What is a link building policy?

It is a written document that sets which link acquisition methods a company allows, on which of its domains, at what price, with whose approval, and how each link is checked and recorded.

Should a company policy allow paid links at all?

That is a business decision. Paid links without a sponsored or nofollow attribute break Google's link spam policy, so the compliant default is to require the attribute. A company that does otherwise should say so in writing and name who accepted the risk.

What should be checked after a link goes live?

That the page returns a 200 status, the link is in the rendered HTML with the agreed target, anchor and rel attribute, the page is indexable, Googlebot sees the same page as a visitor, and no competitor links were added next to yours.

How often should the policy be reviewed?

After each Google spam or core update, and at least twice a year.

Link buying policy and governance for in-house teams

Most link problems in companies are process problems. Somebody bought links nobody approved, from a vendor nobody vetted, with anchors nobody checked, and there is no record of what was paid. A written policy fixes that. It will not make a risky tactic safe, but it makes sure the risk was chosen by someone with the authority to choose it.

What follows is a template built from standard industry practice. It is our recommended structure, not a rule set from Google or a study. Adjust the thresholds to your own business.

Start from what Google’s policy says

Google’s spam policies define link spam as “creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings”. Buying or selling links for ranking purposes is on the list. Buying links for advertising is allowed when the link is qualified with a sponsored or nofollow attribute.

So any policy that permits paid placements without that attribute is a decision to accept policy risk. A survey of 518 SEOs published by Editorial.link in March 2026 found that 91.9% believe their competitors buy links, which explains why many companies make that decision. Governance exists so that it is made openly.

What a written policy contains

A risk appetite statement for each domain. A flagship brand site takes only negligible or low-risk methods. A growth asset may go up to moderate risk with controls. A test site may take high-risk methods if it is fully isolated.
Allowed, restricted and banned methods. Map each tactic on the tactics chart to one of the three. Banned for every domain: hacked links, impersonation, fake reviews, undisclosed Wikipedia editing and negative SEO.
Paid link rules. Who may approve a purchase. Whether a sponsored attribute is required (the compliant default) or the business knowingly accepts the risk. The maximum share of paid placements among new links each quarter. The maximum price for each band of publisher quality. No payment before the link is verified live, unless through escrow.
Vendor rules. An approved vendor list, standard contract clauses, no networks owned by the vendor, and approval of each domain before placement.
Anchor and target rules. Limits on exact-match anchors across the profile, caps per page, and sign-off for any commercial anchor. See anchor text.
Vetting minimums. A score threshold and a list of automatic fails. See how to vet a publisher.
Disclosure and legal. Advertising disclosure law applies to paid content whatever its SEO purpose. Regulated sectors such as gambling, finance and health need compliance sign-off on the copy and on which publishers may carry it.
Record keeping. Every link logged with method, cost, approver and evidence.
Separation. No shared accounts, analytics IDs or hosting between the flagship site and test sites.
Review cadence. After each Google spam or core update, and at least twice a year.

QA gate before publication

Nothing is ordered or approved for publication until these are true:

The publisher’s vetting score is recorded and above the threshold, and the automatic fails have been checked.
The domain has not already been used more than your set limit, and it is not on the exclusion list.
The brief is approved. The target URL returns a 200 status, is indexable and has the correct canonical.
The anchor is within policy. The draft has been read for accuracy, compliance and links to competitors.
The price is inside the guardrail. The terms are confirmed in writing: how long the link stays, which rel attribute it carries and what happens if it is removed.

QA gate after publication

In the first two days after the link goes live, check:

The URL is live, returns 200 and sits on the agreed domain and section.
The link is present in the rendered HTML, with the correct target, the correct anchor and the agreed rel attribute. There is no redirect chain and no tracking parameter unless agreed.
The page has no noindex tag, has the correct canonical, and is not blocked by robots.txt or by an indexing header.
The page looks the same when requested as Googlebot. A different version for the crawler is cloaking.
The article can be reached through internal links and appears in a sitemap or category page.
No competitor links or links to restricted niches were added alongside yours.

Then save a screenshot and an archive snapshot, update the tracker and release payment. Payment comes last for a reason.

Between day 7 and day 45, check that the page has been indexed. After that the link moves into routine monitoring, covered in how to track backlinks.

Escalation rules

Write these down before you need them. Each trigger has an action, an owner and a deadline.

Trigger	Action	Owner	Deadline
Link not live, or wrong, at QA	Return to the publisher or vendor; hold payment	Link operations	48 hours
Not indexed at day 45	Claim a replacement or refund	Link operations or vendor manager	7 days
Link removed, switched to nofollow, or page set to noindex within the guarantee	Claim a replacement; log a vendor strike, with three strikes meaning removal from the list	Vendor manager	7 days
Publisher’s traffic falls by more than 70%, or it is deindexed	Flag it, stop buying, assess existing links	Strategist	14 days
Unnatural spike of unknown links, or suspected negative SEO	Document, watch rankings, warn partners; disavow only with evidence of harm	Team lead	72 hours
Search Console manual action for unnatural links	Freeze all acquisition; full audit; removal requests; disavow; reconsideration request	Head of SEO and management	Immediate
Ranking drop that coincides with a spam update	Freeze paid placements; audit recent links by vendor; do not mass disavow by reflex	Head of SEO	1 week
Vendor found using hacked, cloaked or self-owned network links	Terminate; audit every link from that vendor; legal review if hacked	Team lead and legal	Immediate
Complaint from a journalist or publisher about outreach	Apologise, suppress the contact, review the template and sender	Outreach lead	24 hours
Regulator or compliance complaint about sponsored content	Legal and compliance take over; take the content down or label it	Compliance	Immediate

For the manual action row, the steps are set out in Google link penalties and recovery.

Reporting

Monthly, operational. A table of links that went live, with URL, domain, method, target, anchor, rel attribute, vetting score, cost and indexing status. Add spend against budget, cost per link by method, the pipeline, lost and replaced links, QA exceptions and vendor performance.

Quarterly, strategic. Referring domain growth against competitors. Distribution by tier, relevance, country and method. Anchor and target distribution against the policy. Durability, meaning survival at 90 and 365 days and the indexing rate. Ranking and traffic movement for the pages you targeted against a control group. The trend in AI citations and brand mentions. Risk indicators, and a recommendation on where to move budget.

Annual. A full profile audit, a policy review, a re-tender of vendors, and the cost per additional organic click and per unit of revenue.

Four rules keep the reports honest:

Count unique referring domains, not raw links.
Exclude syndicated copies of the same article.
Show nofollow links and unlinked mentions separately. Do not hide them.
Never report Domain Rating on its own.

When a policy will not save you

A policy does not change how Google treats a link. If the business chooses high-risk methods for its main domain, a tidy approval trail only proves that the choice was deliberate. The separation rule matters most here: tests belong on assets you can afford to lose.

Where to go next

Build the vetting step with how to vet a publisher, and set up monitoring with how to track backlinks. If you work in gambling, the iGaming hub covers the extra compliance checks.