54
[16]Pew Research Center. 2025.↑59 ↑60
[17]Ahrefs. “Link rot study”. 2024.↑61 ↑62
[18]Pew Research Center. 2024.↑63 ↑64 ↑65
[19]PLOS ONE. 2014.↑66

Method

We searched Google for link building statistics, backlink statistics and cost of a backlink, read the 27 pages that ranked on the first page, and counted how many of them repeat each number. Each outside number was traced to the survey, study or company that produced it and checked against that page on September 24, 2026. Most of the survey data comes from companies that sell link building (Editorial.Link, Reporter Outreach, FatJoe) or outreach software (BuzzStream), and their respondents are SEOs they reached through their own channels, so those figures are what practitioners report about their own work. Correlation figures from Ahrefs are Spearman coefficients and do not show cause. We found two peer-reviewed papers that measure something about links (link rot in scholarly articles, affiliate links in search results) and none on backlink prices. CrossMention's numbers come from a Google US check of the first page for the three queries on September 24, 2026; the scripts are in the site repository.

CrossMention numbers new on this page:

6 of the 10 Google results for "link building statistics" are published by companies that sell links or link-building services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026. Top 10 organic results via Serper (US). A publisher counts as a seller when its homepage offers link-building services, guest posts, link insertions or a link marketplace; checked by fetching each homepage. Sellers: linkbuild.agency, Aira, SureOak, FatJoe, PressWhizz, Search Logistics.
6 of the 10 Google results for "cost of a backlink" are published by companies that sell links or link-building services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026. Same check. Sellers: Rankomedia, BacklinkWorks, Linkbuilder.io, SeedingUp, Softtrix, Collaborator.pro. Legiit, a freelance marketplace whose homepage did not load for the check, is not counted.
13 of the 25 sites on Google's first page for three link-building queries sell links or link-building services, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026. Queries: link building statistics, backlink statistics, cost of a backlink. Top 10 each, deduplicated by site. "backlink statistics" alone: 4 of 10.
5 of the 27 pages ranking on Google for link building statistics, backlink statistics and cost of a backlink repeat the claim that 94% of content gets no links, in CrossMention's check on September 24, 2026; 1 of the 5 names a source in the same sentence. Page text searched for a sentence containing "94%" and "link"; source = Backlinko, BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, Semrush or Moz named in that sentence. The figure comes from Backlinko and BuzzSumo's 2019 study of 912 million blog posts.

All 70 statistics as a CSV: link-building-statistics.csv.

Cite this page

CrossMention, “Link Building 2026 Statistics (Updated September)”, updated September 2026, https://crossmention.com/research/link-building-statistics

To cite one number, link its anchor: each statistic has one, for example https://crossmention.com/research/link-building-statistics#stat-1.

CrossMention is a mention exchange where vetted B2B companies mention and link each other in their own content, paid in credits priced by domain rating.